What if to save and sustain the planet, it meant unleashing creativity with personalized, on-demand fashion? It may sound too good to be true, but Ronen Samuel, the CEO of Kornit Digital, explains why this model is both immensely profitable for business and utterly essential for the world.
At Kornit, Ronan is combining the concepts of personalization and customization with a mission of sustainability and efficiency. The outcome is a business model that both saves its bottom line and saves the planet in the process. So how exactly is Kornit leveraging these ideas to transform the fashion industry? And in what ways is the company bridging the physical and virtual worlds to create what’s never before been created? Find out on this episode of Business X factors.
Main takeaways:
- Customization is Key: Custom or luxury experiences used to be available only to the upper echelons of spenders, but ecommerce has made custom experiences more accessible, which is something that today’s consumers require. Research by Accenture has indicated 91% of customers prefer to work with a brand that offers them recommendations and remembers their preferences. Buyers want to feel like they have bought something special, so this should be your priority.
- The Need For Speed: A survey by BCG found that overlong development times were the most-cited obstacle to generating returns on innovation and product development. On the flip side, the survey found that fast innovators were more likely to be strong innovators and that the benefits of speed are faster innovation, lower development costs, larger market share, and greater forecasting accuracy.
- Where’s My Avatar?: Forward-thinking brands are starting to push digital avatars into another orbit. Einstein Marketing believes that a customer avatar – a detailed profile of your ideal customer – should be a fundamental element of a marketing strategy. It will help product development, content marketing, help you to target the ideal customer, and improve user experience.
Key quotes:
“When you look at the car industry, about brands, the brands totally changing in the last five years or 10 years. We’re talking about Tesla, but you’re also talking about Uber. So, Uber became a major, major brand in the transportation industry. This is where I see Kornit. I see Kornit becoming the number one brand in fashion tech by really connecting the virtual world to the physical world, becoming kind of the Uber model.”
“There’s a lot of innovation in Israel. And then we started to have a lot of successes in different parts of the tech industry. It could have been pharmaceutical. It could have been automotive. In telecommunication, and definitely printing. Really the digital printing base is in Israel. I would say the major influence on innovations coming from actually the military… You’re very young to start managing people, commanding people, being exposed to technology, very sophisticated technology, being exposed to pressure, creates some kind of unique capabilities.”
“The entire apparel textiles fashion market is very, very conservative. It actually didn’t change for the last 100 years. When we look at this market, the market from the design of a product to product on the shelf is 18 months. It doesn’t fit for today’s consumer needs and I understood that Kornit can play a much bigger role in changing the industry, to become much more sustainable, on-demand and enabling the creativity that both the consumer and the designers need.”
“The consumer of today and the consumer three and a half years ago are totally different. And we saw the changes. Their generation would like to be unique. Each one of them, they don’t want to have the same product. They would like to express themselves. They have specific needs and would like to customize products, or they would like to get the products immediately. Immediate gratification is super, super important.”
“The ecommerce of tomorrow will enable you [to create) endless products. It’s a virtual ecommerce. You don’t need to have a physical product behind it. You can have endless design, endless creativity that you would like to choose. You choose a product, and only after you choose, then the product is being produced and being shipped to you. And this is the vision that we saw in those days. And we build the strategy of Kornit, 4.0 and KornitX going to the market and changing being the entire supply chain of this industry and making it greener, but more relevant to the consumer.”
“The textile market, the fashion market is the second most polluting industry in the world… I understood that there is a potential here to really change and create an impact on the globe. Just to give you an example of the amount of the negative impact of the world, 30% of everything that is being produced today is actually never being sold. It’s a waste. And if you calculate the impact of this waste, to create the 30% you’re using 28 trillion liters of water… The 28 trillion liters of water is like the entire population of the U.S drinking water for 72 years.”
“Bold is not only developing the next level of technology. Bold is not only about putting high financial targets. Bold is not about day-to-day activities. In marketing, you can be bold as well. What we have established at LA Fashion Week and Kornit LA Fashion Week, Kornit Tel Aviv Fashion Week; next year, we’ll be in London and other places, is to create an alternative fashion week, which shows that you can do on-demand, production, actually from ideas to a catwalk or runway.”
“In five years from now, or less than that, the way you are going to choose your clothing is that you will have an avatar. We all talk about the metaverse. It would be a kind of metaverse. Your avatar will be your size, your height, everything. And actually, going to choose for you. It Is going to tell you if you’re going tonight to a party, we also know what your friends are going to wear. And if you would like to be unique, why don’t you wear red.”
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