Written on July 30, 2008 – 3:00 pm
Robin Wauters, Next web enthusiast & Plugg organizer
RYZ is a Portland, OR-based shoe fashion brand that is trying to make a name for itself by not focusing on attracting customers in the traditional sense, but rather setting up partnerships with people to create a win-win situation. The concept of user-generated designing processes is pretty known to most of us, but hasn’t yet been applied to shoe fashion yet, as far as I can tell, in the way RYZ is doing.
Rather than dictating what’s cool or not, RYZ allows anyone to design their own shoes, based on a number of templates. A creative panel is standing by to assist you if you need help. Other people get to vote up design results, and if you’re the ‘winner’, you receive $1000 + $1 for every pair that’s sold through their shop. The shoes aren’t all that expensive, and most of them look great, but you should note that they’re largely sold in limited quantities, so speed is key. The site was officially launched in beta a little over a month ago.
RYZ is very reminiscent of Threadless in its approach but I think it’s the first one that leverages crowdsourcing for shoes in particular. Unless you’ve heard of others?
(Hat tip to MoMB)
I hope you like that post!
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Written on May 23, 2008 – 12:12 pm
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
Crowdsourcing is all about diversity. That’s the new message of Jeff Howe, contributing editor at Wired and an absolute hero for all the crowdsourcing experts. His upcoming book, “Crowdsourcing: Why the Power of the Crowd Is Driving the Future of Business” is getting him some speaking gigs and for some he even has to cross the ocean. I was present at one of these occasions and saw the inspiring man speaking at SocialStrategyTalk, a new Amsterdam-based speakers event about the social web organized by Sogeti and CreativeCrowds. Howe used to show graphs to prove the power of crowdsourcing - “a stock photo used to cost $300, now only $1″ -, yet he feels this diminishes the power of people. “The term crowdsourcing is misleading, as it sounds like it’s all about a crowd. But this is not how it works”.
It seemed like Howe was a little fed up with telling the same story over and over. Also, he probably felt that some people were running away with the definition of crowdsourcing, giving it their own twist. The result was a 45-minute presentation about special people who can be seen as an example for the beauty of crowdsourcing. Howe: “I Love my people”.
Ever since Howe saw the first signs of the phenomenon later called crowdsourcing, it was about real and special people for him. When he was writing about the music industry, Howe was hanging out with some little rock kids, “a mess of bad creativity, but fun”. He noticed an attitude change. Young people used to say “I wanna make movies”, they now say “Let’s make a cool movie”. With the rise of MySpace, kids started creating their own quality content. Then Converse started its DIY campaign, asking consumers to create an ad for the Chuck Taylor brand. This turned out to be a real hit, which got Howe really excited. “It was full in my nostrils, I could feel this was an article“.
When Howe started looking for crowdsourcing examples, he found great people. Like Nick and Jake, two college drop-outs from Chicago who are avid designers and active members of a t-shirt design culture. In 2000, they started an online weekly t-shirt design competition called Threadless. Contestants could win their own shirt, and everybody else in the community would wear it. This community steadily grew and went viral at some point. Now it’s a profitable company selling 90.000 shirts a month. Most important thing: the users still decide which shirt will be printed. The result? They’ve never not sold out a t-shirt. By letting the community members vote, the selection process is fine tuned to perfection.
If the story of Threadless already amazes you, you’d better hold on to yourself. As Howe summed up some more stunning examples of the power of crowdsourcing. (more…)
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