Celebrities have had varying degrees of success and involvement at each stage, but increasingly there’s an additional part to add to the equation: strike a deal for your own e-commerce venture. Making a shoe of the month, or necklace of the month club may not be the most revolutionary of ideas, but for celebrities looking to capitalize on their image it looks like the future of fashion endorsements is moving online.

Kim Kardashian and Kate Bosworth may not compete for the same roles in Hollywood, but online they’re competing for a similar audience with a similar model, albeit with different products.

Kardashian has started by going after those who want to receive a new pair of shoes each month. Shoedazzle was founded by Brian Lee and Robert Shapiro (who first founded LegalZoom, with Kardashian listed as a co-founder and chief stylist. How much involvement she actually has with the site beyond lending her name as a spokesperson is unclear. To be fair, most celebrity fashion brands work in the same way. Regardless of the depth of her involvement behind the scenes, the site which launched in 2009 raised $13 million in April and was reportedly profitable at that time. The $13 million round in April is on top of a $7 million round bringing the total amount raised by the company to $20 million.

Bosworth and her stylist Cher Coulter have gone down the accessories route (also with a monthly selection model) with BeachMint, a company started by MySpace co-founder Josh Berman and serial entrepreneur Diego Berdakin. Jewelmint, which launched just this past October, was the first site out of the BeachMint stable. Apparently, investors felt it was proof enough of BeachMint’s commerce strategy and the company closed a $10 million round in December, bringing their total funding to $15 million. Unlike Shoedazzle, that entire amount is unlikely to be spent on a single site, but rather building out the celebrity backed commerce model.

World of Alfa, which we first covered in a post on online custom clothing companies, ditches the item a month model entirely in favor of a mass customization model for men’s shirts. Founded by brothers Patrick and Boris Kodjoe, actor Boris is the face of the brand, which Patrick insists is a more personal endeavor than your traditional celebrity line. “Boris was not interested in a traditional endorsement of someone elseâ€s vision. Alfa is something close to his heart. Alfa is our personal vision of what is possible – a legitimate fashion revolution.”

The really interesting part of the story is yet to come though, and that’s whether celebrity is sufficient to build an online business around. Not unlike traditional celebrity fashion lines, it’s likely to still be heavily dependent on people who don’t attract any attention on a red carpet. For Jessica Simpson, whose brand is on track to drive $1 billion in sales, a large part of the success has been in partnering with someone who had the ability to ensure above average production quality. Vince Camuto, who founded Nine West and is responsible for the launch of footwear collections for Tory Burch and BCBG among others, may not be a household name; but, his industry experience has undoubtedly been a reason for the brand’s success. Our best guess is that online ventures will follow a similar path.

While the celebrities may help in attracting fans and new users, it’s still going to be up to the entrepreneurs behind the sites to make them a success. It wouldn’t surprise us if sites who’ve already established themselves (think Gilt, for example) tap into a bit of star power for new features and products if the celebrity co-founder model proves to be a successful marketing strategy.

Chocolate, and even designer sunglasses are hopping on the bespoke bandwagon, but custom clothing has the greatest potential to disrupt the normal fashion cycle. Custom clothing certainly isn’t anything new – it dominated for centuries before ready to wear clothing became the standard. What is new is the speed and price at which custom clothing can be produced, seemingly by tossing out the rules of mass apparel production.

A custom shirt won’t arrive as quickly as one in stock on your favorite department store’s website, but the 2 to 3 week delivery time offered by custom shirt makers like ProperCloth and Alfa is faster than the 8 to 10 weeks an off the rack shirt requires to go from design to delivery. eShakti, a website offering customized dresses and women’s clothing based on existing style templates, has reduced the timeframe to a week and a half. For women’s fashion, design to delivery in stores normally takes a year.

Bringing Down the Cost of Custom

Two fabric options from Alfa custom shirts. Prices range from $29 to $75

While a week and a half or 2 weeks may still not be quick enough for last minute shoppers, the competitive prices make custom clothing an attractive option for those who plan ahead. Patrick Kodjoe, CEO of Alfa, explains that technology and operating outside the traditional ready-to-wear fashion cycle is what allows his company to offer mass market prices on individually produced products.

“We have had to develop unique production processes and sophisticated software, driving down the cost while bringing efficiency and consistency to a traditionally manual industry,” Kodjoe says. “Basically, the biggest challenge is the garment pattern. The reason why ready made production is so much cheaper and easier is that you work with one pattern. With us, in addition to all the different options, every shirt has a different pattern created specifically according to the body measurements of each individual customer. Traditionally, primarily because of individual patterns and expertise needed, custom-tailoring is all manual, which explains the time investment in each piece and thus, the cost/price. Our software enables us to generate each shirt pattern separately with manual supervision, and coupled with our steamlined hand-production processes, this enables us to offer our revolutionary prices.” Perhaps equally important, “we generally stay away from traditional retail distribution and expensive marketing campaigns,” he explains.

Seph Skerritt, founder of ProperCloth, also attributes the relatively affordable prices of custom clothing to direct production and distribution. “The primary advantage is that, by making products to order, we avoid any costs associated with producing products that don’t end up being sold,” he says.

Two shirts from ProperCloth. Prices range from $99 to $200 with free shipping.

eShakti operates on a slightly different model. Shoppers can choose varied skirt shapes and lengths, different sleeve and neckline options in addition to specifying measurements, but do so based on an existing garment rather than designing something completely new. Still, the company has found a similar benefit in using the internet to bypass the traditional retail system. “The costs of production are indeed higher when you make individual garments separately – as much as two to three times higher than mass, assembly-line production. And when we courier separately to individuals, the costs are extremely high. We still keep our price reasonable since we do not have any buyers/retailers as middle-men and sell directly to the consumer,” says Jennifer Mayer, eShakti’s head of marketing.

One Size Does Not Fit All

Bringing prices and production in line with mass market clothing is a significant step in putting custom clothing in line to compete with off the rack clothing, but each person we spoke with emphasized that the biggest opportunity is in providing clothes that fit well.