Thought Leaders in E-Commerce: HugePOD CEO Joe Zhou (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: What about fabric?

Joe Zhou: We purchase from big fabric factories and we handle its stocking.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s say a designer wants to design something, they have to work within a catalog of fabric?

Joe Zhou: We have 40 kinds of fabric. They don’t need to select from the fabric. The fabric is connected to certain styles. We already have these prepared.

Sramana Mitra: But which fabric to use is part of the visual.

Joe Zhou: We just use printing technologies to print images to the fabric.

Sramana Mitra: All of it is print.

Joe Zhou: We use direct-to-garment equipment. We also have our automatic sublimation technology to print these images to the fabric. We are in the industry of print-on-demand. We can understand HugePOD as a new generation of print-on-demand. We have a bigger scope. We have more styles. We have more categories which were not possible in the traditional print-on-demand industry like dresses and shirts. Placement print is very easy to produce in the US. When it comes to overprints, it’s totally different.

Sramana Mitra: Talk to me about the cost. Is there a big cost differential between mass merchandise versus small run?

Joe Zhou: The minimum order to produce a new style is around 1,000 per item. The same in Istanbul. In China in the past, it starts from 100 pieces per item. When we compare the cost of one piece to 100 pieces, it’s about 3 times higher for one piece. Now we can make it for about 1.3x.

Sramana Mitra: Very good.

Joe Zhou: And there’s no inventory risk because we start from one piece. It takes only 48 hours to be produced. For placement printing, it’s within 48 hours. For overprinting, we can make it in less than five days. In the past, it was two weeks to one month in US and Istanbul. In China in the past, it was around two weeks.

Sramana Mitra: Talk to me about the drop ship logistics and branding. Let’s say we have a designer who is building a fashion retail brand and is using you as the backend. What brand will you be drop shipping under?

Joe Zhou: We can do customization for our customers. They can design their own labels. The packing is also customized. Even if you have a small startup, you can have your own brand.

Sramana Mitra: This is very helpful. We do have a lot of clothing brands that are trying to find manufacturing and logistics support. Is there anything else that you want to convey?

Joe Zhou: I like to share my teambuilding strategy. The first strategy is entrepreneurs serve entrepreneurs. All of my management levels were C-levels in previous startups. This creates an entrepreneurial culture for the whole team.

Sramana Mitra: The entrepreneurs who will be working with you will find a similar entrepreneurial culture to plug into.

Joe Zhou: Yes, it’s very disruptive because we have this culture.

Sramana Mitra: I really like what you’re doing. You’re filling a gap in the market.

Joe Zhou: A very big gap.

Sramana Mitra: Absolutely. This is very helpful for our fashion e-commerce entrepreneurs.

Joe Zhou: In the past, small business owners could drop ship based on AliExpress. The quality of stock on AliExpress is not very good. AliExpress is mainly focused on the Russian and South American markets in the past.

Most of the products are cheaper and the quality is not that good to meet the needs of the mainstream market of the US. The minimum order quantity is very high. Small businesses, especially, cannot afford the inventory risk. That’s why I launched HugePOD.

Sramana Mitra: What is the technology that you need from a machinery point of view?

Joe Zhou: We have developed this technology like the AI that allows us to automate sublimation printing. We also use 3D markup to connect the design. We don’t need humans to do the production. Most of the processes are done by machines.

Sramana Mitra: Is this the machine that you have designed for your company?

Joe Zhou: We did the AI part. We collaborated with the equipment producers. They do the hardware part.

Sramana Mitra: I very much enjoyed knowing about what you’re doing. Thank you for your time.

This segment is part 2 in the series : Thought Leaders in E-Commerce: HugePOD CEO Joe Zhou
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