Customization isn't just for grown-ups: Build-A-Bear Workshops and Ridemakerz show that that kids are keen on this trend, too. Capitalizing on this, Muppets and FAO Schwartz have teamed up to build the Muppet Whatnot Workshop. For those not familiar with Muppet vocabulary, a Whatnot is a generic extra used in Muppet productions. And the workshop gives customers the chance to design their very own classic hand-rod puppet to their own specification, taking their pick of body style and colour, eyes, nose, hair and outfit.

As of late October 2008, customers can drop in at FAO Schwartz's New York store and design their Muppet of choice using a design kit. Staff assistance is on offer, along with video tutorials delivered by famous muppet characters, displayed on screens around the workshop. Customers watch their Whatnot being constructed, which takes about 20 minutes, before taking it home along with the design kit as a souvenir. Designing and ordering can also be done through FAO's website. Pricing is USD 110 from the FAO store or USD 90 if designed and ordered online. For USD 130 there's also the option of the Whatnot gift service, a mail order system that ships a design kit to the recipient and covers manufacturing costs. Gift customers currently have to collect their design from the New York store, although from February 2009 they can submit orders online.

The Muppet Whatnot Workshop is a great example of one way that manufacturers can revive interest in age-old products and brands. The engaging user experience that comes from involvement in design still has huge potential for a range of businesses and industries.

Website: www.fao.com/custsvc/custsvc.jsp?sectionId=599&WT.mc_id=k157661
Contact: faocustomerservice@fao.com

Spotted by: Miriam Brafman

Consumers have already shown that they're interested in designing their own dresses, T-shirts and duvets--to name just a few--so it's not surprising to see the trend spread from finished goods to the raw materials that underlie them. Last month we featured Finnish Bon Bon Kakku and its contest-based crowdsourcing approach to fabric design, and recently one of our spotters alerted us to another design-your-own fabric opportunity in the United States.

North Carolina-based Spoonflower lets users design and print their own fabrics for just USD 18 per yard with no minimum order; custom swatches cost USD 5. After a closed beta launch in May, the Spoonflower community now boasts more than 10,000 crafters around the world who upload their own designs and use fabric to make quilts, clothes, pillows, dolls, blankets, handbags, framed textile art and more. When Spoonflower comes out of beta, it plans to allow fabric designers to sell their fabrics on the site, it says. In the meantime, users are selling their creations on Etsy, as well as participating in Spoonflower's Fabric-of-the-Week contest, the winners of which are chosen through community voting. Winning fabrics are offered for sale for exactly one week through Spoonflower's own Etsy shop, and their designers are rewarded with five yards of free fabric.

It's not yet clear how Spoonflower's marketplace feature will work, but allowing users to earn cash for their creations is critical, as we noted in our story about Bon Bon Kakku. If there's anything Generation C(ontent) consumers love more than the ability to design it themselves, it's the ability to be compensated for their output. Long live Generation C(ash)! ;-)

Website: www.spoonflower.com
Contact: www.spoonflower.com/feedback/new

Spotted by: Emma Crameri

It's not even two months since we covered sticky car art purveyor Infectious, yet already the startup has made some major additions to its product line. Specifically, it has expanded beyond the realm of cars with a new range of sticky art for laptops and walls.

"The speed at which we expanded beyond car art and the selection of creating art specifically for laptops and walls was 100 percent dictated by the general public," explains Joey Stevenson, artist liaison for the San Francisco-based company. "We've been deluged by customers saying that they loved our catalogue of art but that they wanted it for their laptop or their kid's room. I can definitely see us branching out into other areas, depending upon what our customers request."

The new line of laptop art currently comprises 74 stickers priced at USD 29.99 each. For walls, the range includes a line of 43 sticker collections priced from USD 59.99 to USD 99.99, depending on size. Six new artists have also joined the Infectious family, and the company's crowdsourcing submission process--which we described in some detail last time--is now being used to gather laptop art for sale on the site. (The process will be reopened to car art and opened to wall art submissions soon, according to the Infectious FAQ.) As before, the creators of submissions voted into production get USD 100 cash, 5 percent of net sales and up to USD 400 in Infectious product, with extra cash up front for the Infectious team's favourite design of the month.

Interestingly, on the laptop front, Dell is on the verge of launching sticky laptop art of its own with a range of USD 75 sticker designs from Nigerian painter Joseph Amédokpo, South African graphic artist Siobhan Gunning and Canadian designer Bruce Mau. Next year, it plans to begin offering an even wider range of customization options, allowing buyers to mix colors, patterns and textures in their laptop designs, according to a report in BusinessWeek.

Is there any surface consumers won't want to customize? So far, it's looking unlikely. Add to that customization a splash of crowdsourced Generation C(ontent) innovation, and you may just have a (sticky) masterpiece! ;-)

Website: www.infectious.com
Contact: info@infectious.com

Regular Springwise readers may recall Threadless, Derby and some of the other sites we've written about that let consumers design and sell their own T-shirts. Many of those operate as a competition--relying on the crowds to determine which shirts get produced and sold--but Yerzies is a brand-new contender that was essentially forced by its early users to adopt a different model.

Launched into beta just two weeks ago, Yerzies is a design-your-own T-shirt site that allows anyone to create, purchase or sell their own customized T-shirts, hoodies and other apparel items. The Pennsylvania-based company gives users access to what it says is an unprecedented array of creative options including printing on dark garments, metallic foils, flocks, glitters, glow-in-the-dark materials and stitched processes. When they're finished designing, users can purchase as little as one piece or sell their creations (produced on demand) to the Yerzies community, keeping the profits for themselves. And that's where it gets interesting: whereas any designer could originally use Yerzies to sell their creations directly via their own web page, blog or page on Facebook and MySpace, getting listed in the online Yerzies store required being ranked highly enough by the Yerzies community. And that, it turned out, was a requirement early users didn't like.

Cofounder Scott Killian explains: "The initial feedback we received from users was very positive, but one reoccurring criticism was the rule we had in place that required designs to be ranked before they would appear in our store. We did this because we wanted to empower our user community to collectively decide which designs were the strongest and deserved the attention. Although our intentions were good, this approach put too many barriers in place for users to list their designs. As a result, we've done away with ranking completely. All designs are listed for sale in our store the moment they're created (unless the design is private)." Yerzies aims to repurpose the ranking concept down the road, Killian added, but for now it's no longer part of the selling process.

As members of Generation C(ontent) demand to join Generation C(ash) via rewards for their creations, the logistics of how it should all work is still being figured out. Yerzies' example is one to learn from.

Website: www.yerzies.com
Contact: www.yerzies.com/help/help_contact

Tapping into the make-it-yourself trend, London-based SomeRightsReserved offers a range of downloadable blueprints for objects that consumers can build, adapt and personalise. Products on offer include everything from cardboard Tetris furniture to children's mittens. Some can be created using hand-cutting and home-printing, others may require laser cutting or rapid prototyping. Prices range from free to GBP 10, and physical objects tend to rely on affordable everyday materials such as cardboard, acrylics and fluorescent tubing. The estimated costs for materials are displayed before the purchase is made.

The concept should benefit designers who have more ideas than they know what to do with, providing them with a way to profit from their ideas without the stressful investment in production runs, if not letting them use the site as a live test before signing a run off. Whatever the final outcome, it's an interesting experiment in creating a marketplace for intellectual property. Meanwhile, if your brand already caters to crafty consumers, or sells products that your customers could make themselves, it's time to add something similar to your offerings. (Related: Shirt sold out? Make it yourself.)

Website: www.kith-kin.co.uk/shop
Contact: www.kith-kin.co.uk/shop/contact

Spotter: Matthew Cua