Angelo Coletta: How 3D & AR Will Kill Traditional E-commerce | Ep. 186

0:05Hey, everyone. Welcome back to Founder Story. Today, we have Angelo Coletta, the CEO of Zakeke. And Angela, we were just talking about that you are in Italy, which is one of my absolute favorite places to visit. I love going there in Europe. I was just there a few months ago, had a fantastic time. But what you're doing is really revolutionary. And I'm excited to dive in because I saw something like this about 10 years ago. But at that time, it was like too soon, too new. But now I could see this becoming massive. So why don't you start off with how did you get into this industry and why this business?

0:45Thanks for inviting me here. And what we have done is, you know, maybe eight years ago, my vision was that the commerce space will change dramatically in the next years. So my vision is that on one side, there are customers. They want to pay more to have something that is just for them. You know, they can create, maybe they can interact, they can do something like that. On the other side, industry in the back office, finally, is ready to offer like an artisan, products done only for you at the same cost of massive production in many industries. And on the other side, brands are looking for providing different experience, more immersive, with more gaming action with their brands.

1:37So all these things together give me the idea that probably we have to create something to help merchants to offer this new kind of experience to their customers and to help them to scale the automating process in a back office and digitalize all their channels from the production till the final customers. So we have started the kicking and we have developed this platform that enables Maxon to offer a very complex experience in the visual commerce era that I think it will be the next step of growing of e-commerce. I can imagine an e-commerce online without visual experience in the next years. So when you do something that's very revolutionary and when it's tied to emerging technologies, not every brand, I'm sure, sees the value in it yet.

2:42How has it been when you go back to the beginning to now? What's been the sentiment of these larger brands and then the sentiment of maybe smaller brands? It's interesting because the visual layer is something that impacts with hundreds of different businesses. There is different age for understanding how it is necessary. So what we have seen that the first word that has used our platform was the B2B word in the gadgeting, in the gift, in the sports where the habits of offer a customized product was something confident. The only thing is that the process generally was manually or semi-manually.

3:35So we have started helping this brand scale and automating their process, saving a lot of times and a lot of money and helping them to be fast in offering the services to their customers. And they started to offer a 3D preview too. In the meanwhile, some other segment like luxury, accessories, apparel, and something like that, they start thinking that the future, it would be 3D and not photos. And so they start understanding that they have to become a company based on the 3D asset. So they start thinking about making a 3D catalog and not samples. They start thinking that if they have a 3D catalog, they can have interactive ads everywhere in a simple way.

4:34And so they are moving to this experience. If they have the 3D, they can offer AR and try-on online or maybe in the physical stores. If they have a 3D model, when they can in the back office, they can offer customization. And in which way at the moment we serve more than 10 ,000 customers, around 15 ,000 at the moment, all around the world in 400 different industries from super small business, maybe they sell t-shirts or caps, customize it to big brands like Armani, Valentino, Uber Eats, Ubisoft. They use the platform to provide a complex experience in any of their channels. So online, the B2B channel, in the physical store too.

5:23I mean, that's amazing. And I've seen the product. It's incredible. And I think, like you said, it's the future and the future is now essentially. So as you are growing and scaling the business and you had to onboard more B2B customers, obviously, for the consumers, was there a marketing strategy or a partnership strategy? What helped you as you went from$1 ,000 to$5 ,000 to$10 ,000 to$15 ,000? Because that's a lot, right? That's a lot of B2B customers. Was there something that you found works really well? Yeah. All we've done here, the idea is that we think that this is a long-term business. So the first goal that we have in our mind is that we want to create a platform that works for everyone, from the small guys to the big guys, with a pricing model that works for all of them.

6:15So we have a self-provisioning plan that is for the, you know, small and small-medium customers. They can do everything by their own. They can download the app using InsiderStores, and the cost is based on, you know, on a percentage of what they sell. And then there is a corporate plan for big companies that have other needs. They need something account-based. there is some special things like cloud dedicated some specific api for integrating erp and other things uh pn vlm pin inside the company and so first of all we have created these two different line of products and second things in terms of marketing we have 80 percent of our customer that comes because they find us in a different way in a different channel and then for the The big customers, we have a network or partner all around the world.

7:13So there is a double strategy for small and medium. Generally, self-provisioning and the marketing is based on digital activity. On the other side, a network partner, so qualified partners to reach the customers where customization, visualization, tryout is a piece of a big strategy in the challenge inside a company. Yeah, that makes total sense. I think a lot of people struggle when they start a company around the pricing strategy. They never know how much they should price or who. It's always a tough one. So I really, I like the strategy that you have so you can really get to everyone. So as you've gone on this journey, Who have you seen to be your biggest customers?

8:03Is there a certain industry, a type of company that you found is really, really taking on this new technology? So what we have seen that there is luxury and furniture that are looking for improving their experience aligned in terms of 3D interaction, AR and trial. So this industry is low, but it's coming with strongness because they have understood that they can change their part inside the company. On the other side, the web to print industry is the largest and full of a lot of entrepreneurs from the small one to the big guys. So we have customers, very important customers in these different fields.

8:52So, for example, we have in the brand, we have Hermione, Valentino, Colmar. We have customers worldwide, Testoni, Sander Paris, and many other brands like that. And on the other side, we have Best Buy, Uber Eats, Ubisoft, US Army, and many others. And a lot of gadgets in play, HP. We have a bigger agreement with HP in the large print format sector. So, I think that this kind of industry are now the main player. But anyway, we have customaries in 400 different verticals. It makes sense around the future of customization, how people want curated and customized experiences for shopping or even customized products.

9:42I think I'm seeing a lot of these like, you know, create your own fragrance versus, you know, a fragrance that the company makes. How do you see the future of, you know, because we're here already in 2025. When you're looking five years, 10 years out, how do you see e-commerce and shopping evolving at that point? Oh, I think that this mix of technology, they are trying on configuration, maybe in the future hologram or maybe other piece of this layer, AI agent, you know, something like that. this will be the next interface that customers will find online and offline. Because many of these actions, you know, online is learning how to offer some kind of experience that in the past you can have only in the physical stores.

10:40Like, for example, a trial, okay? Or maybe AR when you are buying a sofa, for example. You can see that actually in your room. On the other side, the physical stores are at the layer of virtual experience inside the stores to create a mixed experience inside. So these worlds are coming all together. And my vision is that in 10 years, I can't imagine any website, any physical stores, any B2B channel where the visual layer will not appear a piece of the interface. Everything, everyone will not do that. It will be like an old website. As we can see now, there's an e-commerce website over there in 90.

11:26Yeah, wait, what product, what photo? And you have to pray to understand who is going to deliver you. You had to make like a mobile site and a regular site. And now all sites are like mobile optimized sites. If you're on Shopify or whatever platform, it seems like this will be the future. I'm very excited about e-commerce. I personally started in 2012 with e-commerce and then physical stores. So I can relate to the processes and wanting to do things this way. I'm very excited about this. So now that you've been in business for as long as you have, disrupting industries, thousands of clients, obviously people love you all around the world and in different industries.

12:10if somebody was coming up to you and said, Angelo, I want to be as successful as you one day. What is a piece of advice that you would give to them? There's a lot of stories that someone tells me, and I can say the same. The wake up has to be early in the morning. If your work's hard every day and you put the seed every day in the ground, for sure a tree will grow up. It could be big, super big, fantastic, but for sure it will grow up. So many times people, I think, spend a lot of time to see the heroes of this world. Elon Musk, Bill Gates. Yeah, sure, someone can do this. But there are hundreds, thousands of entrepreneurs that can make a really super interesting company.

13:03Maybe with that be on the Time magazine or maybe with... They are not something that they are meant to read in a book, but there's a lot of money that you can gain and a lot of satisfaction that you can find along your entrepreneurship journey. So working hard, don't be in love with your idea, always ready to change what are you doing, what are you thinking, looking at what markets say, what people that is better than you says and what sometimes your instinct says that, okay, yeah, I'm going good, but I can be better. No, and take a risk. And don't forget that when you take a risk, some days or some nights will be dark, but it's a piece of the job.

13:58Then the light is always in the next day. So you have to fight art If you want to try to reach the goals, the other people, I think that you can build your company day by day. You have to have a long vision, but you don't need to forget that today is a day for the Santipat. Wow, Angelo, those are amazing takeaways. A lot of stuff to unpack there, but I could see why you've had the success that you've had based on the things that you just said. funny enough our previous interview we asked the same question and they said waking up at 4 a.m to 8 a.m was like the prime thing that helped them be successful in the time frame waking up early perseverance working hard figuring it out and I love that not being in love with the company or the product because you might need to change tweak many people say oh this company is my baby which I think could be a detriment because they're not going to be okay with feedback and change.

15:02You said a lot of great things, Angelo. If he wants to learn more about you, they want to get in touch, how can they do so? Sure. First of all, our website, tzakeke.com and everyone can reach me on my LinkedIn profile. I'm not a super social user, but I use LinkedIn. And so you can find me there. and I generally accept any request because I think that if you have to stay somewhere on the social list to be social, if you stay there without interact, it's only like stay like a poster on the wall and I don't want to be. So I have chosen only one because I don't have time to speak with everyone, but on LinkedIn, everyone can reach me.

15:49Well, it's Z-A-K-E-K-E dot com. Angelo, some of the most successful people have like no following on social media, right? They're not busy because you're too busy building up your company, scaling and growing. I can super appreciate that feeling. You've been amazing. I can't wait to have you on in a year from now. And then let's talk about the next technology and the next wave of customization. I'm very, very interested in this topic. I think this is gonna help a lot of people, but it's been great having you today on Founder Story. and thank you for your time. Yeah, thanks a lot. And meanwhile, let's have the wait.