RAWR.
One of the most important aspects of our future customization website, is the ease and ability for the shopper to design her garment. The technology behind creating this fluid user experience called a ‘customizer’, has already come a long way, as more brands are seeking the ability to offer a mass customization platform. However, the field is still relatively new, so seeking out a source for our technological design was a bit tricky.
We found that there were three main options to bring the idea to life.
The first is hiring a freelance developer to design the software. Many companies have chosen this route, and it has a plethora of benefits. Having a single person to direct all questions to and communicate ideas with, is widely helpful since the web tool should be styled and edited to fit the particular companies needs. Unfortunately, unless you have a very experienced program developer in mind and at your beckon call, finding an individual with the required skill for a project such as this, is difficult and ultimately costly.
The second is to use a software development company. We reached out to many, but we couldn’t really get what we wanted in our price range. For a more limited use, we found a few companies with stellar experience, and to have everything we wanted, there were some incredibly impressive developers who were, unfortunately out of our budget by a really, really long shot.
Finally we came to software-as-service, which ultimately proved to best suit our current needs. We found Combeenation, a unique company with their feet securely planted in the world of mass customization. They essentially built software that can be tuned to fit a brands needs — the ability for us to create the exact design tool we were looking for. Now, with lots of busy minds working, we are very close and super excited to roll out the launch of our new site coming fall 2015!