The personalized-products industry is struggling at a strange time: making a good personalized product has never been easier. In 2020, 1-800-Flowers bought PersonalizationMall for $245 million. Now it has agreed to sell a package including PersonalizationMall and Things Remembered to PlanetArt for approximately $45 million. The deals aren’t directly comparable, and the new sale hasn’t closed, but that’s a dramatic difference. Shutterfly has its own financing challenges. Bloomberg reported that its June refinancing included a $1.15 billion bond sold at a 12.5% yield, along with stronger protections for creditors. These businesses are combining and working to strengthen their financial positions. What puzzles me is the timing. For years, I’ve thought one of the biggest obstacles in personalization was getting a good file to print. Take a photo book. Someone has hundreds of family photos, but the lighting varies, the crops need work, and arranging everything into a book that looks good takes time. Wanting a photo book and actually finishing one are two very different things. AI can do much of that work now. It can help improve the images, choose the photos and put together attractive pages. More people should be able to create something they’re happy to buy. So why are established companies under pressure just as that obstacle is shrinking? I suspect easier creation helps new competitors as much as it helps incumbents. Owning the design tools may become less valuable, while reaching customers and producing and delivering their orders profitably become even more important. Does consolidation put these companies in a better position to capture that opportunity? Or does the industry need to rethink how it sells personalized products?