Customization And Personalization Using 2D, 3D And AR — Angelo Coletta | Why Interactive Shopping Boosts Conversions, How AI Improves Product Customization, What Visual Commerce Means For Brands, What Ecommerce Brands Should Implement First (#492)

In this episode, we dive into how interactive visual experiences drive online sales and lower backend costs.

Angelo Coletta, founder and CEO of Zakeke, shares how his plug-and-play platform helps brands stand out with 3D product customization, virtual try-ons, and brand-safe AI automation.

He also reveals strategies for launching quickly without complex development cycles.


Topics discussed in this episode:  

• How visual interaction layers improve customer loyalty.
• What customization tools do to lower backend operational costs.
• How automated club uniform ordering eliminates manual mistakes.
• What 3D visualization adds to enterprise sofa configuration.
• Why AI-driven image generation boosts catalog visual variety.
• How computer vision algorithms prevent costly manufacturing errors.
• Why brand safety guardrails prevent AI prompt hallucinations.
• What 3D catalogs do to reduce global sampling costs.
• How prompt-driven onboarding speeds up setup processes.
• Why flexible public APIs simplify complex stack integrations.

Links & Resources

Website: https://www.zakeke.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/zakeke/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/zakeke.official/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/zakekeofficial/
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCZPd_oA-Hjq6CE4G1vSUM1Q

Get access to more free resources by visiting the show notes at https://tinyurl.com/3jxf4djh

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Transcript

00:00:00:05 - 00:00:21:16
Unknown
These processes and impact of a company of 80 millions of business. So generally, mistakes cost 2% of your business to percent of 80 million is a lot of money. So the impact is very strong. When we're talking about AI, how is that changing the system?

00:00:21:18 - 00:00:40:15
Unknown
Hello, welcome to another episode of the E-commerce Coffee Break podcast. Would you agree that most online stores look the same? A few photos, a short description, maybe a video and a buy button? But shoppers today expect more. They want to interact with products, change them, personalize them, see them in 3D and understand how they will look in their own world before they buy.

00:00:40:19 - 00:01:00:11
Unknown
For brands, this used to mean big budgets, a lot of tech and long development cycles. But online shopping is shifting from flat product pages to experiences that feel interactive, personal and almost physical. So the question is simple what actually drives sales? This is what we will unpack in today's episode, and to help me with that, I'm joined by Angelo Coletta.

00:01:00:11 - 00:01:24:14
Unknown
He is the founder and CEO of Zakeke.com Since 2017, Angelo has helped thousands of brands bring products to life through customization, 3D, AI and more. His mission is to make advanced visual e-commerce accessible for every brand. Angelo, welcome to the show. Thanks for inviting me, Angelo. Let's get into it. Many online stores look and feel the same. Why do so many stores still struggle to stand out today?

00:01:24:16 - 00:01:50:05
Unknown
E-commerce has a different stage of developing, as now is the time that you know the brand, that they find their place inside the commerce universe and to fight to have an identity. And so my opinion is that one of the most important layer that you need on top of your e-commerce is to find a way to interact with your customers.

00:01:50:05 - 00:02:22:06
Unknown
It could happen in a different way. It could be to 2D or 3D customization. In this case, your company has been able to offer this kind of, you know, opportunity in their back office. If you an offer customization, you are able to be to be the job in your back office operation. On the other side, it could be a trial experience, or maybe it could be, you know, I want to see my product in different contexts, or maybe I want to see a video with my product, you know?

00:02:22:08 - 00:03:10:12
Unknown
Anyway, I want to see more about my products and maybe I can I would like to guide what I want to see. So this different layer that is has customization layer visualization layer triumphs layer AI layer because of this part are done by AI systems is what I think will change dramatically the experience of customers not only in the commerce space, but in any channel of a company, because the same experience can be provided inside a beta B channel, inside the physical stores, inside many different websites or partners that are working with your brand.

00:03:10:12 - 00:03:51:19
Unknown
So the idea is, let's offer to your customers a new layer of experience. And what we have seen from our experience when more than 1000 brands that are using our platform, is that the law to improve the average of basket, improve the time they spend on the on the commerce side improve, and this is only the front end, then there is a lot of advantage in the back end too, because our platform help companies to cut operational cost and so on the front end side, they provide a better experience.

00:03:51:19 - 00:04:14:08
Unknown
On the back end, they can cut a lot of costs because we have a group of agents that I helped us help them to make a lot of jobs and they provide them, you know, the final output they they need for their operation. So in general, they can cut the cost of the process between 30 and 70%. It depends on what kind of industry they are involved in.

00:04:14:10 - 00:04:37:20
Unknown
Now, obviously, most motions know that a poor product experience will hurt their sales, but still they are having a very plain sight. And you already gave a couple of examples on what you actually can do to improve the customer experience. I want to dive a little bit deeper into this. Can you give a bit of an overview, what you do and what kinds of different tools you use to just make the user experience more lively?

00:04:38:00 - 00:05:01:08
Unknown
Yeah, sure. We call us a weasel commerce layer. So any any kind of technology that you can use in front end to improve the interaction with the product is provided by our platform. What is interesting that we are a plug and play for any commerce platform. We have API for everything. So we are really a plug and play solution.

00:05:01:08 - 00:05:23:05
Unknown
So many times you think that you need a lot of time and a lot of effort to provide all these things together, but in the reality you can do in one week, in one day, sometimes in one hour, if your company is not so complicated. So you don't need to, you know, set up many rules inside our platform.

00:05:23:08 - 00:05:46:08
Unknown
But just to give you an example of different, you know, usage of the platform, because it depends from the industry. For example, if if you are in the uniform, for example, world, generally you have a group of people with soccer uniform, for example, you have a lot of small clubs that they buy the the t shirt for the the young guy in the club.

00:05:46:10 - 00:06:15:05
Unknown
So they have to choose a basic t shirt with some colors. Then they have they add the patch and the logo of their sponsors. Then they have to put the name and numbers on all this t shirt for maybe 100 guys. Yeah. So and generally actually the process is someone start talking with the club. The club choose on a catalog.

00:06:15:10 - 00:06:38:12
Unknown
It is then send to the company the logos, the the company has a team inside that prepare something. I show you in general in a PDF an example of where the logo are. Then you say okay, no, no, the logo is too big, too small. Put this on the left. On the right. There is a lot of job like this.

00:06:38:12 - 00:07:08:02
Unknown
Then provide you maybe an Excel if you are an AP guy, or maybe a list of naming numbers of 200 people, and you have to rewrite somewhere in your back office. And this is the typical process which runs on this process. In super simple things, you have a link that you send to the club. They can make everything inside the product page.

00:07:08:02 - 00:07:44:21
Unknown
They can put the logo, they move it, they do whatever. After that, they can see not only in a 2D version, but in 3D. They can see a preview in 3D. Maybe they can create a small video to show to all the guys. Hey, do you like this configuration for example, and everything just with one click. After that they can upload an Excel file and directly 200, 2000 or, you know, to millions of t shirts are done with the right name and numbers.

00:07:44:21 - 00:08:13:05
Unknown
And what is the most important things the company received directly? All the files, the print ready files for his equipment, so they don't need to do anything else. And there is another important things in this case, because this is the customer that is doing everything. If if it makes any mistakes, it is mistake is not mistakes. Or you know, you give me one name and write another one, okay?

00:08:13:09 - 00:08:39:01
Unknown
You write the name, you put the name inside. You have the side where the logo have to be placed. Just an example. But imagine this process for generally a medium company as between 400 and 600 different clubs. And imagine how this process is time consuming for this company is one of the most important parts of the cost of operation.

00:08:39:03 - 00:09:16:14
Unknown
We can cut this of 80% and we can streamline the process. You know, you can reduce to zero the mistake inside the process. So there is an enormous advantage for the company using a platform like S. Imagine a different total, different companies like, you know, a sofa company, you can create your composable sofa. You can provide this interface on your app, on your website, on your B2B channel, inside your physical stores, for the sales guys that you have inside.

00:09:16:16 - 00:09:39:15
Unknown
And for example, you can import all the rules that you have generally in your Cpq inside, you can import directly these rules inside the cake. So without any effort you can find inside the cake all the rules that you have spend a lot of times to create inside your cpq you can manage of the composable things, and after that you can provide them a 3D vision.

00:09:39:16 - 00:10:13:16
Unknown
They can provide them. You know how to show your sofa inside your room. I can provide you the idea of your sofa inside the 3D architect solution, just to have an idea if it works or not in terms of colors and in this case two, you are cutting a lot of costs. You are providing a better experience and at the end of the game, when everything is ready, you have another files ready to be pushed in your ERP system, ready for production.

00:10:13:17 - 00:10:34:00
Unknown
Okay, because everything is connected with the API. I find very interesting that this is a very complex process that you can really streamline there. And what I liked is that you said it's not only online, you can use this system also in your store. So it's basically on every channel that you have with your customer, every touchpoint. You can use this.

00:10:34:00 - 00:10:58:02
Unknown
Now I want to find out a little bit about when we're talking about AI, because AI is everywhere right now. How does that play in there? How is that changing the system? AI is changing a lot of things for sure. For example, now is helping brands to offer a really bad experience of the contextual ads of this product.

00:10:58:03 - 00:11:25:08
Unknown
Ads in terms of, you know, for example, you have a photo of your catalog with the I know you can create immediately another six seven still live photos, but maybe you can create 100 contextual photo with your sofa in a living room of a super design. House in Manhattan, or maybe in a old style house in the countryside in Tuscany.

00:11:25:08 - 00:11:50:13
Unknown
And so you can give immediately to your customer the idea how it works or not. For example, you're so far inside the idea that you have in your mind, and you can provide a trial experience now without having a 3D model, for example, for whatever it was flat just till one hours and one year ago, like, you know, t shirt collar.

00:11:50:17 - 00:12:23:03
Unknown
Now you can try whatever you want and see on your face on a model or whatever. And so this is another interesting experience that the AI provide. But in my vision there is a, you know, a problem that you have to manage inside enterprise company. In the meanwhile, AI is a basic process is like a probability system. So I sometimes evolution, sometimes I lose consistency of the brands.

00:12:23:05 - 00:12:51:14
Unknown
Sometimes the result of the same problems is not always the same. So if you want to provide a sentence, there are some, you know, if you say I only with prompt you can open some door that can be dangerous on the cybersecurity side. So what we have done, we have created a lot of agent inside the application based on well-tested workflow.

00:12:51:19 - 00:13:23:16
Unknown
And this workflow, there is not only the process to have a result, but there is a lot of process to control the results. And the control is not done only from I. Just to give you an example, if I create a video of a shoes of Adidas now, I want to be sure that any frame the logo Adidas had to be the right one, exactly the right one, because sometimes I can make some creativity.

00:13:23:18 - 00:14:08:04
Unknown
Okay. And we use, for example, in this process and algorithm of computer vision to check frame by frame. If the logo is okay. If not, the process will start again. And there is a lot of things like that you can put inside the guidelines of your brand in a very strong way, at the level of brand, at the level of product to help us to don't evolution of if you have a loose nature, we start the process because for example, you know added as just to tell you why brain maybe the policy I don't want to be never be linked to war for example.

00:14:08:06 - 00:14:51:19
Unknown
And maybe you you give a general context and for example, oh tell me this shoes inside the Kyiv and maybe I because here now is in a different situation. You can put maybe a weapon somewhere. No. And you have to be sure that it never be happened because it's not the idea of your brand. So, so the idea is that we want to we provide inside the platform and a strong AI layer, a strong group of AI agent that works with compliance, with accuracy, with consistency and with cyber security check.

00:14:51:21 - 00:15:17:20
Unknown
And I think is the only way to adopt AI in enterprise process, because you can imagine that your process is like a potential, potentially a variable process. A lot of brand managers have that in mind when they use AI, and I think it's really putting it on the spot. AI had a unit, and you want to keep the control over your brand and what goes out in the world.

00:15:17:21 - 00:15:50:17
Unknown
Now for a brand that has a smaller team, where should they start with customization? With 3D AI, what's the normal process everyone comes inside the platform from is personal angle because, for example, if you want to start with customization, you need your production by coffees. Okay, I'm a shoe producer and I can produce customized shoes. If I can do this in my back office now I have a problem.

00:15:50:17 - 00:16:17:15
Unknown
How can provide to my customers the the front end to do this job and how I can receive in my production life the order ready files in this case okay. And so generally a company have different needs someone ever needs of customization. And they start from this angle and then start exploring the possibility to offer other pieces of experience.

00:16:17:17 - 00:16:46:21
Unknown
Someone else may be the one who lives in a better way. Just for example, if you visit now the most part of many brands, as you told in the introduction, you see Bottega Veneta back two lines of description. You say, oh, I have to pay €5,000 for a bag without a description. In the reality, for example, now we provide, for example, you.

00:16:47:02 - 00:17:13:02
Unknown
If you provide this photo inside the cake, we can create a context all description of this photo following the brands. Following the description, the customers inside all the social media and to create a very nice abstract to be put inside the product page. Maybe they will have only two photos because the photo cost you can provide ten maybe.

00:17:13:02 - 00:17:36:14
Unknown
Now the the the is a statistic photo. Now you can see the bag on your end with the bag in a different context, etc. so in this case they are only improving the experience of the front end. So anyone start from one point. What is interesting, from my point of view of our platform, that we are all in one solution platform.

00:17:36:14 - 00:18:02:12
Unknown
So you can start from an angle using maybe 10% of the power of the of the platform, and then you can expand following your business development. So you can start using only this online and say okay, but all have 100 stores. Our implementing it more. Okay. Now I started I create a new line that is customizable. Okay, I can use it.

00:18:02:14 - 00:18:37:22
Unknown
What is interesting that you don't need to create a complex stack, because another problem in this job that's you need to work inside all you want. Start because for example, if you import a 3D model from one place to another, just the light visualization can change your perception of the product. So you you can have maybe a bag that you see one way in your website in a different way, in your physical store, in different way, your ads.

00:18:38:02 - 00:19:02:12
Unknown
I want to hear a little bit of the industries, the perfect customer you have. Can you share some customer stories that you have worked with and would kind of impact which kind of results there? So for example, in our favorite gift in the gifting and merchandizing sector, okay, they have thousands of thousands of different products customized by months okay.

00:19:02:13 - 00:19:37:08
Unknown
So the workflow is massive. So they import our database of product directly inside the game via JSON files in a super simple way with all the configuration rules. That means to say maybe thousands and thousands hours of job. Then you can use our AI system just to tell to the software. Okay, now you can configure all the products inside the platform following the rules, and you save other towns and of hours just with a prompt.

00:19:37:11 - 00:20:10:22
Unknown
And after that they have different outputs. So for example, they may gain raving. They may get a lot of different things. We can we provide them directly the output in the right files for any kind of equipment. And we make a control of the output files with a computer vision algorithm, because sometimes super small mismatching or 0.1cm can make some print.

00:20:11:02 - 00:20:38:23
Unknown
Not exactly well as the customers want. And so we add them to cut costs. So what the interesting that these processes and impact of a company of 80 millions of business or generally mistakes cost 2% of your business. So 2% of 80 million is a lot of money. So the impact is very strong. And then add important things that can make the job in the pre-sales.

00:20:38:23 - 00:21:14:00
Unknown
For example in this kind of industry, merchandizing, gifting, etc. there is a big pre-sales team for the same motivation of uniform but with more scale because in this case customers are thousands and thousands. Okay. And they can cap this cost between 15 and 80%. Or for example, different companies where you need catalogs. Or maybe that's a company. They are using us in the proofing process to maybe you you have to prepare your showroom.

00:21:14:02 - 00:21:47:19
Unknown
You have your collection, new collection. But in the showroom you have only 30 pieces of the collection that you can show. Because everything is in Ari. You have design. You have finished to design things generally just two weeks before. So you, you, you are ready to show only a small pieces of that. In this case, for example, with our platform you can show all the collection in a 3D way and you can save a lot of cost on sampling.

00:21:47:20 - 00:22:21:12
Unknown
Two so you have two, two different vendors on one side. You can provide them more. You idea of your collection, on the other side, you are saving a lot of cost of sampling and the same things. If you have a global retail network, you can save sampling, providing to your sales people a 3D catalog and not a piece of symbols everywhere in the world.

00:22:21:14 - 00:22:51:13
Unknown
But you know from this an incredible numbers of application in some other brands. We use us, as I told you, I'm proofing. For example, they design the product maybe sometimes by end, but many times in a 2D application using the scratch, we provide immediately a 3D where they can change internally, colors things they so they can immediately go in one way or another.

00:22:51:15 - 00:23:19:18
Unknown
In general, they they create the product physically for doing this job in many industry. So they reduce enormously the time between the idea, the perception of the idea, and which is the the route they want to choose to move forward. And on the other side, the save cost of production of sample for proofing. So there is an enormous number of use case.

00:23:19:20 - 00:23:36:18
Unknown
Yeah, I can see this. I mean, there's a lot of savings in there. I mean, there are massive what you said walk me through. How long does it take for a new brand to onboard? What steps are involved? How can they get up and running? It depends from the big is the company because the setup is super simple.

00:23:36:19 - 00:23:56:15
Unknown
Because generally if you are a Shopify store, so you have a blue commerce or cloud commerce. So I am is a only plugin. So in one second you download the flag in and you are can your studies connected. After that you have to choose which are the product that you are, insert in the cake and just clicking on it.

00:23:56:15 - 00:24:29:18
Unknown
Or maybe prompt that I want this category a product and after that depends what you want to do. If the configuration. For example, if you sell t shirt hats, typical merchandizing, you can prompt directly, please make me a standard configuration of the print area of this product. And in five second everything is ready. It's not important if you have ten products or 1000, or maybe then you can if you want, you can go one by one to mix and check it.

00:24:29:18 - 00:24:55:22
Unknown
But if you are in a general business, you don't need to check anything and then you have to say publish. So for example, this process can take 1 hour or 2 hours and you are ready to sell. There are some other companies, for example, that they need to import the JSON files. Many times they spend time to create the JSON inside, not because we need time inside the plateau.

00:24:56:03 - 00:25:33:05
Unknown
Maybe they have some complex rules for each product, so that they need a bit of time to manage it, to be sure that everything is fixed. But in general, the real time inside the platform can be from 15 minutes till one two weeks, not more the time in the middle, while many times internal time for the companies that they need to access to make assessment of some rules or some information, they don't know exactly where they are.

00:25:33:06 - 00:25:59:11
Unknown
So they they have to put in a basket. All the information they have to transfer to the game is, is, you know, is totally is. We have an MSC server too. So if you have for example, your site MCP server, you can use cloud as an interface to do whatever you want. So there is an incredible simple way to do things.

00:25:59:12 - 00:26:25:06
Unknown
And we are improving this level because the idea is that we want to transform in the next 2 or 3 months, all the functionality in something that you can access by prompt. So the idea is that the first interface for everything, for the most complex things that you can do inside a platform, can start from a problem. Okay, that sounds very interesting.

00:26:25:07 - 00:27:11:18
Unknown
Yeah, we will use the the rest of the interface, just only if you want to go deeper and deeper to see exactly something. But the idea is that we want to provide a learning code as small as possible, because our platform was then following the criteria of Mac Alliance and all that is microservices, at least AI first, etc. with a small group of companies worldwide that follow these rules in a super strong way, allow us to create a strong MCP server on top because everything is provided by public API, so there's not any layer that is not accessible by API on specific microservices.

00:27:11:20 - 00:27:33:01
Unknown
So this is architecture is more flexible for this next step. That's that's awesome. I mean this is really next level going away from a sort of structured static onboarding to something that's completely prompt driven. I want to hear from you about your pricing structure. Obviously you want to make money as well. How do you charge for your services?

00:27:33:03 - 00:28:06:10
Unknown
We have two different offer. One is for small companies. That is a typical subscription with small amount of money. They start from €69 by monster to 100, maybe close to €300, plus a percentage of what they sell. This is a self provisioning plan. You can have 70% of the functionality of the platform. And then there is an enterprise offer for medium and big companies.

00:28:06:15 - 00:28:35:03
Unknown
In this case you have the full access to the platform. There is a count based for you that are cloud. That is a specific cloud just for this customer. So you have more guarantee on platform, any kind of certification, etc. and in this case you pay a fixed amount by year. It depends from many products. How many services inside the platform you need.

00:28:35:04 - 00:29:00:05
Unknown
You know, it's like a 1 to 1 offer based on a scheme of fixed cost. Because medium is a big company, they prefer to work with budget, and so they need to have a clear view of what they are going to spend and and year again before our coffee break comes from end to day. Is there anything you want to share with our listeners that we haven't covered yet?

00:29:00:09 - 00:29:38:20
Unknown
Many times there's more bias inside the management team. Or maybe sometimes you're the director about how complex could be changing the experience side, every commerce in their business. And so my my suggestion is let's discover that there are some platform like cars that can provide you a very big step to improve your business with the cost. That is a super small part of the new revenue that you can provide from this big change.

00:29:38:20 - 00:30:13:01
Unknown
And another important things. You can think this change now, and if you want, you can start doing a new way in your business and one week not into years. So it's interesting that we are really a plug and play solution for changing the e-commerce life. So my suggestion is let's think about more about how you can change things inside your company without a bias, that it could be too costly.

00:30:13:01 - 00:30:35:07
Unknown
Or you know, you need to much time of your team inside the company. Maybe too much time and complexity and manage the process because it's not true. Yeah, I think that's that's that's a good call. Try it out. Get convinced that it's not as complicated as it was in the past. And that's actually changing not only your company but also your revenue.

00:30:35:08 - 00:31:07:04
Unknown
Where can people go and find out more about you guys? Oh for sure they can visit our website. So psychic com or maybe they can contact us to have a demo. We provide a demo to anyone need it. And I think that if you are a minimum big company, the best thing is to ask for a demo so you can understand immediately the how deep the platform is and how can solve maybe a complex problem inside your company.

00:31:07:05 - 00:31:30:08
Unknown
If you are a small guys or let's sign in, let's try. If you need them, you can ask for a demo. In any case, maybe you can joke with the platform and start doing things and see how it works. By the way, my team is always there to answer to anyone, and it's a pleasure for us to interact with anyone that want to try our platform.

00:31:30:09 - 00:31:43:05
Unknown
Perfect. I will put the links in the show notes as always. Then you just one click away and a lot of people will reach out to you and your team and to try the platform by themselves. Thanks so much, Angelo for your time today. Thanks a lot. Plus, thanks to your audience.