The Footwear War in the Age of Mass Customization

Supposedly we are entering the era of mass customization so if a company wants to be “cool” and stay on top of the trends, it should offer its customers the opportunity to personally design the products they are to buy. Burton was among the first to let its patrons personalize their snowboards by customizing the graphics for the boards. Soon others joined the bandwagon. Among them the giants of the footwear industry and archrivals, Nike and Puma with the Nike iD and Puma Mongolian Shoe BBQ Web sites, respectively.

So I head on a quest to discover how it feels to be the creator of your own shoe. But before I do that I should probably let you know that I am one of those old-fashioned, boring people that prefer shopping the traditional way. Especially when it concerns clothing and shoes. Somehow I like going into the store, looking around confused, frowning a little, trying this and that with the hope to see the “that’s-so-totally-you” look on the assistant’s (or, preferably, my friend’s) face and then I buy. To do justice to the contemporary shopping style, several times I decided to be extremely modern and venturesome and bought shoes from eBay and I have to admit that for the most part I was very happy with what I got, but I also ended up with several pairs that were either too small or too big, so I came back to the traditional way. This said, I can now share with you my experiences with Nike iD and Puma Mongolian Shoe BBQ. Oh, and one more thing before I begin – I admit being a die-hard Nike fan so I might be a little prejudiced but I think not too much.

I started off with Nike’s site and first thing I noticed is there is no swoosh on the landing page and I do not mean this is necessarily bad, I just noticed it, maybe because in my mind Nike and the swoosh always go together. One thing that made a positive impression on me is that the site itself is available in six languages – English, Spanish, French, German, Italian and Chinese – an important step if you want to make your site accessible to the greatest number of people and if you proclaim your company global or international. When I selected “English” it then made me choose between U.S. and Europe. At first I wondered what the big difference was except that maybe “color” will be switched to “colour” but I later realized that it is rather the $ signs being turned into £.

But that said, let me focus on the site itself. And here I have to make my first serious remark – it takes too much time to load, or at least to someone used to Google-fast it does. I also have to say that it falls into the “nothing special” category in terms of design. It aims at being cool, trying to create a team feeling with its locker room theme but somehow it does not cut it. For me. Something is missing, maybe the music. I had to look around for a while to try and figure out how the whole customization thing works but soon I am all ready to go. I am a little surprised that none of the Nike models I own is on the list of shoes that can be customized but I finally select my first shoe and get started. And I have to admit it is pretty fun actually. There are so many things to choose from. I started off by selecting my size (or at least the size I suppose I should be) and then came the base color (I start blank so that I can fully experience the customization process plus I really do not like the orange-green combinations that are obviously quite fashionable recently), followed by a secondary color and colors for my straps, the first time I had straps and not lace), backtab, swoosh, swoosh border, lining, outsole and stitch. There are between 12 and 14 colors to choose from and I have to frankly admit I never thought so much time and effort went into the design of one sneaker. But at the end I have a pair of pretty cute Nikes with my name, or at least an abbreviated version of it since it did not let me use more than five characters, at the fot. It is funny but I am almost tempted to buy them so I cautiously press the “add to cart” button waiting to see how the customization affected the price and I am pleasantly surprised to see nothing changed. But still as I think about it, I decide that maybe I should save them as a screensaver first and then if I still want them after looking at them for a while, buy them. As a matter of fact, I so much enjoyed my first customization experience that I went on to create a pair of male sneakers and then one for kids. As I experimented with the male pair, I first wanted to write on it “master” but it would not let me so I then tried “Superman” which was rejected as well so I assume Nike exerts some control on what goes out in the market with its brand name on it. When this pair was done I decided to save it to myLOCKER to see what that is and I found out that if you are willing to share with Nike your personal information and get an account for the Web site in return you will be endowed to some discounts and early peeks at new and limited collections. I decline the offer and after one more pair of sneakers am ready to move along to Puma’s site.

Puma Mongolian Shoe BBQ’s menu comes only in English, something I personally consider one of the weaknesses of the site. Otherwise, I have to admit it looks very nice and is definitely “cooler” than Nike iD. I like the whole idea of mixing the ingredients of your shoe, here the underlying theme of the site is much more obvious and coherent. And it would have been even better if I managed to convince the audio to play for me but regardless of how many times I pressed the on and off it never started. I am still not too worried because I assume I can listen to my Pandora and work on my shoes but I soon find out this is not quite that easy because the site is very, very slow, compared to it Nike iD loads in an eye’s blink. My second disappointment comes when I open the menu and realize that there are only two models that I can customize and there is no difference between male, female and kids. For comparison, Nike has 38 women’s models, 53 men’s and four kids’ models to choose from. Since there is nothing I can do about this, I select my shoe and then I am presented with the dilemma whether to choose the “Dine In” method of customization and go through what Puma calls the “full customization experience” or to take the “Express Line” to customization. Since I am sure to be making a second pair I decide to go the extra mile the first time. And I soon discover that customization can be not only fun but also… painful! I find it extremely hard to navigate the tongs that I have to use to select my colors and materials plus my shoe is totally dismantled so I cannot get a visual idea of what it would look like. I once decided to use the “Preview” option but after waiting for more than five minutes for it to load I decided that it is probably not worth it and moved along. Finally, I go through all 21 (Who would have thought?!) parts of the shoe that need to be customized and I am ready to see the result of my half-hour long endeavor. But I soon realize that my waiting is not over yet since it takes the chef quite a while to mix the ingredients I have selected and present me with the final creation. I have to say the final result is not bad for someone who initially had no idea of what “fot” and “eyestay” were but I am not very sure whether it was worth the wait. Nevertheless, I decide to experiment with the “Express Line” option and I have to say that if you ever decide to use the site to customize your shoe, this is the way to go about it. It is easy to see what the different options are and to select from them, plus you get the extra benefit of seeing what your shoe looks like while you are creating it. This part of the site is very similar to Nike iD the only difference being that there are many more colors to choose from – the number ranges between 13 and 31. This second shoe takes me mere seven minutes to make and that is just because I am very particular about the color combinations and my sockliner this time. Unfortunately, this site does not have the wallpaper option that Nike iD has so I have to keep on throwing my sneakers in the dog’s bag but it is still fun.

After several hours of virtual customization I feel like I have had enough of online shopping for now. It was a nice experience after all. And I am amazed at the thought that were I to purchase any of these shoes dozens of messages will be immediately sent to all the parts suppliers saying Stefana needs red liners and silver laces. It is amazing how much technology has done the way we do business, the way we live. I cannot help but wonder if twenty years from now the kids would know what traditional shopping once was. Maybe not. After all who ever once thought that people will step on the Moon or be able to make artificial blood.