Samsung is adding a new and extremely exploitable customization option to its line of Bespoke refrigerators. Sling the company $500 and you can have any photo or image you like printed on the unit’s double doors. You could choose a favorite piece of artwork, a child’s doodles, or just put your own face on your own fridge for no good reason at all.
The option is launching for buyers sometime later this year (if you need to know the exact minute it goes live you can sign up here for alerts), and if you already own a Bespoke fridge, you can order the door panels separately and swap them in. The cost is $250 a panel, and Samsung says they’ll take about 8 weeks to print and ship.
The Bespoke line of refrigerators is very much marketed by Samsung for its modularity and customization. Previously, though, you could only choose from a limited selection of colors and a few prints (in the UK, for example, you can buy units emblazoned with the Union Jack in time for Queen Elizabeth II’s Platinum Jubilee).
Giving customers the option to add any image they like will almost certainly lead to some very, very ugly fridges sitting in peoples’ kitchens, but I suspect that is part of the feature’s charm. Samsung tells us that it’ll also be moderating the images requested by customers with a combination of automated filters and human review. They’ll be looking for copyright violations and explicit imagery, but other than that: go wild.
