Gelato: Sustainable production on demand : Facilitating global trade through local production
Gelato was launched in 2012, and it has since created the world's largest network for local production and distribution of customized products. Through Gelato's marketplace platform, e-commerce sellers and creators can drive print-on-demand business models by working with printing suppliers to customize products with their own designs to sell them on a per-order basis under their own brand.
With the latest funding round of $240 million in August 2021, Gelato is driven to grow as a platform for the creator economy, self-signups, and application programming interfaces (APIs). Investors want to focus on the platform, the geographical expansion, and new products.
Gelato has kept adding more products to its portfolio: T-shirts, hoodies, sportswear, baby clothing, phone cases, posters, canvas, wallpaper, mugs, calendars, and cards, among others. Through its network of 130 production partners in 32 countries, Gelato offers creators and e-commerce sellers a reach of 5 billion consumers worldwide within 72 hours. One of the secrets to its success is remaining extremely light on fixed assets since Gelato owns no printers or production sites. However, technology evolves fast, and print speed and quality improve in the print industry every year. Thus, by not owning assets, Gelato must partner with the most effective production technologies. For that, Gelato needs to keep developing innovative software to interact with the different equipment and provide the optimal inputs for production. Another key part of Gelato?s API is its routing algorithm, which allocates production to the different production partners.
Gelato facilitates global trade through local production by helping the world move from centralized mass production to local on-demand production.
Therefore, producing locally and on demand reduces transportation distances and waste from overproduction, which, in turn, lowers carbon emissions. With such a value proposition, Gelato can drive sustainability and guarantee a better experience and delivery promise for the end customer. Furthermore, Gelato strives to foster a global collaborative community of creators for the growing creator economy. Many small (and some bigger) e-commerce businesses, referred to as "self-signups", represent significant business scalability for Gelato, which offers them free sign-ups, a broad range of integrations with different applications, access to thousands of products assorted through 100+ production centers around the globe, and many other services for order management, payment, and billing (dashboards, tracking, pre-paid wallets, local currencies, taxes, and VAT handling).
Gelato faces different opportunities to scale the business with new products (branded packaging, home decoration, jewelry), new technologies (3D printing), new geographies, and new services.
With the latest funding round of $240 million in August 2021, Gelato is driven to grow as a platform for the creator economy, self-signups, and application programming interfaces (APIs). Investors want to focus on the platform, the geographical expansion, and new products.
Gelato has kept adding more products to its portfolio: T-shirts, hoodies, sportswear, baby clothing, phone cases, posters, canvas, wallpaper, mugs, calendars, and cards, among others. Through its network of 130 production partners in 32 countries, Gelato offers creators and e-commerce sellers a reach of 5 billion consumers worldwide within 72 hours. One of the secrets to its success is remaining extremely light on fixed assets since Gelato owns no printers or production sites. However, technology evolves fast, and print speed and quality improve in the print industry every year. Thus, by not owning assets, Gelato must partner with the most effective production technologies. For that, Gelato needs to keep developing innovative software to interact with the different equipment and provide the optimal inputs for production. Another key part of Gelato?s API is its routing algorithm, which allocates production to the different production partners.
Gelato facilitates global trade through local production by helping the world move from centralized mass production to local on-demand production.
Therefore, producing locally and on demand reduces transportation distances and waste from overproduction, which, in turn, lowers carbon emissions. With such a value proposition, Gelato can drive sustainability and guarantee a better experience and delivery promise for the end customer. Furthermore, Gelato strives to foster a global collaborative community of creators for the growing creator economy. Many small (and some bigger) e-commerce businesses, referred to as "self-signups", represent significant business scalability for Gelato, which offers them free sign-ups, a broad range of integrations with different applications, access to thousands of products assorted through 100+ production centers around the globe, and many other services for order management, payment, and billing (dashboards, tracking, pre-paid wallets, local currencies, taxes, and VAT handling).
Gelato faces different opportunities to scale the business with new products (branded packaging, home decoration, jewelry), new technologies (3D printing), new geographies, and new services.
Collection: IESE (España)
Ref: OIT-20-E
Format: PDF
Number of pages: 15
Publication Date: Mar 11, 2024
Language: English, Spanish
Description
Gelato was launched in 2012, and it has since created the world's largest network for local production and distribution of customized products. Through Gelato's marketplace platform, e-commerce sellers and creators can drive print-on-demand business models by working with printing suppliers to customize products with their own designs to sell them on a per-order basis under their own brand.
With the latest funding round of $240 million in August 2021, Gelato is driven to grow as a platform for the creator economy, self-signups, and application programming interfaces (APIs). Investors want to focus on the platform, the geographical expansion, and new products.
Gelato has kept adding more products to its portfolio: T-shirts, hoodies, sportswear, baby clothing, phone cases, posters, canvas, wallpaper, mugs, calendars, and cards, among others. Through its network of 130 production partners in 32 countries, Gelato offers creators and e-commerce sellers a reach of 5 billion consumers worldwide within 72 hours. One of the secrets to its success is remaining extremely light on fixed assets since Gelato owns no printers or production sites. However, technology evolves fast, and print speed and quality improve in the print industry every year. Thus, by not owning assets, Gelato must partner with the most effective production technologies. For that, Gelato needs to keep developing innovative software to interact with the different equipment and provide the optimal inputs for production. Another key part of Gelato?s API is its routing algorithm, which allocates production to the different production partners.
Gelato facilitates global trade through local production by helping the world move from centralized mass production to local on-demand production.
Therefore, producing locally and on demand reduces transportation distances and waste from overproduction, which, in turn, lowers carbon emissions. With such a value proposition, Gelato can drive sustainability and guarantee a better experience and delivery promise for the end customer. Furthermore, Gelato strives to foster a global collaborative community of creators for the growing creator economy. Many small (and some bigger) e-commerce businesses, referred to as "self-signups", represent significant business scalability for Gelato, which offers them free sign-ups, a broad range of integrations with different applications, access to thousands of products assorted through 100+ production centers around the globe, and many other services for order management, payment, and billing (dashboards, tracking, pre-paid wallets, local currencies, taxes, and VAT handling).
Gelato faces different opportunities to scale the business with new products (branded packaging, home decoration, jewelry), new technologies (3D printing), new geographies, and new services.
Read more
With the latest funding round of $240 million in August 2021, Gelato is driven to grow as a platform for the creator economy, self-signups, and application programming interfaces (APIs). Investors want to focus on the platform, the geographical expansion, and new products.
Gelato has kept adding more products to its portfolio: T-shirts, hoodies, sportswear, baby clothing, phone cases, posters, canvas, wallpaper, mugs, calendars, and cards, among others. Through its network of 130 production partners in 32 countries, Gelato offers creators and e-commerce sellers a reach of 5 billion consumers worldwide within 72 hours. One of the secrets to its success is remaining extremely light on fixed assets since Gelato owns no printers or production sites. However, technology evolves fast, and print speed and quality improve in the print industry every year. Thus, by not owning assets, Gelato must partner with the most effective production technologies. For that, Gelato needs to keep developing innovative software to interact with the different equipment and provide the optimal inputs for production. Another key part of Gelato?s API is its routing algorithm, which allocates production to the different production partners.
Gelato facilitates global trade through local production by helping the world move from centralized mass production to local on-demand production.
Therefore, producing locally and on demand reduces transportation distances and waste from overproduction, which, in turn, lowers carbon emissions. With such a value proposition, Gelato can drive sustainability and guarantee a better experience and delivery promise for the end customer. Furthermore, Gelato strives to foster a global collaborative community of creators for the growing creator economy. Many small (and some bigger) e-commerce businesses, referred to as "self-signups", represent significant business scalability for Gelato, which offers them free sign-ups, a broad range of integrations with different applications, access to thousands of products assorted through 100+ production centers around the globe, and many other services for order management, payment, and billing (dashboards, tracking, pre-paid wallets, local currencies, taxes, and VAT handling).
Gelato faces different opportunities to scale the business with new products (branded packaging, home decoration, jewelry), new technologies (3D printing), new geographies, and new services.
Year: 2023
Geographic Setting: Norway
Industry Setting: Services and manintenance
Learning Objective
The case can be used in MBA and EMBA programs but also to other executive programs in Operations Strategy, Supply Chain Management, Business Model Innovation, Sustainability or Digital Platforms courses.
The case serves to analyze decentralized vs. centralized production and supply chain models with impacts on sustainability, flexibility, resilience and coordination.
The value proposition of creating value without fixed assets (asset less business model) can also be addressed. From a business model based on software, knowledge and data accumulated from customers, on-demand production services with production partners. It will be possible to evaluate the creation of value along this chain and the control and dominant position of each element. Related to the supply chain, the case can address the production partner selection model, implementation through the routing algorithm.
The case will also allow to discuss the Creator Economy from the point of view of growth, volume, communities, monetization and innovation.
From a more concrete point of view, the case allows to analyze the ROI in case Gelato invests in Branded Packaging by reviewing the economic, branding and visibility elements.
Additionally, the case can address the advantages for Gelato of collaborating with Optimalprint to quickly test the market before launching a new product.
Finally the case can be opened for discussion on how to select opportunities for growth (product, geography, additional services) and which operating model will be best suited to scale the business.
The case serves to analyze decentralized vs. centralized production and supply chain models with impacts on sustainability, flexibility, resilience and coordination.
The value proposition of creating value without fixed assets (asset less business model) can also be addressed. From a business model based on software, knowledge and data accumulated from customers, on-demand production services with production partners. It will be possible to evaluate the creation of value along this chain and the control and dominant position of each element. Related to the supply chain, the case can address the production partner selection model, implementation through the routing algorithm.
The case will also allow to discuss the Creator Economy from the point of view of growth, volume, communities, monetization and innovation.
From a more concrete point of view, the case allows to analyze the ROI in case Gelato invests in Branded Packaging by reviewing the economic, branding and visibility elements.
Additionally, the case can address the advantages for Gelato of collaborating with Optimalprint to quickly test the market before launching a new product.
Finally the case can be opened for discussion on how to select opportunities for growth (product, geography, additional services) and which operating model will be best suited to scale the business.
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