Taking Product Personalisation to a New Level

As always, and even more so in the current climate, consumers want as much as possible for each pound. It seems many retailers worldwide are stepping up to the mark and offering more bang for not much more buck. Personalised products have long been great gifts but often at an increased higher price. Now, however, it seems personalised products are becoming more popular as retailers start offering them at mainstream prices and they are becoming as much self purchase products, as gifts.

With Christmas trading just around the corner, building personalisation opportunities into your products is also a great differentiator. Adding another string to your bow in this way will encourage both previous customers and potential customers to see you in a new light.

It’s often the case when shopping that consumers have a fixed idea of what they want and often they end up compromising some of their desires for a suitable, but not fantastic, product. Retailers have acknowledged this and are giving some of the design power back to the consumer.

If you’re clever about what you offer and how you build it into your margin, there’s no reason you can’t profitably build an element of personalisation into whatever product your offering.

Let’s look at some examples:

Personal style is important to everyone. Everyone has a style and everyone knows what they feel comfortable wearing. Retailers are allowing consumers to express their personal style without having to buy into standard off the shelf fashion. A watch is something you wear everyday so why wouldn’t you want it to suit your style? Timex 80, through their MyTimex tool, allows customers to personalise the colour of their watch for just an extra €5 on the non-personalised version.

Shirts My Way allows complete customisation of men’s dress shirts, literally, from cuff to cuff and collar to yoke, for as little as $75. If you look hard enough, and often you don’t have to look far, you’ll find most clothing items that you can personalise to suit your personal taste.

People are also just as passionate about their hobbies. Lind Golf is a great example of how to offer great personalisation. They allow you to purchase a set of golf clubs completely personal to you – both in style and size – via their MiFit tool. A very clever way to both encourage mass purchase and return custom – no one wants a golf bag with one club that doesn’t match the others!

And food? Mix My Granola allows complete customisation of your granola – right down to the box it’s packaged in. It even offers mass customisation to allow for corporate events or weddings!

Finally, a personal favourite. Who wouldn’t want their own personalised chocolate bar? Chocri allows complete personalisation of a 100g chocolate bar from $8.50, in some cases less than you’d pay for a similar non-personalised version.

Giving consumers more control over their purchases and making the purchase process personal and fun enhances the shopping experience and therefore encourages customer loyalty, something that is getting harder and harder to gain. It also encourages viral marketing, on more than one occasion I’ve been emailed a cool product personalisation tool and gone through the whole process except the actual purchase. No sale this time maybe but I did emailed it on and the fun experience means they will be at the front of my mind next time I want what they’re offering.