The customer is always right, and now they've only got themselves to blame

Are you fed up of buying the same old crap from the same old places (for anyone who's been to my flat, please ignore the fact it looks like an Ikea showroom, just for now)? It seems that more power is being given to the people, more power, more choice, more voice!

Though I was taken my Barry Schwartz view on this (an excellent presentation I'm sure you'll agree), it seems now that the small guy is coming through, and they are giving people what they want. Something different.

Threadless.com is a great example here. A community driven clothes selling retail web site. Users can upload their designs and other users can vote for those. Winning* designs are printed by threadless for a limited run. Once those t-shirts sell, users can request another print run though at threadless's discretion. What an awesome idea.

Flicking through Saturday's Guardian, I come across another innovative, if similar idea. Essentially the same, except for household objects. People can upload designs of products and others can suggest changes and make comments. Once that product has a certain amount of votes (currently 1000), the business agrees to take on the design (unless it conflicts with copyright, health and safety laws etc) and create a batch to sell to retail channels. Now, this guy has just set up a channel agreement with Muji, a UK high street distributor. Instead of the threadless payback (kudos, plus some one off cash and gift vouchers - plus potentially more for re-prints and winning further competitions), the designer is given royalties on profits. How awesome is that. Both interesting models.

So now, not only can you buy something that's different, on a limited run, you can now potentially get your own ideas made for yourself and into the homes of others.

These sites let you contribute, but personalisation sites are doing well too, least we forget moo.com =)

*winning defined by threadless.com, not exactly sure what that is as I've not entered a competition