It was an ordinary birthday for Hugo. He had counted the days and watched the numbers on his calendar steadily rise. Got ready to wake up as a seven year-old, for whom getting older meant being showered with e-cards, toys and jellybeans. It was also a day to catch up with Noddy. He was guaranteed a glimpse into the life of his favourite children’s character every year in books with glistening hardback covers that seemed so heavy his mother had to hold them as he turned the pages. This year, though, standing among Noddy and Big Ears, with the usual threat of goblins nearby, he saw himself, and he was amazed to find they were taking him to Toy Town to become “the hero.”

This scenario reveals how customisation is blurring the line between the world of traditional products and exciting new adventures in consumer creativity.  Penwizard, a subsidiary of
HarperCollins, has made it possible for parents to customise children’s stories by actually putting their kids in the story, alongside heroes. In many cases, the kids actually become the heroes themselves.

Penwizard’s personalised Noddy books are easily identifiable from titles that include A gift for... and A Christmas gift..., as well as ...Saves Toy Town. The company is inviting consumers to fill these blank spaces with their own child’s name, thus giving him or her a pivotal role in the story, and taking on challenges that have until now only been fit for a hero. Kids can read about themselves carrying out amazing feats that
make idols into sidekicks.

In addition to Penwizard, a company called Flattenme has developed a line of storybooks that can be personalised with a child’s photo. The child’s name is also incorporated into the text and illustrations. Customers simply upload their child’s photo to flattenme.com, indicate their name and gender and select a book.

Customisation is not a new concept even if personalising Noddy stories is. Finding the specifics of product perfection is something of a holy grail in the business world. Fitting products hand-in-glove with individuals as opposed to basing them around certain categories and groups that come close is the new way forward. A trip to an electronics store turns into a hunt for an appliance with the right colour, fittings and memory size, which more or less fits what the buyer has in mind.

And yes, the internet has brought consumers a little closer to that dream of turnkey technology. There has always been – even before the advent of the internet – the need, along with the want, to cut certain products like a tailored suit. The promise that customisation makes to the consumer, that a product can fit individual consumer needs right down to each and every personal preference, seems a little closer with online interactivity.

Online companies in the past ten years trying to maximise the internet’s ability to customise, have revealed how far this can be facilitated. Successful online clothes store, landsend.com, has tailored jeans and clothes items right down to specifics such as height and length. Still in the clothing line, a company in Great Britain, Eleven Forty Co., produces cuff links individually modelled on photographs of a child, a loved one or a pet. The cuff links are available
in a range of precious metals. When the links are not in use, they snap together to form a miniature bust of the person depicted.

Other companies getting into  customisation include DNA 11, which creates personalised art from a person’s DNA and fingerprints. For DNA art, the company sends a kit with a non-invasive method to
collect DNA from a mouth swab. The company then turns that into a DNA portrait representative of a person’s life code. Another similar organisation is My DNA Fragrance, which makes individual fragrances that include a client’s DNA.

Representing the beginning and end of life, a Japanese company, Yosimiya, is selling bags of rice printed with a newborn’s photo, name and date of birth in a bag shaped to resemble a swaddled baby, while a company in Austria is offering a Requiem for You, which is a custom-made personal requiem for when you depart the world.

We have become accustomed to an online environment in which personalisation is everyday, from personalised news reels on Yahoo! to sites like Facebook, to Photoshop-ed images that we make and put online for our own entertainment. A business without at least some sort of an offer to customise may find it hard to compete in the future, or even today.