The other panelists include Matt Lauzon, Founder & President of Paragon Lake, Wendy Cebula, President of Vistaprint, Shaon Kan, President & CEO of Tikatok, Andrew Callen, General Manager of Corporate Casuals, Micah Rosenbloom, General Manager of Brontes Technologies, Sarah MciLroy, Founder & CEO of FashionPlaytes, and Sung Park, President of Umagination Labs.

This free panel will take place on October 8, 2009 from 6pm to 8:30pm at the Olin Auditorium at Babson College in Wellesley, MA. To register, visit: http://masscustomizationpanel.eventbrite.com/.

The First Growth program (1) connects class members with venture capitalists, angel investors, successful entrepreneurs and advisors, all of whom have spent years in and around technology start-ups; (2) connects each start-up with a First Growth Advisor Team consisting of a VC, an angel investor or executive and a successful entrepreneur who will serve as mentors to the team; (3) provides regular opportunities for substantive information and networking with the broader First Growth community; and (4) provides a peer group of other high potential tech leadership teams in the First Growth program

The other start-ups selected to participate in the First Growth Venture Network include: 20X200, AdHatchery, Capsearch.com, ChallengePost, CB Information Systems, Give Real, GoodCrush, Legolas, MeeGenius!, OrderGroove, Producteev, StyleHop, Zeevex and Zodah.

First Growth Venture Network is comprised of leading venture-related players including venture capital firms - Bain Capital Ventures, Battery Ventures, Charles River Ventures, First Round Capital, Flybridge Capital Partners, Highland Capital Partners, North Bridge Venture Capital, Valhalla Partners, and Venrock; angel investors - Grape ArborVC and AngelVineVC; the Tech Group at law firm Lowenstein Sandler and the tech investment banking firm GCA Savvian.

We are thrilled to be a part of this amazing program and look forward to working with the First Growth entrepreneurs and advisors.

To learn more about the First Growth Venture Network, visit the following links:

http://www.firstgrowthvn.com/news/sept09/

http://blogs.wsj.com/venturecapital/2009/06/16/start-spreading-the-news-first-growth-wants-to-nurture-vc-in-nyc/

From the post:

I love the idea of being able to customize a pair of shoes. I know your passion for it comes from a personal place, but what exactly motivated you to make it into a career move?

I’ve always wanted to be an entrepreneur and I think that started when I was a kid and was living in Europe. Whenever my dad came back from business trips to the States he would bring back boxes of my favorite candy, which I would promptly turn around and sell to my American school classmates at a 100% mark-up instead of eating them myself! I kept the idea of starting my own business in the back of my mind and then a few years ago when I was having a pair of custom shoes made for my wedding I got the idea for Sole Envie. I really enjoyed the experience of designing my own shoe - choosing my style and materials and seeing my design come to life. The light went on that this would be a great idea for a business. I did some research and discovered that no other companies were offering custom shoes and for good reason - it’s not the easiest business to get off the ground. I didn’t come from a footwear background so I took some shoemaking classes, started networking, connected with some key people in the space and got to work. 9 months later I had developed my first collection, put on a fashion show and was invited to speak at a mass customization conference at MIT. Since then I’ve been working on setting up the manufacturing side of Sole Envie.

You expressed in wanting your online shoe factory to be more than just a shoe store but a community. Why and how would you go about doing that?

Shopping for women is a very social experience. We want customers to not only be able to design their own shoes, but have a place to share them with their friends and other fashion enthusiasts. Who doesn’t love creating something new and getting compliments from their friends? At Sole Envie customers will be able to rate and comment on each other’s shoe designs, participate in shoe design contests, and have a say on new product offerings. We’re also making it easy for them to share and monetize their designs on other social networks such as Facebook and StyleHive. We think we’ll be able to build a loyal following and strong brand by engaging and listening to our community.

Is there anything you would like to say to people who are looking into starting their own company, any words of advice?

Disclosure: I don’t always follow my own advice, but here are a few tips that I try to put into practice:

1) Passion. You need to have a vision and keep your eye on the big picture. At the end of the day this is what’s going to keep you going when things get tough.

2) Trust your instincts. Believe in yourself and treat mistakes as learning experiences. I struggle with this one everyday. I want everything to be perfect from the beginning and that sometimes causes me to end up with analysis paralysis.

3) Be flexible. Be open to making changes to your vision. Most likely your business will end up being a lot different than what you initially envisioned and that’s o.k. You need to be able to roll with it.

4) Seek advice. Get a mentor who knows your industry and is willing to invest time with you and guide you. This will go a long way and could open a lot of doors for you.

5) Don’t operate in a tunnel. Talk to as many people in the industry and across various disciplines as you can even if they just don’t get it (and trust me you will come across a lot of people like that and it’ll irk you to no end). It’s painful but you need to learn to listen to stuff you don’t want to hear. Let people poke holes. If nothing else it’ll make your future pitches that much stronger because chances are if one person is questioning you about something, others will too. As an entrepreneur you should expect to spend a lot of time “selling” your business whether it’s to manufacturers, suppliers, investors or customers.

6) Get structured. Formalize your company as soon as possible. Choose a business entity, form a board, spell out ownership and job responsibilities. This will help establish in your mind as well as others that you are a “real” company. There are also potential tax benefits to forming an entity as soon as possible.

7) Network, network, network and make sure you follow up with everyone you network with. You can’t do too much of this. I couldn’t have gotten this far without help from all the people I’ve met along the way. You’ll be surprised how many people are willing to go out of their way to help you.

Be resourceful. If you are self-funded and looking for capital (like Sole Envie is right now) you may not have the money to pay for legal fees, employees, marketers, etc. That shouldn’t stop you from pursuing your goals. See if your lawyer is willing to defer fees till you get funding or revenue, hire an intern, trade services, or look for people willing to work for sweat equity. It takes effort to find people, but it can be done.

To read the rest of the interview, visit alixrose.com.

Crowdsourcing has been on my mind a lot lately so when Rob Langstaff of RYZwear.com mentioned he was going to be in Boston this week, I was excited to meet up with him for a drink at the Onyx in Boston’s North End. Rob, the former president of Adidas America and Adidas Japan, recently took the plunge to found RYZ, a Portland based start-up that produces community-designed shoes. For those familiar with Threadless, the “demi-gods” of t-shirt crowdsourcing, RYZ is the “Threadless” of sneakers. RYZ runs regular contests where they invite their online community to contribute designs. Aspiring designers download a template, add their designs and upload them to the site where RYZ then turns them into 3D models. People vote on their favorites and the winning design gets produced and sold.

"Cables" by Peter Van Dam (AKA "Flew the Coop") has a clean feel and is a very wearable design

Rob is a very affable guy and is clearly passionate about what he does - we had A LOT to talk about. We immediately jumped right into a conversation and it was a while before we realized that we hadn’t formally introduced ourselves. First thing we had to set straight was that Eric WASN’T the guy in my “Don’t know nothin’ ’bout shoes” t-shirt (although I think he quickly figured that out when he saw Eric)!  Rob gave us an update on his progress and it was really good to see RYZ, an early stage company that is just a few months ahead of us, already having success in this space. While our business models and markets are a little different we’re both web 2.0 footwear companies centered around self-expression and user-centered innovation. The footwear is really just our medium for enabling users to express themselves. Being what would be considered nontraditional companies in the industry, we share a lot of the same strategies and manufacturing challenges. Having already launched, Rob was able to validate a few of our forecasting assumptions and give us some good advice.

Jason Ehlers (AKA Caveman) designed "The Creep" while serving time for graffiti charges.

Rob had a duffel bag full of sneakers and we got to see some of them up close. Looking at the shoes, it’s clear that they’ve put a lot of time and thought into the design at RYZ. The silhouettes are your classic canvas high-tops but they have some really nice elements that set them apart. Some distinguishing features are the crystal outsoles that allow for printing a graphic on the bottom of the shoe (a really cool detail), the clear plastic guards on the toes that protect the designs from rubbing off, the comfortable pigskin and antimicrobial linings and the elastic connector between the tongue and the body that allows for a nice fit. But of course this thoughtfully designed white high-top is just the stage for the main feature - the art.

Since launching in June, RYZ has had 7 contests and produced 9 winnings designs, attracting artists and participants from all over the world (half of Ryz’s orders come from overseas) and all walks of life. The artwork is just as diverse too. Rob showed us some of the winners. One of my favorites was designed by prolific graffiti artist Jason Ehlers who goes by the name Caveman. I loved hearing the story about how Caveman created his winning design “The Creep” while serving time in prison after being busted for graffiti charges. ”The Creep” is an incredibly detailed design described as a “metaphorical illustration of the existence of a greater all-seeing eye. ”

"Warhawk" - inspired by pinup girls and warplanes was designed by Australian designer, Leon Ryan

Rob talked excitedly about how Caveman was able to redirect his passion for graffiti towards shoes (instead of buildings and bridges) and how RYZ has been able to be a part of that. Warhawk, another favorite, was inspired by pinup girls and war planes from the 1940s (Eric thought the bomb on the sole was cool). The designer, Leon Ryan is a self described “aficionado, jet pilot, illustrator, designer, firefighter and toreador” graphic artist from Australia. “Cables” designed by fashion designer, Peter Van Dam, is a more subdued but still excellent design that features telephone power lines against a white background. The black and white palette makes the shoe very versatile and wearable and the birds on the sole are a nice accent.

To me these shoes are works of art - so nice that I’d be afraid to wear them in fear of making them dirty. It’s almost like they belong on a mantelpiece. At $99 though, you’re truly getting a bargain on wearable art and I’d be tempted to buy 2 pairs - one for wearing and one for displaying!

RYZ design template

While the RYZ design contests are open to anyone, the bar to entry is high from the standpoint that designs must be submitted using Illustrator or Photoshop. Typically if you’re proficient with these tools you’ve got some artistic talent. This inadvertently serves as a filter to keep the quality of artwork high. With crowdsourcing you always run the risk that noone is going to submit anything good so by raising the bar to entry you’re increasing the odds that you’re going to get a lot of high quality designs. And the shoes we saw reflected that.

Rob talked about how he wants to de-emphasize RYZ as a label and showcase the contributing designers instead (which is how Sole Envie is positioning itself as well). I really like what he wrote on his Welcome to RYZ company blog post. “At RYZ we’ve set out to create a “people’s brand - a community of designers, sneakerheads and anyone that cares enough about art, fashion or sneakers to speak up. Together we’ll create sneakers that are designed and chosen, not by some big, faceless corporation, but by you. Think of RYZ as a stage for designers to showcase their creativity and a forum for people to define what great sneaker design means. In other words, we just make comfortable sneakers – the rest is up to you.” I think RYZ does a great job of living up to this. The winning designers not only receive $1000 in cash but they also share the revenue by receiving $1 in royalty for every pair that gets sold. Perhaps even more rewarding than the cash is the recognition and exposure they receive for their work. Besides being featured on the RYZ site, their story also get showcased on the hang tags accompanying the sneakers which are a great touch.

This kind of web enabled collaboration is still a new phenomenon and companies have been using it in different ways. Startups such as RYZ have based their entire business models around harnessing the crowd to design and drive what gets produced whereas other companies look at crowdsourcing as just another way to harvest new ideas or innovations, hear customer feedback, or build brand loyalty and identification through contests and promotions. The Netflix Prize contest that will award 1 million dollars to anyone who can come up with a way to improve the accuracy of their movie recommendation engine, Cinematch, by 10% is a good example of the latter.

Crowdsourcing is still in the early adopter stage and it remains to be seen whether it can be a sustainable business model for products more complex than t-shirts. With Rob Langstaff at its helm, I think RYZ has a good shot of capturing the market and I think we’ll be hearing a lot more about them in the future.

Nominally the article is about how artists are freely distributing their content online without charging for it  and instead are turning their fans into paying customers by selling merchandise (such as t-shirts). It’s an unbelievably big industry with T-shirt and other apparel companies selling 40 billion dollars worth of decorated apparel a year.

What interested me though, was the part about how Mass Customization companies such as Cafe Press and Zazzle have cashed in on this phenomenon by making it easy for artists to instantly create and sell their merchandise with no investment needed.  In fact, at Cafe Press users sold more than a $100 million in goods in 2007 resulting in a $20 million dollar profit.

I’ve never been much of a t-shirt kind of gal, but recently I’ve become addicted to perusing the above mentioned websites along with others such as  Threadless and Spreadshirt. These sites crowdsource designs or enable users to upload their own graphics onto their t-shirts. There are some really amazing artists out there and I’m glad these companies have given them a way to distribute their work.   Here’s one of my favorites.

If you remember in the late 90’s you could actually get a pair of Levi’s jeans customized to your fit. For women this was a dream come true. With women and their wide range of hips, thighs, waists and everything else that you have to stuff into a pair of jeans it’s almost impossible to find something off the rack. Levi’s had what should have been a perfect approach: measure the body in the store and make the jeans to a perfect fit. But it failed? Why? Not because they didn’t have customers.

Another good point Frank made about mass customization programs within larger corporations (like the Levi’s one!) is that support for the MC program needs to come from the top.

Without the support of top managment, it is unlikely that you will get the resources or focus that you need to be successful. A good mass customization program is going to require its own set of processes and ways of doing things.

Luckily Sole Envie will suffer no such problems. As CEO, I hereby declare we’re all about customization! One challenge down, 99 to go!

Note: I did a bit of in-depth research on the Levis Original Spin program and I think I found out the REAL reason that they failed. They were making !!MOM JEANS!!.

Monika Desai at the SMART Customization Seminar

The seminar pulled together a diverse group ranging from well known researchers and scholars such as Joseph Pine (and here) and William Mitchell to executives from a wide range of industries. Nike, M&Ms, Adidas, Avery, Keds, Zazzle and Spreadshirt were just a few of the participants. The focus was on sharing success stories, challenges, trends and research regarding implementing mass customization strategies and technologies in both the business to consumer and business to business sectors.

Over the next few posts, I’ll be recapping some of the highlights. Here goes!