Founder's Story
Angelo Coletta: How 3D & AR Will Kill Traditional E-commerce | Ep. 186
Thu, 13 Mar 2025
Angelo Coletta discusses his bold vision for transforming e-commerce through visual customization and immersive technology. Based in Italy, Angelo explains how Zakeke enables merchants to deliver personalized, 3D, and AR-enhanced shopping experiences that bridge artisan craftsmanship with mass production. He shares insights on the evolution of visual commerce, the strategic challenges of onboarding diverse B2B customers, and his long-term plan to redefine online retail, making digital interactions as compelling as in-person experiences.Key Discussion Points:Vision & Inspiration:Predicting the shift towards personalized, immersive e-commerce experiences eight years ago.The spark to merge artisan quality with mass-market affordability.Technology & Innovation:Integrating 3D visualization, AR, and automated back-office processes.Creating a scalable platform that serves small businesses to global brands.Strategic Partnerships & Market Expansion:Building dual pricing models for small and large merchants.Leveraging global partnerships to drive adoption in various markets.Takeaways:Visual commerce is set to become the new standard in online retail.Embracing emerging technologies can redefine customer engagement.Strategic innovation and flexible pricing models drive sustainable growth.Our Sponsors:* Check out Avocado Green Mattress: https://www.avocadogreenmattress.com* Check out Indeed: https://indeed.com/FOUNDERSSTORY* Check out Kinsta: https://kinsta.com* Check out Northwest Registered Agent and use my code FOUNDERS for a great deal: https://northwestregisteredagent.com* Check out Plus500: https://plus500.com* Check out Rosetta Stone and use my code TODAY for a great deal: https://www.rosettastone.comAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy
Chapter 1: How does Angelo Coletta envision the future of e-commerce?
Thanks for inviting me here. And what we have done is, you know, maybe eight years ago, my vision was that e-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 mass in 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.
So 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 and automate things. process in a back office and digitalize all their channel from the production to the final customers. And so we have started the kicking.
Chapter 2: What technologies are revolutionizing the e-commerce industry?
and we have developed this platform that enables Merchant to offer a very complex experience in the visual commerce area that I think it would be the next step of growing of e-commerce. I can imagine any 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. How 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. So 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 space.
Chapter 3: How is Zakeke helping businesses with visual commerce?
in the sports where where the habits of offer a customized product was something uh confirmed the only thing is that the process generally was manually or semi-manually so we have started helping this brand scaling 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 mid-wide, some other segment like luxury, accessories, apparel, and something like that, they start thinking that the future is It would be 3D and not photos. 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. And 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 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, customized to big brands like Armani, Valentino, Uber Eats, Ubisoft. They use the platform to provide a complex experience in any of their channels.
Chapter 4: What are the strategic challenges faced by Zakeke?
So online, the B2B channel, in the physical store too.
I 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, for the small guys to the big guys, with a pricing model that works for all of them. So 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 insider stores 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 other needs, they need something account-based, they need some special things like cloud-dedicated, some specific API for integrating ERP and other things, PLM, PIN inside the company.
And so, first of all, we have created these two different line of products. And second thing is in terms of marketing, we have 80% of our customer that comes because they find us in a different way, in a different channel. And then for the big customers, we have a network of partners all around the world. So there is a double strategy for small and medium.
Generally, self-provisioning and the marketing is based on digital activity. On the other side, network partners or 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?
Is there a certain industry, a type of company that you found is really, really taking on this new technology?
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Chapter 5: Which industries are leading in adopting 3D and AR technologies?
So what we have seen that there is luxury furniture that are looking for improving their experience lines in terms of 3D interaction, AR, and try-on. 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 ones to the big guys. So we have customers, very important customers in these different fields. So, for example, we have in the brand, we have Hermani, Valentino, Colmar. We have customers worldwide, Testoni, Vodafone. Sandro Perez and many other brands like that.
And on the other side, we have Best Buy, Uber Eats, Ubisoft, U.S. Army, and many others. And a lot of gadgets in play. HP, we have a big 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 customers 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. I 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, right?
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, AI, trial configuration, maybe in the future hologram or maybe other piece of this layer, AI agent, something like that. This will be the next interface, right? 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. Like, for example, a trial, okay, or maybe AR when you are buying a sofa, for example. You can see directly 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 words 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 a piece of the interface. Everyone will not do that. It will be like an old website.
As we can see now, there are e-commerce websites over there, 90. Yeah, with one product, one photo, and you have to pray to understand who is going to deliver you.
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Chapter 6: How will e-commerce evolve in the next 5 to 10 years?
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 you work 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 trees. the eras of this war, yeah, 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. Maybe with that be on the Time magazine or maybe with... They are not something that 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.
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