Dream Heels: A Threadless for High Heels

I was for long wondering what may be the next big product exploiting Threadless' spin of crowdsourcing ... and perhaps Matt Francois found a perfect match. While the majority of Threadless' customers are young male men, Francois is offering the female equivalent: High Heels.

His new website, Dream Heels, lets anyone design printed high heels and earn cash when their design is winning a competition, Artists submit their designs to an ongoing shoe design competition. Winners are rewarded with $250 upfront, and $0.50 for each pair sold.

“Dream Heels lets you design printed pumps that are completely unique; Wild patterns, colorful designs, you name it.” Founder and owner of Dream Heels, Matt Francois, is quoted in a press release, “I’ve designed one-of-a-kind custom shoes for years, and I know that given the chance others will enjoy designing unique shoes as much as I do. The extra cash is just the icing on the cake.”

For more information, or to begin designing shoes now, head to http://www.dreamheels.com

There is a rather simple template to use and a very nice 3D viewer to get an idea of the shows.

Will this work? I am curious to see .. Being a critical German and not part of the target group, I would say no, as the product's price point may be to high for a spontaneous purchase (there is no price quoted yet, however). Also, production runs for such a shoe should be considerable longer than the few days it takes Threadless to produce a shirt, allowing them to cash into the moment of excitement that a design wins for which you just have voted.

Also, with shoes of this kind you have a fitting problem, and returns of more than 50% may kill you if you are a small company with little cash. And, finally bit most importantly, will their be a community of shoe enthusiasts that both submit shoes and participates in the voting -- and finally purchases the shoes?

But I hope that I am wrong, as the idea and product itself is great ... and it really is time for a successful and scalable transfer of the Threadless idea into another product category.

Comments

[Matthias]

I agree with the first comment of jheri, in the next steps of customization processes it should be made possible for the consumers to influence the actual product design. Rather than defining colors or choosing from different options for one or a few products, the product itself should be customizable. Of course this is very difficult to realize from the manufacturers point of view, but I think it would be way more attractive and bring Mass Customization to a new level.

But I don't want to criticize the business model of Dream Heels, actually I like that designers are rewarded for their efforts. I wish them all the best!

[jheri]

I'm a 25 year old women, so I am probably part of the target group.

There have been other companies that have offered custom printing on running shoes, but I have never seen any interest. The shoe design, and not what is printed on it, is what is interesting. This design is very boring.

What happens with street fashion is women find interesting clothing and combine and modify them so they become part of their own style. Shoe painting and hacking is fairly common, but you need to start with a shoe that has the right design for you rather than something this conservative.

I doubt they will do very well.

[Dirk]

Interesting, I'm also not part of the target group, I think the idea is good, especially for getting young ladies in the interactive value creation process. The more people getting introduced to such processes the more successful will these competitive strategies be.