The House of Aroha

When talking to retailers about consumer trends I frequently refer to consumers' desire to customise and personalise product offerings. And although this is often easy to put into words, it is harder to put into practice... You can imagine my surprise on a recent trip to New Zealand when I stumbled across a small boutique in the regional town of Napier who is leading the way in customisation and persoanlisation.

The House of Aroha is a boutique showcasing what they love, art, music, design, and clothing. Aroha is the Maori word for love, and the love of the in-house design team hits you in the face when you walk into this store. Walls are adorned with local designs, motifs and iconography and each design can be customised in its colour and framed on the spot for customers. But more surprisingly, a large back areas of the store is dedicated to what seems to be a sort of press, which enables any design to take any colour, and be printed onto high quality t-shirts, with environmentally-friendly ink.

In their own words "Made with Aroha specialises in screen printing and producing hand printed T-shirts and art prints using solvent free water based inks that are nice for the environment, printer and wearer. We have an in-house design department where we create our own collections as well as collaborate with artists to produce limited edition T-shirts, art prints and all sorts of printed goodness."

Congratulations to the team at the House of Aroha... you've developed a truely inspirational space which allows customers to co-create their product offerings.