People sometimes wonder how our work relates to physical commodities. The Internet is by some mistakenly believed to change only the industries of intangible products, such as it has with music, news, video, marketing and so on. But this is not the case.

The Internet will change all markets – also the market in industries of physical and very non-digital products. And the challengers in these industries will as well thrive through social and digital business models that utilise on co-creation, involvement and social innovation.

At fashion company MUUSE they are responding to the crisis in the apparel industry by acting as a business platform for new fashion designers. They team up with talents around the world, upload their individual collections to the MUUSE web site and only when an order is placed, MUUSE gets the item produced. Customers on the other hand can enjoy a wide range of unique collections through one service that offers specially crafted and uniquely fitted fashion clothes – what’ is not to like?

In the video below the co-founder of MUUSE, Gitte Jonsdatter, introduces the firm and elaborates on the strength of organising a firm around a community. In the case of MUUSE the community replaces the design department of traditional high-end fashion companies.

Other apparel companies has for some time now had success with social business models that are inspired by the logic of the Internet. In a different area of the fashion spectre, companies like Threadless and Design by Humans sells t-shirts designed by their own communities. T-shirt designs are uploaded to their sites and the ones with the most votes gets printed and sold throughout the communities.

Open source and community-based products will penetrate all industries. Even stuff like community based cars and espresso machines are now available. In the future, people will not settle for a standardised product but will prefer to participate and to take part in the design and in the very creation of the product. Traditional business models can’t meet this demand – social and network-based business models are needed.

I hope that you’ll enjoy the video despite the poor sound and picture – Gitte’s points are spot on!