Amazon Receives Patent For On-Demand Fashion Manufacturing
You may recall our story about how Millennials love buying fashion on Amazon. It appears Amazon is doubling down on their lead in fashion sales with a new patent.
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The company received a patent for a system that produces fashion items after order placement. But this is not a one-off custom order scheme.
The computerized system would batch orders based on common product attributes. It then would print, cut, and assemble the fashion item for fulfillment.
By combining orders from different geographic regions and coordinating product assembly on a large-scale, the system will take advantage of new methods in production efficiencies.
Fashion Products Only The Beginning
The patent also goes into details that this same process may work for other product categories. This could include footwear, bedding, curtains, towels or anything made from paper, plastic, leather, rubber and similar materials.
We already have seen the growth in 3D printing, which already includes food products.
While we are a long way from “printing” useful products at home. On-demand production is the next frontier in eCommerce.
Entrepreneurs will still need to design and create products. But production may shift from mass production lines to a 3D printing facilities.
Therefore, we could see an impressive improvement in speed from concept to product. Also releasing product updates would no longer be tied to existing inventory levels.
On-Demand Production is The Wave of The Future
It is not known if Amazon is building an on-demand fashion production facility today. But this is not Amazon’s first foray into on-demand production.
A previous patent they filed involved the use of 3D printers on delivery trucks. The concept being this could speed up deliveries of popular products.
Amazon continues to invent and explore ideas involving on-demand production. There are clear signs to a future of Amazon revolutionizing this form of eCommerce.
One day we may see FBA turn into PBA (Produced by Amazon).
What is your thought about on-demand production? Can you see yourself creating products on a computer, produced on demand, and fulfilled by Amazon?
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Richard Meldner
Richard is co-founder of eSeller365. He has over 17 years of experience on eBay which includes tens of thousands of sales to buyers in over 100 countries and even has experience with eBay’s VeRO program enforcing intellectual property rights for a former employer. And for about two years Richard sold products on Amazon using Amazon FBA in the US.
To “relax” from the daily business grind, for a few weekends a year, he also works for IMSA as a professional race official.