How Mass Customization Is Evolving in Promo

Early in Johanna Lucia’s tenure at San Francisco, California-headquartered promo distributor Brilliant, the vice president of client services worked on an alumni gifting campaign and was tasked with sending the sales team at ZipRecruiter mugs from each of their alma maters.

That type of personalized touch can be critical for ensuring a recipient feels valued and seen by the company doing the gifting. It was also one of the most complicated and involved campaigns Lucia had ever worked on, with multiple steps required to source, kit and distribute the mugs.

Almost all of the end-users attended different colleges, so each mug had to be individually ordered and shipped from that particular university’s bookstore to the Brilliant warehouse, where it was then repackaged with a custom box and handwritten note.

“I feel like if we were to do that today, there would be a much easier way for us to source quicker and execute it far better than we had done many moons ago,” Lucia says.

In Lucia’s case, Brilliant wasn’t responsible for decoration, but it was responsible for a personalized experience – and even just five years ago, the distributor lacked some of the technology to simplify that complex project.

Whether by using artificial intelligence to ensure back-end consistency or decoration technology to create fully customized, one-of-a-kind products, the industry is moving into an era where promo is more personalized than ever – and just in time, considering how much end-users value branded merch that’s truly theirs.

“People are looking for something that is more personal and feels more genuine as a gift,” says Rachel Hoskins, vice president of sales at Lees Summit, MO-based promo supplier Sock101.

Keys to Decoration

Recent developments in printing equipment are helping promo companies unlock opportunities in mass personalization. In particular, direct-to-film (DTF) printing, where digital designs are printed onto a special transfer film, has been a boon.

“It’s kind of like the holy grail of personalization,” says Brad Belk, director at High Point, North Carolina-based Axiom America, parent company of Arcus Printers, which has a variety of DTF printers in its product lineup.

DTF technology is almost a no-brainer for a project where, say, a sports team wants to print custom jerseys with the last name and number of each player, Belk adds.

Screen printing presses might be more efficient for high-volume or single-color apparel orders, since they can rapidly churn out prints once the screens are burned and set up. But when it comes to low-volume orders – or orders with related, but personalized designs – direct-to-film printing has opened a whole new realm of garment decoration possibilities. In the sports team example, an apparel decorator would just print the names and numbers onto a DTF transfer, have them all lined up and go to town, Belk says.

In fact, says Omar Hassan, vice president and chief operating officer at apparel decorator Smash Transfers, it’s so easy to print just one or two DTF transfers for a shirt that when he gets in-person customers at his Hackensack, NJ-based print shop asking for small-batch orders, he prints them right away.

“99% of the time, when a customer comes to me with a low minimum and they bring the garments,” he says, “I tell them – don’t even leave, just wait in your car.”

The direct-to-garment (DTG) revolution of the early 2000s was similar – allowing for small orders to be printed on demand.

Customization is prevalent outside of apparel decoration, too. Variable data printing – which allows for the customization of elements in each printed piece without slowing down the print cycle – has been around since the 1980s, especially in the direct mail realm.

Customizing campaign mailers with the name of the recipient? Coca Cola’s famous “Share a Coke” project? Both mass personalization elements were made possible through variable data printing.

Over the years, that technology has developed alongside advancements in digital printing, expanding to allow users to edit almost every element of an uploaded file, from text and QR codes to font colors and finishes. And with printers and promo suppliers beginning to integrate artificial intelligence into their back-end processes, there’s room to make the process even easier.
Sock101, for example, uses AI to make sure the order confirmations it sends to manufacturers and its final packing lists are all derived from the same base.

Software Solutions

Even outside of variable data printing technology though, the solution for hyper-personalized production is often on the back end.

Enhanced ordering systems at suppliers like Boulder, Colorado-based outerwear company Hexa Custom, for example, often allow for fully customizable production instead of – or in addition to – personalized decoration.

WATCH: Sue Timbo talks about the Hexa Design Lab and her company’s customizable outerwear

Hexa Custom’s model allows end-buyers or recipients to customize almost every aspect of a chosen product. That can include anything from selecting the color of each panel of fabric on a puffer vest to adding a chest pocket, and those choices are individual to each recipient.

A recent project Hexa Custom fulfilled for sports betting company Draft Kings involved 11,000 total end-users, with each of them picking the color of the outerwear’s zipper, chest pocket and liner.

When each selection is made, the order is immediately submitted to Hexa’s manufacturing center, one piece at a time. That’s thanks to the software interface CEO Sue Timbo and her team have built out since the supplier’s launch in 2018, a system that couldn’t have existed without improved back-end and manufacturing technology that allows for low-minimum, one-of-a-kind custom production.

Even elements like instantaneous translation services have made the process more seamless, Timbo says, especially considering the number of factories – Hexa’s included – located overseas.

In some cases though, Lucia of Brilliant says, enhanced personalization is as simple as ordering software that compiles information in one place instead of relying on manually inputted spreadsheets. Some gifting platforms, for example, allow recipients of an employee appreciation campaign to select the gift they want and then input their home addresses.

For 84% of customers, a Salesforce study found, being treated like a person – not a number – is essential for new business. Integrating automation technology and personalization then is the key, Lucia says.

“I think some players in the space have tried to do it but have lost sight of the physical gift,” Lucia says. “It’s really about bridging those two and making it really automated and easy for people to send gifts in a thoughtful way. That’s where technology and AI is going to be really impactful.”