I am going to start this posting out with a quick anecdote. Around 10pm last night, I was talking over IM with a founder of one of the companies I am actively advising and she has her mind spinning about a new project that she wants to actively and quickly get off the ground. This posting won’t go into whether or not the idea is good, or whether or not she should be focusing on her own current project at it’s infancy phase, but will talk about her mindset about how she was going to market with her idea.

Essentially, she wanted to have the website built quickly by someone she knew, and release it as soon as possible as she had a need for the application. She then mentioned to me a few things about fundraising and so forth – all around this particular new venture.

I quickly applied the brakes. It was almost as if we were driving 100 miles per hour and I pulled the e-brake (emergency brake for those non-car enthusiasts). The conversation quickly went from a fair amount of agreement to a considerable amount of disagreement. My thoughts about this subject are as follows:

1. You do not have a business if you just have a website. I have a blog that gets traffic (albeit not much), but it’s not my business.
2. A business must have a financial/business model around it. The for-profit sector, the majority of businesses, all look to make money. Launching a site blindly without any financials is not just a bad idea, but irresponsible.
3. The operational side of launching a business is time intensive and laborious (filing paperwork, insurance, staffing, etc) and must be done before launch. I personally hate this part, but hey – it must get done.
4. Funding – its one thing to build a website by yourself or employ your cousin/aunt but what happens when the website takes off and you need to pull the resources together and scale it? Who is going to pay for that? Who is going to pay for the filing fees to the government for business formation? Insurance? Liabilities? Where is the money coming from?

The web cuts down the time to market for many businesses. If you’re launching a web-only venture, you can technically be online in a few hours (if you put up a landing page) but make sure before you launch to the world, you have all your ducks aligned. Not only does it make your job easier, but also allows potential partners (business development, funding, sales, etc) to work with you more efficiently.

A fantastic graphical representation of the 2007 trends on the Internet. The official website can be found here.

Every few months, the Pew Internet & American Life Project releases a study that gives us insight into a certain subject such as Social Networking Websites and Teens: An Overview and Teens and Technology (amongst many others). The resource is available to anyone and is fairly in-depth. Much of the research can be used in new venture pitch presentations or advertising/media planning (I certainly see it over and over).

In the most recent study, 55% of teens use social networking sites. That’s more than half. Impressive as the bulk of social networking sites came into existence in the past 3 years. Most interesting to me is that older teens, particularly girls are more likely to use these sites. Girls find social networking sites are primary places to reinforce pre-existing relationships; for boys, the networks provide opportunities for flirting and making new friends. Another statistic that stands out to me is that 3 out of 4 teens say that they use social networking sites to make plans with friends…. bridging online with offline. I love it.

In a time where we want “engagement” metrics… we better find a way to figure out how to measure the value of engaging a user-base because more than 4 in 5 social network users have posted messages to a friend’s profile or page. How can we leverage this for brands?

The survey was conducted via telephone interviews from October 23 through November 19 2006 among a national sample of 933 youths.

I’ve been thinking about how to write this post for quite some time but after reading today’s (Thursday) Wall Street Journal, I got all excited and decided today was the day I’m going to blog about this.

Ms. Teri Agins, the reporter who covered the article entitled The Future of Luxury: Custom Fashion, Cheap Chic talks with Tom Ford, arguably one of the most influential designers of today and former creative director of the Gucci Group. I agree completely with Ford as to his statements and analysis of the fashion marketplace:

1. In a shift from the era of mass luxury, consumers are demanding ever more uniqueness and customization in fashion.
2. As high fashion becomes more democratic, with designer clothes available at Target and Wal-Mart – everyone is capable of pulling off a stylish individual look.

Today, however, consumers no longer want to have the same thing at the same time. “Now everybody wants to have something different,� Mr. Ford says. “A woman doesn’t necessarily want the same bag her friend has. That is part of the appeal of vintage fashion- you don’t see yourself coming and going. It’s something that you found.�

Lets now pull back from this article and apply a little Darren Herman analysis.

Lets first approach this from the online media space perspective: consumer generated content and customization of the web. Sound familiar? Consumers now have the ability to customize their news (thru RSS feeds), create start-pages (yourminis.com), post videos (youtube.com), create avatars (oddcast.com), and tons of other opportunities to make the web their own. Isn’t web 2.0 all about making the web your own? In the advertising world, many brands are looking at ways in which consumers can interact and engage with the brand in new ways, not through traditional means.

Can’t we relate this to what Tom Ford is saying in the fashion world? Yes. We have finally reached a time in which the world is about “me.� Not just about Darren Herman, but lately, Time Inc. says, You. Last year, Reinier Evers talked about the term MEdia. The trend in media is to make it about me. We have now reached the time in fashion where we can go mainstream and allow shoppers to customize their clothing in ways never technically available [to the mainstream] before.

Customizing the color, amount of pockets, fabric, patterns, logo, on a per fashionista basis is now available. The only leverage a consumer had with a brand was size… now, if we want 3 pockets instead of 2, or green leather instead of brown, we can now get it… and this isn’t just for celebrities any longer. It may take a little longer to receive the actual item you are buying (may have to mail it to you or pick it up in the store), but you know that you’ll be getting a customized article of clothing for a realistic price.

In 1999, a company called CafePress.com came out of the wood-work and emerged as a leader in the online customized clothing space. CafePress allows anyone to be a fashion designer (most people create t-shirts) with a simple to use interface that creates a storefront for online purchasing. If you have an idea for a t-shirt or a drawing pre-made, you can upload it in minutes and people can be purchasing from your online store.

The best part of CafePress is that the designer does not have to hold inventory… it’s printed on a per order basis. No overhead. Genius. To give you an idea of what type of volume CafePress is doing, as of December 2005, they had over 22 million unique items for sale. It’s now over a year later…I think it’s safe to assume that there is demand for customized clothing.

I predict that you’re going to be able to order customized fashion (from Gucci to H&M) at any of the stores that you’d likely to purchase that specific item from. Department stores are going to become faux design laboratories – where you can go and customize any item of your choice. When I was walking around a department store in Zurich, Switzerland, in the Spring of 2005, they had a shoe display where you could customize your strap and cork bottom. It was genius! Within 5 minutes, you could pick out all the parts to your new shoe and have it assembled on the spot… imagine the mashup possibilities when Nike and Gucci start sharing parts. Come’on, a Nike sole and Gucci straps would be hot… ok, maybe not.

Nike is already in the game with Nike ID. Have you customized your sneakers yet? Lands End, one of America’s conservative brands is being proactive in the online world… custom clothing. Check it out. What about your brand?

What I’m trying to show in this post is that the fashion world is following the web. On the web, we want it our way – built for us. Every piece of consumer generated content defines who we are… from your Oddcast avatar to your MySpace profile page. In fashion, what we wear helps define who we are as well. Today, the trend in fashion is coming that we can customize anything we want for ourselves… and it’ll be readily available. Imagine the world reversed where we start with a white t-shirt for $15 and if we want to include the Nike swoosh, we subtract $2 as Nike will pay us to wear their logo…. branding at it’s finest and money well spent from Nike.

I went back through all the posts on this blog and wanted to share the posts that are in my opinion, the most important “thought-chunks.” Let me know your thoughts… feel free to share them as well.

• First Post - Welcome
• Why I like: I’m nostalgic… it’s my first post ever, so give me a beak. One of the best Muppet Movie quotes.
• Media Consumption 18-34 Year Olds
• Why I like: A fantastic posting that looks at my demographic and talks about how media is fragmenting….
• The Decline of Prime Time
• Why I like: A look at how time shifting is killing the television industry. Media fragmentation also is causing television to take new formats…
• It’s All About Me
• Why I like: It’s a look at ME-dia. There is a ME in media and I predicted it before Time nominated us at the Person of the Year.
• Deeper Peak into Avatars
• Why I like: Avatars are a hot topic within the web today. I believe that they will help bring the web a face…. And this is certainly a post that begins that conversation.
• The Power of the Music Experience
• Why I like it: I absolutely love the music industry and put a lot of thought into this posting. It got quite a bit of traction around the record labels and is a must read of any posts on the blog.
• Fertile Soil for VCs
• Why I like: NYC is an amazing scene for entrepreneurs and this post talks about why…. And no, we’re not Silicon Valley…
• Startups: Focusing
• Why I like it: Many of us are involved in startups but with all these opportunities out there, it’s hard to focus, especially thru all the clutter. FOCUS FOCUS FOCUS. Read.

Enjoy!