Customization: the future of fashion?

                In my past blog posts I have talked about how many sports brands offer the opportunity to customize shoes. The option to customize numerous different articles of clothing seems to be the big thing lately, and I think that is because people feel the need to express themselves more and stand out from the cookie-cutter mold. People want to be different, and to provide that, sports companies use customization. In a post I wrote back in November, The Beauty of Customization, I told of how I customized my basketball shoes for the then upcoming season. Now that my high school basketball season has come to an end, I am once again relying on the customization options to design new jerseys for our season next year.
                To start the process, we met as a team with a sales rep for Adidas and Under Armour, where he showed us the different styles of jerseys available. Most of them were not in my school’s colors so it was hard to in vision how cool the jerseys would actually look, so that was where the “beauty of customization” came into play. The sales rep, showed us how to access Adidas customization tool, mi adidas, and from there we could access the numerous styles sitting in front of us, but this time we could view how they would look in green and gold. Not only is the customization tools offered by these sports companies fun to mess around with to try crazy combinations, but they also give the buyer the option to assess all their creations side by side so they can see exactly what they are buying, exactly how they want it, and exactly how much each creation would cost. It makes the buying process much easier, because there isn’t any doubt on what you are purchasing.
                Obviously within the customization site, you could easily change the colors of the jerseys to match what we wanted, but there were also many other variables that the buyer has the option to change. You could decide where you want the team name placed on the front, where the numbers would be, what the size and font the numbers and letters would be, where you wanted to place your team logo, and so on. Just on one jersey style there are millions of options on how to make your team’s own unique jersey so you can stand out from the rest. Now realistically with all these choices there is also a price to it, which can get pretty high the more options you add. But it is nice because as you are creating your jerseys and you add more options, you can see the price adding up off to the side, so you know that if you got with option 1 over option 2 you could save $10, which adds up when you are buying a team set of jerseys.

                Customization is the future of not only the sports fashion world, but the fashion world in general. People want to be different. People want to stand out from the crowd. People want to be noticed in that one-of-a-kind clothing and know that they won’t show up to a party wearing the same thing as the next guy. Being different is just what we are as people and the ability to customize clothing to fit our wants and needs, satisfies us. Every time I’ve used a customization site, whether it be for personal items or as a team, the process has been an easy one because you get to dictate exactly want you want and how you want it.