The custom touch

In 1995, Park’s company was acquired by Levi Strauss & Co., its first big customer, for an undisclosed multimillion-dollar sum. It seemed like the concept of mass customization, long touted by consultants and academics, was ready for its moment in the spotlight.

But while Levi Strauss for a time used the technology to sell “Personal Pair’’ jeans in its retail stores, and companies like Nike and Reebok still allow online shoppers to design their own shoes, the mass customization wave never seemed to reach the shore. Today, most Americans still buy mass-produced, off-the-shelf products.

A growing group of Boston area start-ups, however, are taking another crack at customized apparel and accessories. Offering bras and business suits, engagement rings or a killer pair of stiletto heels, these entrepreneurs believe that consumers have become more comfortable with e-commerce over the past decade-and-a-half, and more desirous of unique products. Offshore factories have also developed the flexibility necessary to produce one-of-a-kind items.

“All of the planets are starting to align,’’ says Park, who is now an adviser to several companies that are part of this new customization crop.

Some of the executives running local customization companies say they hope to benefit from a cultural shift. “When I grew up, in the 1970s, we all wore our hair the same way and we wore the same clothes,’’ says Deb Bessemer, chief executive of Lexington-based Paragon Lake Inc., which works with jewelry stores to let customers design their own baubles.

“But the new generation of people in their 20s is more individualistic. They don’t want the same ring or pair of earrings that their friends also have.’’

Paragon Lake sells jewelers a touchscreen display and software that enables customers to create their own items - changing white gold to platinum, for instance, or a ruby to an emerald - and see how the price changes as they go. An item can be produced in three weeks, Bessemer says, and it doesn’t cost the customer any more than an item selected from the jeweler’s in-store inventory. Last summer, the 15-person company raised $5.8 million in venture capital funding.

It’s possible that the customization companies could be helped by the turmoil affecting traditional retailers.

Many apparel retailers are cutting costs by eliminating sizes that don’t sell well, says Samantha Shih, founder of Boston-based 9tailors LLC. As a result, consumers who need special sizes are gravitating to companies like 9tailors, which offers men’s and women’s button-down shirts as well as short dresses, starting at about $60.

Several customization companies are just now getting off the ground - many of them hailing from Babson College in Wellesley. Blank Label aims to sell shirts and suits to men in the 18-to-28 demographic.

Suits will start around $300, and will be made in Shanghai (like 9tailors’s shirts). Ball & Buck has already begun selling customizable pocket T-shirts made of organic cotton and sewn in Framingham. One of the older companies of the bunch is Boston-based Zyrra, founded by two Babson alums to sell bras that are made using 10 different measurements, starting at $85.

Many of the companies, like Zyrra and Sole Envie, a Boston company that plans to let women customize shoes including sandals, flats, and heels, have been funded so far by their founders, or investments from friends and family.

Aside from Paragon Lake, the only other company that has raised venture capital funding is Fashion Playtes, which will allow “tween’’ girls, ages 6 to 12, to design their own dresses, bags, and jean jackets. The Salem company, still in beta-testing mode, raised “less than $5 million’’ from two Cambridge-based firms, Launch Capital and New Atlantic Ventures, according to founder Sarah McIlroy.

Fashion Playtes aims to make the design process entertaining and game-like for its young customers. But a big challenge for all of the companies will be persuading customers to do the extra measurement and data entry that is required, rather than just selecting “medium’’ on a website and clicking the purchase button.

“There’s definitely a higher learning curve here than going to a Banana Republic and buying something off the rack,’’ says Shih, “and it does require some hand-holding.’’

To deal with that, some of the companies hold “shopping parties’’ where a group of prospective customers can get together, get their hands on sample products, and get measured; 9tailors has one scheduled in Boston later this month.

Another local company, NetVirta, thinks it has a better solution for achieving a perfect fit - one that doesn’t require a measuring tape and a friend.

The company is developing software that can stitch together a 3-D model of your body based on a set of six to eight photos taken with a consumer-grade digital camera. The stealthy start-up, led by MIT alum Jeff Chen, is trying to raise money. There’s no website yet, and no launch date set.

Park, the Newton entrepreneur, has been helping Zyrra and Fashion Playtes raise money, and also developing new products in collaboration with the Cambridge office of IDEO, the California-based design firm.

I asked him whether he had a theory about why it has taken mass customization so long to go mainstream, given that it has been 14 years since he sold Custom Clothing to Levi Strauss.

“I read somewhere that there’s a natural up-curve that lasts about 14 years,’’ Park said with a laugh. “That’s generally how long it takes for new stuff to catch on.’’

But many of the big companies that were part of the first wave of mass customization in the 1990s, like Nike and Levi Strauss, are inherently more comfortable with the scale, costs, and logistics of mass production. Customization was never essential to their survival or success.

It could be that this new cluster of start-ups - companies that will either live or die based on whether they can profitably do mass customization, and turn consumers on to it - could have a much bigger impact on the way we buy over the years ahead.