The world started as an extremely customized experience. Each piece of clothing was hand made for that individual, each meal made specifically for one person and we (quite literally) ate what we killed. Then we saw the rise of the industrial revolution and mass production. Humans began to globalize and specialize into what we were best at. No longer was the sweater just made for the individual who asked for it, now we make thousands of sweaters for thousands of individuals who didn’t even know they wanted one yet!
Shopkeepers went from servicing very few and specific needs (local penny candy store) to servicing every possible need coming into their store (Walmart). In the mid-20th century, patrons at local stores would be greeted by shopkeepers standing behind a counter (think the smallest coffee shop you have ever seen in NYC with room for 5 people at most). Instead of browsing the aisles and adding items to a shopping cart, shoppers would order their list at the counter. This is a world unimaginable for each one of us reading this post via a laptop, smartphone or tablet. Sam Walton, ever the innovator, was one of the first to introduce the idea where customers could browse and pick their own items. The advantages here are multifold – consumers are provided more variety, more likely to choose an additional item that wasn’t on their list, and multiple shoppers can add to their cart at once. Emphasis here is on the transition from bespoke service to generalized. No longer was it one shopkeeper providing one hose option for a customer looking to purchase, but now servicing the general population with a variety of hose lengths, types, and attachments to service various needs. The guys over at Acquired have an excellent breakdown on the history of Walmart that can be found here:
https://www.acquired.fm/episodes/walmart
See the (poorly sketched) chart below. The top layer is the extremely narrow and custom experience we lived in as humans from the rise of the merchant class Phoenicians around 1000 BC until Sam Walton and Walmart showed up in the mid 20th century. The bottom layer is where we exist today – the era of hyper customization:
We now live in, and are trending ever towards an era of hyper-customization. Instead of walking into a store and hoping they have something we need, we can log onto our laptops and order the exact article of clothing with the correct size, style, color, material to our doorstep. Our media we watch is tuned to our interests. My instagram feed is different than everyone else’s in the world. Suggested shopping opens our eyes to items we didn’t even know existed. In financial services, investing in mutual funds, ETFs and index funds (proxies) is old. What is on the rise are SMAs and direct indexing. Technology has made it easy for us to customize everything we need to exactly what we want.
The age of customization is upon us.
mike murphy 