A few years back I gave a presentation to the marketing group at the company for which I worked. The presentation was effectively about what I’m blogging here: the return of product development to a more “craft” age – courtesy of emerging technologies that allow us to create more complex, ornamental, personal products. One of the examples I used for that talk was Nike’s “design your own” website. It was a great idea and I was surprised that none of the marketing folks were aware of it (or the other similar “customization” efforts going on at the time). Then again, I suspect you had to be paying close attention since I don’t recall any Nike advertising for their little project.

Fast forward to Nike’s resurrected (?) customization effort called “Nike iD” (which makes me wonder if some concept work I saw on the Core77 forums last year, done by a Nike director, is related). Anyway, courtesy of the intriguing AdverLab blog, comes a nice link to an article on Clickz.com which includes this interesting quote:

Nike’s iD division, which lets shoe buyers customize their own footwear according to color and design, is reportedly becoming a more important part of the shoe maker’s overall strategy.

Any wonder why Nike rules?

(addendum – check out the Nike site at: nikeid.nike.com . There’s more than footwear to customize. )