It's Time to Customize

Tapestry is the company that owns luxury brands Coach, Stuart Weitzman and Kate Spade.   The company has now embarked on a program that allows all three brands' customers to customize product offerings to accomplish the following goals:

• Reduce sales and discounting
• Improve pricing structures
• Mine customer data to determine trends and buying behavior in order to speed up the supply chain

Coach Create is available in about 40% of the company's stores worldwide.  It allows customers to design the features on Coach bags and add accessories and monogramming.  The Coach Rogue bag can be completely customized offering customers more than 1 million options.

 

Kate Spade's Make it Mine program gives customers 45 different customization design options and the ability to add accessories and monogramming to jewelry, bags and accessories. Customization capabilities are available both online and in-store. In Kate Spade stores, sensors are activated that identify areas on the bag that are customizable.  Digital screens identify possible changes consumers can make to a bag and there's even a training tutorial illustrating just how a bag can be customized.  

 

Customization enables customers to personalize products and make original one-of-a-kind products. Other luxury brands such as Chloe, Gucci and Diane von Furstenberg have also gotten on the customization bandwagon. In addition to being able to charge full price for customized products, these manufacturers are mining data they might otherwise not obtain because customers are likely to provide more information than they would for a typical purchase.  

 

Lessons for decorative plumbing and hardware showrooms:  

• Partner with brands who offer customization capabilities that allow customers to create their own unique fixtures by changing handles, spouts, finishes, etc. 
• Partner with manufacturers that have the capability to produce custom products.
• Establish databases to track customer preferences for use in future marketing and merchandising.  
• Determine if you automatically need to discount custom products because they are not likely to be available from any other source.