In a recent article by e-commerce trade magazine, Internet Retailer, Nike President and CEO Mark Parker was quoted as saying, "Customization continues to be actually a very strong subset of our dotcom business, and we see lots of innovation opportunities there that are quite compelling." At Medelita, we couldn't agree more. When we saw that Nike's direct-to-consumer sales rise 22.9% this year we immediately knew why: customization. Recently Nike launched new online tools branded as NIKEiD, that allow regular users the ability to design their own custom Nike shoe using a pre-set palette of available colors and shoe styles. The result has been a huge hit, as everyone from normal customers to celebrities, and we've even seen some software brands using the software to create custom-branded shoes as giveaways at trade shows and other promos.
Medelita's Embroidery Studio
Our business continues to grow by offering a similar service that is free of charge on most of our products. This represents a huge deal to our customers because we perform all of the personalization in our own embroidery studio, complete with veteran pros who stitch some of the most innovative and beautiful artwork we've ever seen sewn onto a garment. Since we began offering custom name and title embroidery on our garments, about 70%-90% of our web orders come through with custom embroidery requests. Almost all of our group orders (5 or more garments) include requests for logo digitization and custom logo embroidery on each garment. Needless to say, we have embraced the fact that Medelita is as much a service company as it is a uniform brand, which is essentially a requirement when competing for customers who are willing to skip a visit to the local uniform store and pay a premium online for uniqueness in quality, design, and service.
