Customization

Current—physical garment customization is a bespoke or superficial service, mainly seen in made-to-measure (MTM) brands and on-demand merch.

Clothing manufacturing is largely set up for wholesale, which implies high minimum orders of standardized art, fabric, and sizing. Brands that currently offer customization to the end-consumer work around these issues with: a) presales to hit minimums (example: ASPHALTE)

b) 1 of 1s (not customization but may satisfy customer desire for uniqueness - example: Del Día by Cotopaxi)

c) knitwear [shoes and garments] which is a more mechanized production flow d) niche manufacturing like formal attire (example: XUITS)

e) vertical integration (example: Roberts Wood) f) small scale from the ground-up (example: Atalyé)

Some of the above mentioned brands plug into body scanning tech (example: LMTLSS), which currently overshoots what manufacturing can accommodate—though that’s exactly what we’re working on. The tech itself is improving but is only reliable with expensive machinery or expensive phones (& steady hands!)

Horizon—The emergent fashion ecology that we’re mapping here begins as a cultural shift, set off by tenuous externalities that can no longer be ignored, and finds footing through prototyping the tech and tooling layers before making any hard changes in production. Manufacturers operate fragile business, often hypertrophied in one specialization or way of working (and deeply invested in high-cost machinery) to maximize efficiency due to extremely low margins. If we want real adoption, we need to minimize collateral, and therefore coordination—hence the case for web3—becomes the primary transformation-through-action zone.

coordination==

1. standardization across traditionally un-interoperable processes, such as file formats (most industrial machines work on proprietary software, as do digital prototyping softwares), tech-pack and pattern notation.
2. open ERP with automatic validation OR incentivized production management (production calendars standardized and kept up-to-date) to capture a) material inventories so that products can take advantage of existing materials and b) production line availability so that incoming orders can be bundled together to reach a healthy quantity threshold for batch production. Ideally manufacturers would benefit through deadstock monetization & fluid production booking, mitigating current volume spikes and lulls.
3. unbroken provenance as designs are iterated upon, produced, and sold, to incentivize design exchange rather than withholding. This has implications for IP as well as resource distribution, and would open up a pathway to curation-meshes (out from under brand-stacks).