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Gift personalisation is becoming the standard for any brand that wants to forge a new connection with its existing customers.

This has the potential to make your products totally unique, something that every brand invests so much money into but rarely succeeds to the degree originally aimed for. It’s also not that hard to do, as long as you align your logistics, your brand perception, personalisation options and the UX design of your website. We’re going to explore several ways in which most businesses can give their customers a way to personalise gifts and allow them to make what could be a generic product into something special. We’ll cover industries such as fashion, restaurants, technology and more

Personalised fashion

Fast fashion is dying. Thank god. It means that quality products are being made, built and designed to last. This is both in line with new customer wishes for products to be ethically made and also, products they care to keep in their wardrobes for longer. They need to be just as stylish but also, save them money in the long run.

One way you can do this is unique custom designs that are categorised. For example, take a look at various sneaker websites. They allow for different colours to be selected for different parts of the show. So the laces can be green, while the shoe is white. They allow for the soles of the shoes to be red and the face of the shoes to be yellow. It’s totally up to the customer what they would like, but once again, the options are categorised and therefore systematised.

You can also give customers the option to fit custom made gift tags to their products if they plan on giving items to friends and family. This can help customers to really put a personal touch onto their products, and allow you to be a part of their celebration somehow. You can have ‘made with love’ ‘for your Clarrisa’ or whatever personal message is required, on the gift card.

Personalised technology exists?

Yes technology products can and should be personalised. This is because technology products are almost as numerous as fashion items. Everyone has a smartphone of some sort. There are tens of millions of copies made of smartphones, having a personalised version would stand out for customers. All the research suggests that customers are willing to pay for it.

One example is the ability to etch a unique design into phone cases. This is something that can be done on various websites but only ones that are not from the brand of the smartphone makers themselves. This could be something of an aftermarket product but as long as you can fit into the most popular design of phone cases and implement unique designs in them, you have a great market potential.

The type of customisation you could offer is etching names into cases, drawing unique images, and the usual designs such as popular brand symbols like the Mercedes trident. These can be etched using lasers, or perhaps done by hand if you offer wooden handmade phone cases.

Restaurants should offer personalisation

The most obvious way to offer personalised products is to offer customers a way to put a spin on a dish they have ordered. This however requires a lot of preparation of ingredients, cooking styles and organisation in the kitchen. For example, you have a smoked salmon dish that is cooked in a French rustic style. A customer should be given the option to mix or swap the vegetables and the sauce. This could mean they can order one of three different sauces, one is cheese-based, another wine-based and another animal fat-based. They can swap out the tomatoes for celery or perhaps onions for garlic. Some kind of variation should be offered to customers if they order specific dishes, preferably those that are a little complex and expensive.

But what about the chefs? You could also make unique aprons with some kind of customisation on hand. The simplest is to etch or sow the name of the chef in the apron, or maybe the logo and or slogan of a restaurant. This should be done with materials that will stand the heat and steam in a kitchen, and multiple washes a week if need be. So very high quality threads and etches into the apron are required. You could also offer leather aprons which are more durable.

The en masse item

For every product you make, there is at least one giant component that is made en masse. For example like we have touched upon the smartphone, brands make back glass covers en masse. And for clothing items, there is always something that is made en masse and then is customised or printed on, such as a basic t-shirt. Look at your business and products and see which part of a product is basic enough, large enough and affordable enough to be made into a customisable area or part of the product.

Chances are you will find at least one area. For example, if you sell wheels for cars, surely you have a model for how you make each different wheel? You can see how some stages of the production can be done for others. So maybe the centre of the wheel can have a customer’s personal logo or name in it? Maybe if you make printers and you have one sheet of plastic that is easy to make and goes on just about every design, why not offer that up to have a brand’s logo on it? If you look hard enough you can find one area of your product where you can offer customisation options to customers for very cheap.

The personalisation of products is definitely something to invest in. The potential to make a lot of customers happy and to gain a huge profit is just too good to miss. Hopefully now, you have some ideas of where to begin.

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