Revolutionizing Print: Henrik Müller-Hansen on Gelato's On-Demand Innovation

What if the print industry isn't dying, but instead is on the brink of a breakthrough? Join us as Gary Pageau of the Dead Pixels Society chats with Henrik Müller-Hansen, the founder and CEO of Gelato, who is revolutionizing the world of local, on-demand printing. Hear Müller-Hansen recount how a small village in Sweden and the teachings of business icon Jan Stenbeck propelled him to disrupt the global print landscape, and how the initially skeptical reaction to the name Gelato only fueled the drive to innovate further. 

Discover the untapped potential of print production in our discussion, where Müller-Hansen unveils strategic insights that reveal growth opportunities in both digital and traditional printing sectors. We explore how local, on-demand production can span various industries, from apparel to home decor, and challenge the outdated perceptions of the print industry. By rebranding the concept to "production on demand," Müller-Hansen aims to highlight the innovative and broad applications of local production, showing us a future where personalized products can be created efficiently and sustainably.

Lastly, we delve into the transformative impact of digital printing on localization, sustainability, and the thriving creator economy. Through real-world examples, including potential shifts for companies like Starbucks and the rising engagement of younger generations, Henrik paints a compelling picture of how Gelato is connecting global entrepreneurs with local printers. Learn how GelatoConnect is enabling makers to utilize idle capacity in printing facilities, driving industry growth and fostering new business opportunities. Tune in to hear how this innovative approach is setting

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Transcript

Erin Manning: 0:02

Welcome to the Dead Pixels Society podcast, the photo imaging industry's leading news source. Here's your Gary Pageau. The Dead Pixels Society podcast is brought to you by Mediaclip, Advertek Printing, and Independent Photo Imagers.

Gary Pageau: 0:18

Hello again and welcome to the Dead Pixel Society podcast. Today we're joined by Henrik Müller-Hansen, the founder and CEO of Gelato, and he's coming to us from Oslo, Norway. Hi, Henrik, how are you today?

Henrik Müller-Hansen: 0:31

I'm all good.

Gary Pageau: 0:32

Thank you for having me looking forward to this so this, in addition to being a delicious dessert, what is Gelato?

Henrik Müller-Hansen: 0:41

yeah, uh, no. So it's interesting. I I founded this company, as you said, but when I was to name it, I came up with the name Source Logistics and my wife she said it's the worst name I've heard in my entire life So I reached out to David Plasek, Silicon Valley Lexicon Branding. And he has this linguistic company. He's actually the person behind BlackBerry Pentium Inside, so he's, you know, reputably one of the best naming people in the world. So he looked at this business model what is Gelato? And I explained it to him. It's like we've built this software, we've connected it to production hubs all across the planet and we allow any human being, any company, to produce what they want when they need it, where they need it, and that's kind of local production, down to the fingertips of an individual Right, and that's kind of local production down to the fingertips of an individual Right.

Henrik Müller-Hansen: 1:46

And he loved that idea and he thought about it and pinged me back two months later and $50,000 for her. And he said you know, now I know what the name should be Gelato. And I said no, but like seriously, david, what should the name be? And he said Gelato. And I said what are you talking about? And he said, well, think about it. You come into, you know, a gelato stand. It's beautiful colors. Everywhere. Everyone loves ice cream. If you don't consume it, it's going to melt and just drip away. And then, lastly, what you paid me for if you hear gelato, you won't forget it. So that's gelato and that's gelato in a nutshell.

Gary Pageau: 2:26

But that's not how you really got started right In the business. You had a business called Optimal Print, which is still around. So talk about where you came from and how you got into the print industry, because you didn't really start there.

Henrik Müller-Hansen: 2:38

Yeah, no, I mean, I've been blessed and fortunate in so many different shapes and forms in my life. I've been blessed and fortunate in so many different shapes and forms in my life. I grew up in a very small village 2,000 people in the southern part of Sweden, and after university I got to work for one of, I would say, objectively speaking, europe's most successful founders. So his name was Jan Stenberg. So his name was Jan Stenbeck. He founded Vodafone, millicom, metro International, like five unicorns and 70 other companies, and there were a couple of things in Jan's way of approaching building a business. One is if there is an overcapacity in an industry, do not go and invest in more capacity Right Printing capacity in an industry. Do not go and invest in more capacity, right printing.

Henrik Müller-Hansen: 3:26

You know wheni started to look at printing uh, printing basically had six times more capacity than demand right secondly, one of the things uh john stembeck always said was go for large, really established industries that are massively inefficient.

Gary Pageau: 3:44

Right.

Henrik Müller-Hansen: 3:45

Printing, printing. So you know it wasn't like I took a cold shower and bang. I had a great idea. It was more after working with him for a couple of years, and then I became CEO for Teletubbe Norway, which is why I ended up in Norway, which was about a 400 plus million dollar telecommunication operator. So seven years into that, I kind of thought about what have I learned? What could I take and apply to something completely different. And you know, when you operate like I had, teletubbe Norway was, as I said, you know, 400. But as a group we did like 6 billion euros.

Henrik Müller-Hansen: 4:29

So it was slow moving material and I want to work in a fast paced, agile, changing environment. And so I realized that I wanted to create my own company and I just went to the drawing board. I took what I've learned, kind of the lessons that Jan always told me and repeated over and over again and I started to look at different industries and I came across an industry that everyone thinks is dying, which is printing. It turns out objectively that printing is one of the most dynamic and fast-growing industries in the world. So when I founded the company, like 15 years ago, digital printing was about $80 billion worldwide and now it's like $200 billion, and then bear in mind that the music industry in total is $40 billion.

Henrik Müller-Hansen: 5:24

So, we actually, during the last 15 years, added three uh, music industries, right, just digital printing. So the stars were kind of aligned and and that's how I came to printing, I just did an objective analysis on the things that had to be improved in this industry and I sold the apartment. Not I, but my wife and I sold the apartment, sold the two cars and took every single dime and invested it in Gelato.

Gary Pageau: 5:53

So was it the vision from the start to be this network, or is this something that, once you got into the business, you learned over time?

Henrik Müller-Hansen: 6:02

Well, the vision from the start was definitely not to found a company that will end up being a basement company in Norway, right? So I think the only thing that is not taxed in the Nordics is to think big. So you should, you should, you should leverage that ability. So from day one, I was kind of thinking like, what industry is not working and how can we change, through software, that industry and make it more efficient? And so that was a quite big, bold vision from day one. I would be lying to you if I would say this has been a straight line.

Henrik Müller-Hansen: 6:46

It's been a roller coaster.

Henrik Müller-Hansen: 6:48

Everything you know. Every founder, every entrepreneur knows that whatever you plan, you know that's not going to be what is playing out in reality. And so we've iterated, we've pivoted and we'll come to it later. But optimal print was a beautiful starting point in many ways for gelato, because it was a b2c business very similar to, you know, shutterfly, vista print photo box, but with one big distinction, which was we did not own a single asset, so for us, the software was kind of the glue that kept the customer and the company together. And then eventually this was back in 2011, 2012, one of our investors from Dawn Capital, a VC firm based out of London, he sent me an article about a branch of Amazon called AWS.

Gary Pageau: 7:53

Right.

Henrik Müller-Hansen: 7:55

And I did not really know what AWS was. But it turned out that you know, they spoke about AWS and APIs and how you can build a network based upon the existing infrastructure, and so we kind of took that thought and we applied it to Optimal Print and we spent six, seven years just opening up everything we've built to the outside world.

Gary Pageau: 8:19

Right.

Henrik Müller-Hansen: 8:20

I thought it would take like two years and it ended up taking almost six years. I thought it would take like two years and it ended up taking almost six years, and it turned out that we launched an API business called Gelato Crate today, which we, together with Shopify and Etsy, launched in February 2020. And one month after, we know what happened.

Henrik Müller-Hansen: 8:46

The global pandemic. I can't say we were lucky, but the timing was pretty crazy. We connected to Shopify and Etsy. The pandemic happened and the creator economy, the e-commerce, exploded. Today we're a network of 150 production hubs in 32 countries and, of course, if you're a creator, you're sitting in michigan and you're selling to the world of consumers and, all of a sudden, overnight, you can access local production, local distribution to 5 billion people and you can use your Shopify store. You can use your Etsy store. It was very explosive growth that we went through.

Gary Pageau: 9:37

What was the decision in your end? To integrate with Shopify and Etsy as opposed to trying to build your own, Because I've talked to different people who have got into this space and that seems to be a very typical process where you realize you can't do it better than them, so you kind of delegate that function to them. What was your thought process on that?

Henrik Müller-Hansen: 9:59

It's a very interesting question. I don't know if this is a deliberate bridge from your side, but you move into gelato connect this. This is so interesting that you asked that question because I've made many mistakes in my career. One of the things is to not you know every point in time, understand what. What is your true core competence? Right? Our true core competence is not to build e-commerce platforms, and so we've tried that through OptimaPrint and we've realized that. Why should we replicate a basket functionality, a payment functionality, design editor functionality, when you have thousands of apps and a really strong global platform? In Shopify, etsy, we realized, if you combine that with the creator economy, the creator economy 10 years ago did not exist. Basically.

Henrik Müller-Hansen: 10:55

And now the creator economy. This year is estimated to be about $300 billion right. Goldman Sachs estimates the creator economy by 2027 to hit $500 billion. So the trend is going towards e-commerce and the creators, but what they don't have is local production, local distribution at scale that you can just plug in. So, for so many different reasons, these global e-commerce platforms are a natural way to connect to the future growth of printing.

Gary Pageau: 11:32

Sure. So when you talk about the creator economy, I think people understand pieces of that. They may see an influencer or what, but it's actually much broader than that, because you have all kinds of niches and lifestyles that now can create products where before you know, they couldn't afford to create a run of t-shirts for a local band or, you know, a group or a club you know didn't have access to all the variety of products that may be suitable for them. But that's really what your platform does is it connects and it could be an infinite number of niche markets that are creative and have an audience to produce their products.

Henrik Müller-Hansen: 12:17

I mean, it's so interesting. You think back this is going to date me, but when, when I started university, I had an excel and word course, it was completely new and I got my gmail address. And ever since, you know, the technology has continued to surprise us with its pace of change. And who could ever imagine that? You can sit in Oslo, you get an e-commerce platform for, you know, a very like 50 bucks per month. You get the global payment platform. You get a global production and distribution platform and all you have to do is pay $100, $200 per month, which just 10 years ago would be unimaginable. So the whole software and platform economy has provided tools for creators. That is just fueling growth in e-commerce, but I also believe that it is fueling growth in digital printing and that's what we will see now going forward.

Henrik Müller-Hansen: 13:33

And I think, if you reflect upon the power of a single individual today, in today's technology platform or technology world, our best way to find growth in digital printing is to leverage these creative people all around the world. I mean, I spent two years in Japan and when you go to Japan, you realize the creativity in that society is incredible, right? So the the coming decade, I think, will be about liberating and and empowering these designers, these creators, these entrepreneurs to reach consumers, no matter where the consumer is living. And that's where we are moving now I. It turns out that, if you think about I spoke to a person from Adobe and I can't vouch for the numbers, but this is what they said.

Henrik Müller-Hansen: 14:36

They said that if you're a creator, if you're a designer, approximately 3 to 5% of the value of the end produced product is the digital part of the product. It's the actual creation of the digital file. The rest is the production, the packaging, the shipping. So, if you're a creator, if you're a designer, an entrepreneur, how do you access the bulk, the lion's share of the value that you're actually part of creating?

Gary Pageau: 15:08

And that's why I think that the digital print industry has, or the print industry at large, perhaps I should say never stood in front of such a gigantic growth opportunity as we are now well, you know, and you touched on a point that I think a lot of people overlook. I mean you were saying earlier, digital print is what? 200, $200 billion or something like that that's still a fraction of the overall print industry. Yeah, I mean there's still a lot of digitization yet to happen in print. You know, there's still a lot of analog wet plates being made and things like that, so there's still a lot of opportunity there for growth. I think HP it's like overall less than 5%. I mean it's a ridiculously low number. That's actually all digital.

Henrik Müller-Hansen: 15:56

Yeah, you know, I think the volume is 5%, but the value captured is about 20%.

Gary Pageau: 16:04

Yeah.

Henrik Müller-Hansen: 16:04

Those are the numbers I've heard.

Gary Pageau: 16:05

It's a higher value, yeah.

Henrik Müller-Hansen: 16:07

Yeah, but to your point there, it's very interesting. So two aspects of what you said. So, yes, correct, digital printing roughly depending on whom you're speaking to 200 billion offset analog, roughly 600 billion plus minus, but is the word and this is the second angle I I'm often thinking about why do we use the word printing? So like, when I speak to my two sisters and I use the word printing, they fall asleep.

Gary Pageau: 16:34

Right.

Henrik Müller-Hansen: 16:35

But if I speak to my sisters and I say you know we're actually in production on demand and most of the things you see around you that will be produced locally in five to ten years, right locally in five to 10 years. What is happening in additive manufacturing and 3D printing?

Henrik Müller-Hansen: 16:53

but, also in regular printing, two-dimensional printing. You can take apparel, you can take the whole apparel industry right, the size of what I just mentioned, the 200 plus 600, 800 billion. That is not including apparel. So what about home decor? What about wallpaper, like there are so many? So I actually try to avoid to use the word printing, because it it defines us in a very negative connotation exactly there is no one I've met, basically unless you're, you know, knowledgeable about it that has said, said, oh, printing sounds super exciting.

Henrik Müller-Hansen: 17:34

I have met many people that said you know, printing isn't printing dying.

Gary Pageau: 17:39

I know exactly what you mean because I run into this space. I'm primarily in the photo print space. Right, personalized photo products and things. Everyone says, well, no one prints photos, photos are dead, no one prints photos. And I say, I said, well, now you throw in home decor, throw in apparel, throw in, you know, canvas prints, throw in photo books, throw in all of those things and they don't think of it as printing, right, they, they're thinking. They put it in a completely different category. When you think of, like photo, it's the same thing, right, it's. It's. When you describe the, the cornucopia of things that could be actually printed on demand, it's amazing. And there's new things being invented all the time.

Henrik Müller-Hansen: 18:17

Yeah, but a question to you, Gary did you feel that it resonates with you? And when I say that, why are we using the word printing? Why don't we use production on demand? Because production on demand is something that most people feel wow, that is super exciting. You can actually produce all this stuff across the planet on demand. Wow, Like, do you see my angle there?

Gary Pageau: 18:40

Oh, no, absolutely. In fact that was. I was just in a discussion with somebody on LinkedIn about, like, what's the proper? Is it print on demand, is it personalization on demand, or you know, that's the sort of thing I think people are trending towards that I'm just talking about, just like you said. You mentioned your sisters. I'm seeing just the normie people I talk to and they ask me what I do and I said well, you know, I'm in the photo printing space and they go who prints photos? That must be depressing to be in that.

Henrik Müller-Hansen: 19:01

So no, it's actually very exciting no, it's interesting, you know I don't know if you know about a person named Peter Thiel, but founder of PayPal and part of SpaceX and Tesla and Facebook and so forth. He says that when I interview people, I often ask what is the universal truth that not a single person you speak to agrees with you on? And I know my question there it's digital printing is the most exciting and dynamic industry in the world.

Henrik Müller-Hansen: 19:58

There is no one agreeing with me on that, but it is the universal truth. It is, objectively speaking, one of the world's absolute most dynamic and fast-growing industries.

Gary Pageau: 20:12

So, let's talk a little bit. Let's so, let's talk a little bit. Let's kind of change the focus a little bit. Talk a little bit about why localization is so important, for a lot of reasons. I mean, there's speed reasons, obviously, for producing locally, producing faster, but there's also sustainability reasons for that I was just thinking of. You know, there's a major pop star traveling the world right, and she's got this major. Wouldn't it be great if all all that merchandise she has to fly around the around the world that was produced in, you know, in china, could be produced locally, for example?

Henrik Müller-Hansen: 20:45

yeah, no, it's a very, very topical. I guess you're speaking about taylor or something yeah, some, some.

Henrik Müller-Hansen: 20:55

Yeah, I don't know that or or you can take coldplay, which makes a whole point about sustainability, right, but I I would also just go um and speak a bit about sustainability as an umbrella, right, because under sustainability you have e for environmental, you have s for social and g for governance, and we often end up speaking only about the e out of the e, s and g. Sure, the e is kind of the carbon emission and the waste which, obviously, if you are one of the usual suspect macro retailers with shops all around the world, you're sitting and planning and guessing the consumption of red t-shirts.

Henrik Müller-Hansen: 21:40

And you're like do we need 10 million, 20, 15? Ah, let's go for 15. Average per year, about 50% of everything we produce in apparel is either landfill or burnt in fast fashion. Depending on whom you speak to or what report you're reading, you're wearing a fast fashion item as six to twelve times plus mine.

Henrik Müller-Hansen: 22:05

So every time you personalize something, per definition you're producing it in micro quantities. It's very easy to bring it local in terms of production. But imagine this you go to your wardrobe and you think about what's your favorite t-shirt. You pretty much know where you bought it. Many times you bought it 10, 15, 20 years ago.

Gary Pageau: 22:30

Right.

Henrik Müller-Hansen: 22:32

And you don't throw away personalized items Right. So there are so many values and positive impacts attached to E in ESG.

Gary Pageau: 22:43

Right.

Henrik Müller-Hansen: 22:44

And the S here is even more interesting, I think, because you have two legs, with local production and local distribution. On the S the social aspects Because we connect the global e-commerce worldwide with local printers so that single individual can make a living through Gelato, Paypal and Shopify. All of a sudden that person can make a living on Gelato. The other S is we have a local printer, let's say, here in Oslo. This person last year received orders from entrepreneurs living in 73 countries Shipped to his facility right outside Oslo and he's telling me like I have have 30, 40 people employed thanks to Gelato. Without Gelato, I would not be able to take all those orders from entrepreneurs selling to customers in Norway that we are able to produce in Oslo and ship locally.

Henrik Müller-Hansen: 23:46

And then the G in ESG, the governance. It's not easy to become part of Gelato.

Henrik Müller-Hansen: 23:51

We put very high thresholds for what

Gary Pageau: 23:53

I was going to ask about that, but yeah, yeah and and I.

Henrik Müller-Hansen: 23:56

We have a curated marketplace, right, because so far we've only been speaking about one end of the marketplace, which is the creator, the entrepreneurs generating the volume. But then we have the makers, the print partners, right on the other side of the marketplace, and that's the story behind Gelato Connect and the software that we have now launched so that they actually can produce these micro-orders that are fully personalized with profitability at scale and just make the whole end-to-end production flow hyper-efficient.

Gary Pageau: 24:36

So I want to talk a little bit about the profitability piece, because one of the comments I hear about being part of a network is of course you guys take a piece of every transaction. How does that factor in to the overall profitability? Obviously they're getting volume right. I mean, your fellow there in Norway is getting orders he never would have gotten, so there is a volume increase.

Henrik Müller-Hansen: 24:59

Yeah, no, that is a very important discussion when it comes to Gelato Connect and Gelato Create. So if you view Gelato as the marketplace, we've just spoken about Gelato Create, which is the creator economy, it's the individual creator being able to upload their art on Shopify, Etsy, and Amazon, sell it to billions of consumers and then we produce it and ship it.

Gary Pageau: 25:29

Right.

Henrik Müller-Hansen: 25:30

On the other end of this marketplace. Uh, you have the makers right and to your point.

Henrik Müller-Hansen: 25:36

Here you're you're, you're saying Gelato, you're taking a cap out of what you produce for the creator. That's true, but with gelato connect and this is the next um case of gelato we're basically enabling makers across the planet to start communicating with each other without Gelato being involved at all. I just had a podcast this morning with one of our Gelato Connect customers in Germany. Their name is Oshat, so they are using Gelato Connect now. So they are using Gelato Connect now, and they mentioned that they have one of our other Gelato Connect customers in the UK, which is U. Basically, with their words, they said that all of a sudden, with Gelato Connect, we speak the same language, we know exactly where the order is at every given point in time and we can share a customer that is pan-European, customer that is pan-European. If it's in Germany and we want to produce in the UK, we can ship that over to a lot of.

Henrik Müller-Hansen: 27:01

Connect straight into the Connect customer in the UK and vice versa. I believe that the future will be very much about the Connect customers building virtual networks between themselves to support individual customers, Because I think what is important with your comment there, Gary, that we take a cut, which obviously we do. If there is a creator that sends their job to us, we take a cut for that but, ship it to the network.

Henrik Müller-Hansen: 27:28

However, one very interesting example is Starbucks. So you go back 10 years in time. You go into Starbucks under the Space Needle in Seattle. How much of what you saw in the store was merchandise with the Space Needle on it? Very little. Today I go to the Space Needle in Seattle, Eiffel Tower in Paris or Big Ben in London they're all with that tourist attraction. On Starbucks and merchandise, there is no way I believe that Gelato could be a middleman between the printers across the planet and gelato and Starbucks.

Gary Pageau: 28:16

Right.

Henrik Müller-Hansen: 28:16

So if Starbucks is to bring their production locally, we need to facilitate the communication between the production partners on Gelato Connect and Starbucks. If we put ourselves in between, the starbucks volume will never move to the local markets right because there are no margins when you're.

Henrik Müller-Hansen: 28:36

I don't know how much starbucks is doing now, but I think they have 38 000 stores in like 82 countries around the world and probably they're doing $6 to $10 billion in merchandise, depending on whom you're speaking to. Why does that need to move local? Because in the EU, legislation is forcing every single company by 2030 to cut their carbon emission by 50-55%. I can tell you there is no way a company that is producing in a couple of locations and shipping into Europe will be able to count their carbon emission by 50%.

Henrik Müller-Hansen: 29:15

You need to bring your production to the local market and you need to bring it to production on demand Because, as I mentioned, in the apparel industry, 50% of everything that is produced is burned. It's crazy.

Gary Pageau: 29:31

That's crazy.

Henrik Müller-Hansen: 29:32

It's crazy, right, yeah? So I think, going forward, what we want to become, gary, is, of course, a marketplace where we connect creators and makers, but eventually a marketplace where Gelato doesn't need to participate to drive volume, but the marketplace grows the volume by itself.

Gary Pageau: 29:55

Right.

Henrik Müller-Hansen: 29:55

By us facilitating the connection between creators and makers, but also larger and larger companies.

Gary Pageau: 30:01

Now there's some things within Gelato Connect also, as I understand it, that are advantageous, because it does allow for inventory management of paper and other things. So it's actually doing more than just being that connectivity piece. It's also helping you with your production management. Is that correct?

Henrik Müller-Hansen: 30:20

Yeah, I mean we go back five, 10 years. I went out to a print hub and what I saw was many times like one machine park, very rarely two and then one, two, three product categories, typically paper, and you know perhaps something else. And what I see today is four, five, six machine parks. I see four or five different workflows, four or five different workflows. I see 10, 20, 30 different product categories, enormous complexity in not only the workflow. But imagine if you're a printer and you enter into apparel. How many SKUs do you need to hold in your warehouse? Exactly Right, like if you were a paper printer. You might hold, let's say, 100 to 200 SKUs.

Henrik Müller-Hansen: 31:10

If you are an apparel printer, you need to hold 2,000, 3,000 SKUs at a minimum, so that in itself poses a lot of challenges. But then you need to connect that to what you're actually producing or what you're shipping, If we go to the shipping part. So you have these complexities in the procurement, you have the complexities with many more machine parts and many more products in the workflow. So what has happened in the logistic part, the packaging and shipping of your facility? You go back 10 years. The AOV this is our data.

Henrik Müller-Hansen: 31:49

The AOV at the time was $400 to $800 on an average print facility and you had anywhere between 10 and 100 orders per day going out.

Gary Pageau: 32:02

Right.

Henrik Müller-Hansen: 32:02

You go. Today, the typical average production hub we connect the AOV, has dropped to anywhere between, you know, like 20 to 150. The number of parcels has gone from the hundreds to the tens of thousands. When it's holiday season, right.

Gary Pageau: 32:21

Right.

Henrik Müller-Hansen: 32:22

So what has happened? There is so much complexity in the actual packaging process, the number of labels that you need to generate, the number of shipping alternatives you need to have. What do you need to govern all of this? What do you need to support you along all of these different phases in your facility? You need software. I don't think that any printer we have spoken to have entered into the software space because they love software.

Henrik Müller-Hansen: 32:52

They have entered into the software space because there has not been software globally that connects the procurement part to the workflow to the logistic part all in one, so that you have control over the end-to-end process right now, if you think about that and we go back to the two examples with o-shuts in germany and uir in the uk, imagine also a world where you can use idle capacity and upload it into Gelato Connect so that other printers in your country, in your city or in Europe or in the US can actually use your idle capacity. What will happen to the return on investment on your balance?

Gary Pageau: 33:43

Right.

Henrik Müller-Hansen: 33:44

And so there are all these new opportunities that comes when you have one global marketplace that is powered up by software that allows you to communicate not only with the creators and the demand generation, but also to the makers and the supply of the value chain of the value chain.

Gary Pageau: 34:06

So I think we're sitting in a situation where the creator economy, the growth driven by the demand for local production, the Starbucks example and the power of software through your facility can really drive incredible growth for the digital print industry, and it's going to be one of those things where you know success is going to breed success as people have more good experiences, the creators doing those things. They're going to be doing more of it, right? I mean, that's sort of how these things work, is it's a virtuous cycle. People creator creates a product or a brand or a logo or a shirt or something. They have it done. It's successful. Their people are happy. They're going to do more.

Henrik Müller-Hansen: 34:53

Yeah, well, two examples on that. Like I, have three children and our mid-child, Isaac, is 17 years old, His friend turned 17 and Isaac created a T-shirt I'm not proud of. You know the actual motive and the design. It said save water, drink beer. And so he created the T-shirt and it was by a German designer that helped him design it. I did not know it ended up. The German designer used Gelato. So, of course, if you think about the next generation, do you think Isaac would go to H&M or Sarah or Gap and buy a t-shirt for his friend?

Gary Pageau: 35:43

Right.

Henrik Müller-Hansen: 35:43

Or will they create their own t-shirt with their own design, with their own taste and preferences? So, that's one example where growth will come to this industry. We just need to be ready. The other example I'm coming back to Oshuts Oshuts shared with me on the podcast which we will release next week ahead of Printing United where we will be, by the way and I will also be there.

Henrik Müller-Hansen: 36:09

But Oshad said, thanks to rolling out Gelato they are now able to add 25% growth already on their top line because they have been able to take e-commerce volume completely new volume from companies that want to enter Germany. But nine weeks ago when they signed Gelato Connect they could not do it.

Henrik Müller-Hansen: 36:37

They didn't have the profitability, they didn't have the production efficiency, they didn't have the end-to-end control to be able to say to that customer yes, we can take your volume. So so far, after launch, they have increased their top line with 25%. That is growth coming to the digital print industry because now they have the machines, now they have the software end-to-end to actually make it happen.

Gary Pageau: 37:10

And they can procure the materials they need.

Henrik Müller-Hansen: 37:15

The procurement is connected to the production and we're also using AI to predict the demand. So if you sign up for Gelato Connect procurement, you give us the data from your previous years and we can then predict with AI all the different SKUs you need to buy.

Henrik Müller-Hansen: 37:41

And we have a customer very interesting in Sweden, stockholm, named TidyMerch. They're also using Gelato Connect. They said that they were missing out before they activated Gelato Connect procurement. They were missing out on 11% of the orders because they did not see the SKUs that they did not have in the warehouse. But those 11% of SKUs translated into 19% in revenue. That they did not have in the warehouse.

Henrik Müller-Hansen: 38:10

But those 11% of SKUs translated into 19% in revenue that they did not get because the orders were sent somewhere else, they just didn't have it in the warehouse. So, there is no way. When you look at what is happening in the digital print industry and the amount of micro orders and the amount of personalization that is coming to your plant, there is no way you can have people with Excel sheets sitting trying to do the procurement. It's just not going to happen.

Gary Pageau: 38:53

The one word I would use to describe what I believe will define the print industry during the coming 10 years is software? Definitely so, henrik. Where can people go for more information, to learn more about Gelato, gelato Connect and Gelato Create All of your various platforms? Where can they get more information?

Henrik Müller-Hansen: 39:05

So, considering your audience, I would say that we hopefully can meet you at Printing United. We also have, you know, 17 offices around the world and so we're very local. You know Asia, europe, us, south America. So if you're interested to learn more, drop me a note. Henrikgelottocom One of the advantages of getting on the train early easy email address and then you can also go to LinkedIn and reach out to us via that platform. So it should be very easy. If you go to gelottocom you will find all the necessary contact information, but hopefully we can meet face-to-face in Las Vegas in I think it's like three, four weeks.

Gary Pageau: 39:57

Great Well. Thank you, henrik. It's been wonderful having you and appreciate your time from your busy schedule, sharing with us the Gelato Connect story and vision, and I look forward to seeing you soon. Take care.

Henrik Müller-Hansen: 40:09

Well, thank you, Gary. You're doing a great job for the print industry, surfacing so many of the important topics, so thank you for that.

Erin Manning: 40:17

Thank you for listening to the Dead Pixel Society podcast. Read more great stories and sign up for the newsletter at wwwthedeadpixelssocietycom.