hyalineskies

I waited in the typical Starbucks queue around 2pm yesterday to get my afternoon coffee.

“A soy double latte with two pumps of vanilla, please.”
“An iced tall nonfat caramel macchiato, please.”

It was already an adjective frenzy, but a woman in front of me demonstrated her superior CML (coffee markup language) talent:

“I’ll have a Grande, nonfat, no-foam, sugar-free, seven-pumps, decaf peppermint chai.”

The baristas scrambled around behind the counter, utilising a formidable amount of tools. The knowledge for even a “simple” job like this is insane, and economists call this unskilled labour? I know that I couldn’t do what they’re doing. Starbucks appears to be an art in itself. As the espresso machines whirred and foam nozzles hissed, I stepped to the register with my delightfully simple order.

“A tall Americano, please.”

As other people received their excessively custom cups of coffee, with essays authored in some type of shorthand scrawled onto the sides of the paper reservoirs with a china marker, I watched them like animals. It was a sociology experiment in action as I saw them smile, grab this ultra-custom coffee, and wander out the door back into the rat race. I finally realised why Starbucks can get away with their prices: these drinks are practically luxury items, and the consumer has become so omnipotent that, even for a moment, they can command a corporation’s attention for one cup of coffee.

It’s not like Starbucks is their once-in-a-while special treat, either; these people, including myself, are regulars. If there is any price in the economy that approaches Economics 101’s teachings of equilibrium and Pareto optimality, it’s got to be the prices paid for Starbucks coffee. (For that matter, I’m either cheap, worthless, or a combination of the two - for me, happiness at Starbucks is only a relatively measly $1.70.)

Last winter, I read a book by Michael J. Silverstein and Neil Fiske titled Trading Up: The New American Luxury (link goes to Amazon,) which presents an extensive case study of a new American consumer culture. The book roughly concludes that all Americans are constantly pushing their financial limits to buy semi-luxury brands - the economist’s superior goods - instead of what is “common” for their income bracket. I’m not about to argue with Silverstein and Fiske - I believe that they are honestly entirely correct in their findings - but I think that they didn’t spend nearly enough time highlighting why places like Starbucks are so successful across a diverse socioeconomic landscape: the sheer individuality and creativity in their business model of what I’m calling microcustomisation.

A bit of extremely simplified statistics yields over 38 million possible drink combinations from the espresso bar alone. If I was to walk into a small-town coffee shop and said I wanted a grande, nonfat, sugar-free, ristretto, four-pump, 140-degree peppermint mocha, they’d either respond with a dirty look or “What the hell am I? A CML parser?” (Okay, maybe not, but leave me to my own geeky amusement.) The very response to the parser question, is, however, perfectly ordinary: “Yes, you are, now please make my coffee to these specifications.” Consumers expect extremely specialised service, and they’ll gladly go elsewhere if you won’t give it to them. After all, we’re part of a society that preaches the visions of diversity, the well-rounded person, and the beauty of a liberal arts education. Why wouldn’t we continue that philosophy when we buy our goods? After all, we pride ourselves on being unique, so, logically, our coffee should be equally unique. In the lives of the business world, where corporate rigidity bottlenecks creative spirit with profit-and-loss statements, the creativity given to the consumer in the microcustomisation of objects is emotionally exhilarating and psychologically powerful. In the lives of Richard Florida’s (another Amazon link) “creative class”, the creatives wouldn’t have it any other way. The creative can’t create his or her own drink down to nauseating detail? That’s like giving a painter only one brush and the color chartreuse. Any creative consumer will scoff at your business model.

The real question to be answered by all of this is that of what’s going to be the next industry to be microcustomised. We’re all so accustomed to creating coffee in extreme detail; what else will we demand this power over? When will companies stop traditional ads and focus their “marketing” back on themselves to show how adaptive their products are as opposed to forcing onto us how much we want to buy them? My bet is on apparel. Threadless is extremely close to this with their current business model - a designer submits a design and voters either greenlight its printing or scrap it - but it’s still customisation by group as opposed to the individual. (Yes, I know that Nike ID is extremely close to this, but footwear is still only one part of a person’s wardrobe.)

I’d also love to see this trend come to mobile devices - it’s getting very close with the MVNOs such as Amp’d Mobile and purely cosmetic companies such as ColorWare, but it’s still not at the point where we can customise our personal mobile devices to the point we do our computers.

I’d love to make and professionally screenprint my own clothing label (CafePress’s system of iron-on transfers doesn’t count.) It would be exclusivity to an unheard-of point, available not only to the elite, but to the masses with Adobe Creative Suite or even a pencil and paper. I’d love to have a pearl-white Treo 650 with EV-DO and Graffiti. As for now, though, I guess I’ll just have to settle for this Cafe Americano. I guess we can’t all be designers of everything.