The Future of Retail: The Segment of One
By Doug Stephens
Three hundred years ago, most things we purchased were customized, one-of-a-kind and bespoke. The maker and seller were one and the same and the things they sold were made one at a time. The customer got precisely what they wanted based entirely on their personal needs and tastes.
A hundred years later, just about everything became more or less the same. Labor was divided. Makers made and sellers sold. And most things were manufactured en masse to streamline efficiency, lower costs and broadly meet the needs of large “market segments” – segments comprised of thousands or even millions of consumers, based on a loose set of commonalities. It was a commercial revolution that would shape our entire frame of reference for over 200 years. And those manufacturers who couldn’t or wouldn’t master these new advanced means of mass production were largely wiped out. Any customized manufacturing that did remain was largely relegated to the luxury category and out of reach of the typical consumer. Instead, the average Joe got average products. And the retail marketplace became a sea of sameness.
By the early 1990’s visionary authors like Joseph Pine were writing about a new era they called mass customization. An era where the benefits of mass-production could and would now be enhanced by new technologies that enabled varying degrees of tailoring of products to appeal to individual tastes, needs or preferences. Mass produced products but modified to feel customized. While this brought us closer to true customization, it remained a compromise.
From Mass Customization to Massive Customization
But today, there’s an entirely new revolution brewing and it’s coming at a velocity and scale that I suspect will be incomprehensible compared to all that came before it. It will wed the skill and precision of the world’s finest craftsmen with the volume and efficiency of the world’s fastest assembly line. It’s the era of what I’m calling MASSIVE customization – pure, unbridled one-off production but on a simply massive scale. An era where it will be as efficient and profitable to make one bespoke pair of sunglasses that fit a particular buyer’s face perfectly, as it will to make a thousand of the same style, that suit the masses adequately. One pair of jeans that fit the algorithmically precise measurements of only one person, versus a million pairs that almost fit everyone…sort of. Where virtually anything I want can be made for me. Just me. Genuine, full-on customization at prices comparable to those of mass-produced goods.
For many retailers, this new era I’m describing will be as unimaginable as the industrial revolution must have been to 17th century craftsmen. It may seem far-fetched to imagine making something unique for almost every customer that comes through the door. But the signs of this movement are everywhere. Quantum developments in technologies like 3-D printing, big data and biometrics are making this sort of precisely individualized production not only possible, but from a business standpoint, preferable to having to order huge amounts of inventory and sell through as much as possible before marking down unsold stock at a loss. Massive customization will be better for consumers, businesses and I suspect, the environment too, with fewer unsold products ending up in landfill sites.
It’s a new era of retail, a new era of manufacturing and a new age of consumerism. An age where every consumer regardless of demographic or economic similarities will soon belong to their own unique segment – a segment of one.