How mass customization really works -- Spreadshirt

Spreadshirt has a nice video on their blog that shows how a custom product really is made. You would expect a lot of high tech machines .. but the secret are many many hands and human labor ... given this complexity and the German wage level, it is amazing that the custom t-shirts do not cost more (but perhaps workers are just paid in t-shirts).

Or, as the company's founder writes:

"When people visit one of Spreadshirts manufacturing sites, they are often surprised. they expected a big machine, somebody pressing a few buttons and a customized shirts to emerge. instead they find real manufacturing. real people taking real apparel from shelves (hard till impossible to replace with robots at a competitive price with nowadays tech), real people preparing the designs, real people pressing the shirts, real people doing quality control and packaging."

Here is the video about the reality behind one of the largest mass customization consumer sites (show this video to your local government funding agency, and they will provide you money as this shows the labor effects of a mass customizer in town)):

Link: sevenload.com