This post came about mainly because I think this Reebok site is so cool, but there is also a lot to be said about the rise of user-generated content and how that will play out in the physical world. The Reebok site allows you to customize a shoe by selecting the color of about 20 different elements on the shoe. You can see a movie of the custom shoe builder in action here. I’m not sure how successful the Reebok site has been, but another company you may have heard of has been rocking the customer-generated products very successfully.

Threadless has been around for a while now and they did $6.5 million in sales last year. By letting anyone submit t-shirt designs and then letting anyone vote on which designs will be printed, Threadless has created an entire business around user-generated content. Reebok has somewhat of a Threadless vibe, because you can buy shoes created by other customers. You can see this in the screencast, but the point of Reebok Custom is designing a shoe that no one else has.

The point of this post is a little harder to pin down, but I think it’s that by allowing your customers the ability to have some say in your product’s final look you allow them to connect to the product, and thus your brand. And customers connecting to your brand is always a great thing. What do you think about customization on the web?