The Process of Purchasing Personalized Creations

I can't wear the most expensive shirt I have ever bought. It doesn't fit. Even though I spent $89.95, I don't think I could take 16 hours of shallow breathing. The shirt is too small in the chest for me to take a deep breath.

Original Stitch is an online fashion company based in San Francisco. They empower their members to build their perfect dress shirts from premium quality fabrics and an endless variety of patterns, styles, and details. Their mission is to liberate men like me from the slog of traditional shopping by offering convenience, simplicity, and flexibility. They want to provide shirts that guys want to wear versus what men can buy off the rack.

Their process is simple.

1. Select a fabric.
2. Measure yourself and supply the values.
3. Place your order and wait for the shirt to arrive at your door.

There's a wrong tool for the job:

and there's a right tool for the job:

Another folly is to rely on historical data as in: my sports jacket is a 40 long so my chest size must be 40 inches.

Attribute	What I Supplied	What I Should Have Supplied
Sizing Method	Body Sizing	Body Sizing
Height	6 ft 3 in	6 ft 3 in
Weight	198 lbs	198 lbs
Neck	16 inches	16 inches
Left Sleeve	34 inches	34 inches
Right Sleeve	34 inches	34 inches
Chest	40 inches	41 inches
Waist	35.5 inches	38 inches
Shirt Length	32.5 inches	32.5 inches
Hip	40.5 inches	41 inches
Shoulder	18.5 inches	20 inches
Bicep	13 inches	13 inches
Right Cuff	7 inches	7.5 inches
Left Cuff	7 inches	7.5 inches
Gender	Male	Male
Fit	Regular	Regular

Luckily for me, Original Stitch's motto is:

They are graciously creating a correctly fitting shirt for me. As long as they are recreating the shirt based on the chest being too small, I updated the other measurements to get what I believe will be a perfect fit. Customers are limited to one free remake which seems more than fair. This is my fault, not the supplier's. My original order specified a blue palm-tree fabric which is now out of stock so I asked if I could have Polka Dot Jungle instead.

Autodesk believes that the future of making will involve:

• Additive manufacturing because complexity is free and material use is minimized.
• Personalized objects because consumers will no longer be satisfied with generic off-the-shelf goods, when for the same price, they can obtain items created specifically for them.

Here is a case where the personalization process was left up to the user, and I didn't do so well with my first attempt. Compare the process of measuring myself to what a company like Feetz uses. Feetz is the first 3D shoe factory of its kind. Located in Chattanooga, Tenn., the "SizeMe" footwear technology personally fits shoes to every customer: 7 billion sizes, 1 for everyone in the world. Instead of having you measure your foot yourself, they have you place your foot on a 8.5" by 11" piece of paper and take a few pictures. Feetz is able to deduce the size of your foot by scaling the image against the known size of the paper.

I recently got an email from Nordstrom. Nordstrom just launched a "reserve and try in-store" feature on its mobile app. This reserve and try in store capability, which Nordstrom has dubbed Reserve & Try, works using another somewhat new Nordstrom app feature called Store Mode. When shoppers are using the app, they can toggle to Store Mode to see what's available at a particular store. Then can then select a certain item, select to reserve and try in store, fill in their contact information, and confirm the reservation.

It's not exactly a bespoke process, but it does try to combine the online shopping experience with the in-store experience to liberate men like me from the traditional shopping experience. I get to select something like a shirt that I want and know that it's physically there before I head to the store. I actually try it on to make sure it fits rather than supply my own measurements. There's more than one way to skin a cat.

I will post a picture of me in the updated Original Stitch shirt when it arrives. Thanks, Original Stitch!

Fittings are alive in the lab.