Nike, Adidas and other iconic brands have customers hooked with custom ‘made to order’ goods

An endlessly fascinating quirk of humans is to desire something that no one else owns. It’s apparent in the way people spend millions in auctions, create NFTs, or even prefer the chipped teacup over the others in their cutlery collection as if in defiance against mass-produced items. Back in 2017, Louis Vuitton’s artistic director and ‘Off’White’ CEO Virgil Abloh designed custom sneakers for Nike. Called ‘The Ten’, it was a reimagining of some of Nike’s iconic shoes, a childhood dream of Abloh. Its success warranted a repeat of the campaign, with twenty and recently, in 2021, some fifty signature-style sneakers.

While the concept may seem glamorous or even elitist, we are all quite familiar with custom-made goods. Even in small towns, people wear clothes stitched for them, with the material, cut and size tailored to them. There are restaurants that tweak the menu or recipe for certain loyal patrons, going the extra mile for the love of customer service. But brand head honchos pooh-pooh the humility and ‘waste-not’ mentality of our everyday customizations and aim for luxury and individuality, to tell millions of people that there’s no one quite like them.

Irony or not, it’s an interesting proposition. As we steer deeper into curated experiences, be it targeted advertisements or data collection so astute that they know your dog’s birthday, companies are wielding customization as an embargo from mass-produced in a bid to industrially influence your personal tastes.