During the presentation two articles were discussed. The first one was ‘Customizing Customization‘ and the second article was named ‘Models for Supply Chains in E-Business‘. In this post we will discuss the examples we used to support the theory from the lecture and articles.

Customizing Customization                                                                                             This article describes different company strategies from aggregation to individualization. Instead of choosing one of these extremes, most companies shift towards the middle.   We used two jeans companies as examples of different types of customization strategies.

MakeYourOwnJeans

This company offers you the opportunity to ‘design’ your own jeans online. There is also an option to clone jeans that you already posses. Next to jeans you can also design pants, shirts,  shorts, jackets, coats and suits. Online you can choose from different types of fabrics, colors and fits. The next step is to fill in your measurements, on the website their are guidelines how to measure. The products are produced in India and shipped throughout the world.  The strategy this company follows can be considered as Tailored Customization.

Levi’s Curve ID

This famous jeans brand developed an online tool / questionnaire to find the perfect fit. Three questions about fit are asked. Afterwards a suggestion is made of which certain type of model is the best available option. The advice is based on three models that already exist. The Curve ID is only available for women (sorry guys). This approach from Levi’s can be considered as Segmented Standardization.

Models for Supply Chains in E-Business                                                                         E-business is described as ‘a business process that uses the Internet or other electronic medium as a channel to complete business transactions.’ Within E-Business two methods were discussed, Brick & Click (Levi’s Curve ID) and Pure Click (MakeYourOwnJeans). Another possible method for doing E-Business is to first be active online and second to be active offline, opening a retail store (Click and then Brick). We used Coolblue http://www.coolblue.nl/  as example. In 1999 Coolblue started with selling mp3 players on the Internet, after four years they opened their first store in Rotterdam. Now they have two more stores in the Netherlands and their assortment varies from smart phones to household appliances.

For more theory about supply chains we would also like to refer you to the post from the other team 1(morning). Below we have added two clips that supports the lecture. The first one is about Amazon.com, we believe that this is the perfect example of how the process should be. The second clip is IBM’s view how companies chains should be in order to serve empowered customers properly. Enjoy!

Mahrou Kharazi & Rajiv Hanoeman                                                                                    Team 1