Custom Design Shopping without Breaking the Bank

April 12th, 2010

One of the advantages of online shopping lies in the opportunity it offers for finding items not available in your area, or ordering customized products for your group, business, or family. You can create t-shirts or other mementos for reunions or family gatherings, and comparison shop for the best price. The possibilities to create something unique are limited only by your imagination. Vendors who encourage customization by their clients represent an ever-growing niche market of online shopping.

One can draw a parallel with radio and television broadcasters who frequently now have blogs where they go into more depth on subjects mentioned briefly on the air. Similarly, Internet sites now offer the ability to buy not just a tennis shoe or a t-shirt, but one designed for either your particular taste or specific need. It may very well be that your local shopping area does not have any custom design vendors. The worldwide stage of the Internet provides unlimited choices. I have found numerous sites willing to provide services that I never dreamed would be available to a small volume buyer like myself.

I looked for sites that accepted credit card payment and offered me a lot of options to design my product, as well as those that required no minimum purchase, so that I could create only a single item. I also wanted to be able to save and share my designs. I was impressed by the high level of customization offered by large and small companies alike, and how easy it was to use their designing software. Here are my favorites:

NIKEiD offers custom footwear, apparel, and gear. The site says “you design it, we build it” and you can create your own or choose from other customers’ designs. Customize your look with materials, colors and ID, as well as choose widths, independent left & right sizes, and order sizes not available in stores, like smaller than size 4 or larger than size 14. Orders take up to 4 weeks, and shipping is free over $175.

At Converse,  you can choose the shoe template, style and materials for men, women or kids and color each element of the shoe with solid color or print. The order takes 2-4 weeks.

The name of the Laudi Vidni site is “individual” spelled backward. They allow you to create custom leather handbags in 8 designs and over 10,000 possible combinations. You can order swatches before buying a bag, and they offer a “Love It” guarantee – if you don’t love it, they’ll take it back. During the design process, you can even view the bag on a model scaled to your height.

Blank Label allows shirt wearers to assemble preferred fabrics, buttons, collars, and fancy stitches, to “co-create” your personal dress shirt with their easy-to-use design application. Shirts start at $45, and new customers get 10% off their first shirt. 

Dooni Designs lets you select one of their images or upload your own to use on anything from baby clothes to youth and adult clothes and gifts. They offer a 5% discount on orders over $81.01.

The uber prints site even has a couple of designs for your pets in addition to tees, sweats, business shirts, and loungewear. They provide free shipping for orders over $100, an easy-to-use online design studio, and digital or screen printing on dark shirts. There’s no minimum for digital printing, but you have to order at least 12 screen prints.

Custom Ink also offers single shirt digital printing, and a minimum of 6 group shirts for screen printing or embroidery designs. Their font selection even includes greek letters and images, ideal for sorority and fraternity apparel.  Orders arrive in 7-14 days with free shipping.

In general, I don’t care for the community-based sites that sell products designed by members because the myriad of choices are simplistic and not very well organized. However, among this type I found Cafe Press to be one of the best, offering a wide variety of items from shirts to mugs to home decor, free standard shipping, and quantity discounts on shirts. You can create your own, or choose someone else’s design.

I have to say that my favorite would be LEGO’s Design by Me site, which offers the opportunity for kids of all ages (and adults, too!) to create a toy entirely from their imagination. You simply download the design software to create your model and box graphics, and generate a free unique building guide. Once the design of both the project and the box are complete, LEGO will manufacture the parts and ship it to customers in 23 countries. The bricks are hand-picked in Poland and delivery takes up to 3 weeks. They also offer missing brick replacement.

If you have always harbored a secret desire to be a fashion designer, you now have the opportunity to express your inner artiste with quantities as low as one. Your access to these services through the Internet removes any previous barriers that you considered insurmountable, and allows you to create a true one-of-a-kind item.

Entry Filed under: Shopping