In an era where uniqueness carries a social currency more valuable than gold, digital customization is transforming consumer products from gaming controllers to everyday apparel. Co-founded by Levi Patterson, Portland-based Spectrum is the company behind the sophisticated 3D-to-factory platform that enables personalized designs for major brands including Xbox, Carhartt and Hydro Flask.
Levi is also co-founder of the marketing agency, Pollinate where he draws on his expertise to drive strategic integrations that redefine user engagement with bespoke items.
In this conversation with Tech Reader, Mr. Patterson discusses the engineering feats enabling lifelike product previews, the hurdles in expanding such systems globally, and the horizon for interactive, tailored experiences in gaming and beyond.
Tech Reader (DT): As one of the founders at Spectrum since 2011, what sparked your passion for 3D product customization, and how did your marketing background from co-founding Pollinate influence the platform’s focus on seamless consumer experiences like Xbox Design Lab? What challenges do companies face when integrating 3D visualization tools such as those powering Xbox Design Lab’s real-time previews into e-commerce, and how does this impact the user experience for casual vs. hardcore customizers?
Levi Patterson: (LP) Having the experience of working on digital marketing for a decade before starting Spectrum gave us a clear lens on what to prioritize. It became apparent very quickly that “what you see is what you get” (WYSIWYG) is the customer’s expectation. With that, we knew that we had to create 3D visualization, which ultimately became 3DTrue, while focusing on ensuring what gets created for the customer is accurately reflected in 3D. Our promise to our clients, and our client’s users, is the confidence that what you design on-screen is what arrives in the package. Fortunately, that same expectation exists for the casual and hard-core user so we focus on premium visualization by default. That has been the challenge to date, but over time, we’ve been able to iterate and continually evolve.
DT: Spectrum has achieved a 100% factory integration rate across diverse brands – walk us through a pivotal “aha” moment early on that convinced you this tech could bridge the gap between digital design and real-world manufacturing.
LP: While most configuration solutions solely focus only on the front-end, we spend a lot of time inside factories and embellishment facilities matching digital with reality for automated file delivery. At the start, we thought we might have bit off more than we could chew, but seeing our first fully sublimated garment come off the line was when we felt like we had something special. Details matter and we’ve been able to codify them into our platform.
DT: Spectrum’s benchmarks show a 72% decrease in 3D load speeds and 63% smaller resource sizes. How did your team prioritize these gains for high-stakes applications like Xbox Design Lab, and what does that mean for gamers tweaking designs on mobile devices?
LP: The Spectrum team has spent years refining its 3D asset pipeline to ensure that every step is fully optimized. Starting with the models, the team takes the provided CAD files, rebuilds only the visible components, and focuses on maintaining clean, quadrangulated topology, which allows for easy texture assignment. The Spectrum team’s attention to weight, map counts, size, and device detection all contribute to fast, interactive experiences across desktop and mobile platforms. These memory savings have enabled support for more real-time features—such as translucency, sheens, lightmaps, and complex animations—allowing us to push the boundaries of what’s possible while maintaining sustainable frame rates.
DT: With pixel-perfect material rendering for everything from controller plastics to Carhartt fabrics, how does Spectrum handle the challenges of simulating textures like leather or metal in real-time, and could this evolve to support AR try-ons for custom gaming peripherals?
LP: Spectrum’s PBR mindset paired with the scanning technologies adopted over the years have resulted in highly realistic material creation. To help faithfully recreate existing products in 3D, the team also receives samples so they can tumble the product and see how the surface behaves as light hits the form. Furthermore, all assets are built to real world scale which means they could easily translate into an AR space using supported formats.
DT: Features like roster/group orders and artwork re-coloring sound game-changing for teams or esports squads, what’s one under-the-radar tool in Spectrum’s toolkit that’s revolutionized how brands like JBL or Leatherman engage their communities?
LP: Moderation is the feature that comes to mind because it’s so important to protect the brand. We want to give users a canvas to express their creativity, but with guardrails. We’ve been using AI to do this well before ChatGPT was a household name to examine imagery in real time to examine for inappropriate content, copyright, or rejected terms or phrases.
DT: Drawing from successes like Life is Good Custom or Hydro Flask’s personalization, what lessons from apparel and drinkware have you applied to gaming gear, and how might we see Spectrum expand into custom VR headsets or modular console skins?
LP: At this point, we can visualize almost anything on any product, but the biggest lesson learned is the way the product is manufactured matters a ton. For example, printing on plastic or different types of coating can affect durability so we’ve been able to suggest different decoration methods that overcome a lot of those challenges. One reason for our 100% factory integration success is the result of being adaptable to the manufacturing requirements and finding the ideal embellishment solutions to create a durable, rewarding custom experience.
For gaming specifically, in our partnership with Xbox Design Lab we allow users to design and 3D print their own components for controllers. This is particularly helpful for users that have accessibility challenges and allow for operating a controller for other body parts besides hands or fingers. For us, that feature is really satisfying as we’ve been able to go beyond personalization into true customization centered around one user…that is the future!
DT: For B2B tie-ins like Carhartt’s Company Gear, how does Spectrum’s platform help brands like Xbox create exclusive drops (e.g., The Outer Worlds 2 controllers) that drive hype while managing supply chain realities like 3-4 week delivery times?
LP: We create frameworks that allow our clients the flexibility to drive timely designs or drops at a minute’s notice. Since we understand the manufacturing constraints and have the rules to enforce them, brands don’t need the typical supply chain timeline or even carry stock. As the user decorates an item, the brand can pull stock parts, print and assemble in a time-line that competes with ordering a stock product. We have some partners that are now shipping fully custom products within a day after the users creates it.
DT: Adaptive thumbstick toppers and elite components emphasize inclusivity in Xbox Design Lab, how is Spectrum pushing boundaries in accessibility, like 3D-printed toppers or voice-guided customizers, to ensure gamers of all abilities can create “one-of-a-kind” gear?
LP: Spectrum and Microsoft’s shared values regarding inclusive customer experiences resulted in a unique collaboration between our teams. Microsoft had an initiative to visualize and print accessible thumb sticks for consumers. The Spectrum 3D Team was able to support this specific initiative by creating two pipelines that would translate, orient, and export Microsoft’s toppers for the experience and for 3D printing.
DT: Looking ahead to 2026 and beyond, how do you envision Spectrum evolving with AI and Web3? For instance, could we see NFT-linked custom controllers or generative designs pulled from a user’s gaming playstyle?
LP: We see AI playing a huge role in customization beyond what we use it for now: moderation and AI image generation. Obviously, those capabilities will continue to evolve generally and likely branch into the 3D space. We are most excited about providing agentic-experiences to our end user or clients that create an assortment of customizations based on a user’s preferences, that can come from games, interests, past behavior, or anything else the user allows us to discover. It’s super powerful, so for a client like Xbox it would obviously be around gaming, but for Carhartt it’ll be centered around their occupation or outdoor activities.
Less sexy, but just as important is allowing our client’s AI layers to talk to Spectrum for common customer services issues. For example, allowing Shopify to ask Spectrum where in the process an order is and being able to respond in real-time without any human interaction.
DT: As someone who’s scoped integrations for over a decade, what’s the biggest hurdle brands face in adopting customization tech today – scalability, cost, or user adoption—and how is Spectrum tackling it for emerging markets like mobile gaming accessories?
LP Hands down, the biggest hurdle is in the supply chain because they are inherently built to deal with mass quantities and not a batch of one. We have the leaders in the water bottle category and for each one we go through the same level of care in ordering and producing one bottle than if the order was for thousands. The key is automation to be able to scale and keep costs low. Consumers have agreed with their wallets that they are willing to pay a premium, within limits, for a product tailored to their needs. Spectrum’s automation allows the brand to keep those costs within those limits to enable customization on virtually any product in any market.
As I wrapped up my interview with Levi, one thing became very clear: the era of mass-produced gaming gear is giving way to a more personal, immersive future. And this should be no surprise to gamers who thrive on custom built PCs, skins for their gaming consoles and other customizable features.
Through Spectrum’s cutting edge 3D-to-factory platform, brands like Xbox are not just selling controllers, they’re handing players the tools to craft extensions of their own identity. Advancements in rendering speed, material accuracy, and seamless manufacturing integration already reshaping how we shop for everything from jackets to tumblers, Patterson’s vision hints at an even broader horizon, one where customization isn’t a premium feature, but the standard.
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