Shopping on the internet has changed radically since the advent of e-commerce. Gone are the days of clunky websites, bad photography, and complicated point-of-sale systems. Today’s online shopping experience is far improved and much closer to a real-world experience than ever before. Angelo Coletta, the founder of Zakeke, seeks to draw e-commerce further into the future with his 2D, 3D, and Augmented Reality (AR) integration. 

Today’s savvy online consumers have high expectations whenever they hop online to shop. Retailers have considerably stepped up their game regarding the ways they showcase their products and how consumers interact with their sites. The pandemic was a catalyst for both of these shifts in the e-commerce space. Since people could no longer go to stores in-person, virtual try-ons and 3D renderings of products, enabling shoppers to see them from all angles, became far more common. 

Angelo Coletta’s goal with Zakeke is to completely disrupt the online shopping experience, making complex technology and innovations in e-commerce easy for any brand to adopt. 

Growing With Visual Appeal

Imagine going to your favorite clothing store online, searching for a hat to wear on your latest vacation. Now, imagine that your favorite store has seriously stepped up their game, allowing you to view the hat you are eyeing from all angles. It looks as if you could reach out and touch it. You can even try different bands, colors, and textures on the hat right there on the store’s site. The experience is completely immersive, and you will know exactly what to expect when your hat arrives on your doorstep.

This immersive and visually appealing experience is precisely what Coletta envisioned when he brought Zakeke to the market. 

An experienced entrepreneur, Coletta has an eye for what the market needs. After founding his first company in 1997, Coletta laid the groundwork for his career in leading global SaaS companies. “I realized at a very young age that I wanted to be an entrepreneur,” says Coletta. After building several companies from the ground up, he launched Zakeke in 2017 upon recognizing a market need for a visually-driven e-commerce suite that helps brands scale. 

“My goal has always been to lead a company focused on innovation, one that strives to change the way consumers think,” Coletta told Authority Magazine. 

Seeing that consumers had a strong desire to have their products better represent who they are and what they like, Coletta set out to give brands the ability to hand consumers the power of customization and a unique shopping experience. 

“We live in a visual world,” says Coletta. “The idea for the Zakeke platform fits perfectly into this visual worldview.” 

Growing on a Global Scale 

As e-commerce changes and innovators bring new ideas forward, visually-driven tools like what Zakeke provides will only continue to be adopted by a growing number of brands. 

“Zakeke has grown by 300% over the last four years,” says Coletta. “What started as an Italian SaaS company has gone global — we have customers throughout the world utilizing our suite of tools for everything from apparel and shoes to jewelry and gadgets.”

What makes Zakeke unique is its ability to fit the mold of any retailer, large or small. They tackle pain points for different industries, from digitizing processes for the printing industry to creating an immersive shopping experience for consumers of luxury brands. 

“I knew there was an opportunity in the market to provide retailers with an easy-to-use set of tools guaranteed to grow their sales and allow for repeat business,” explains Coletta. 

The ease of use for any and all brands is Zakeke’s calling card. A cloud-based platform that can be integrated with any e-commerce site, the Zakeke suite comes complete with an easy-to-install set of tools. The platform integrates with backend operations seamlessly and with leading eCommerce platforms such as Shopify and Etsy. 

Although the technology may look complicated, Zakeke has made it accessible for even the most tech-adverse entrepreneur. Zakeke’s team supports retailers by leading them through the platform’s integration and making themselves available for questions and concerns. 

A Service and a Movement

Currently, Zakeke has over 7,000 customers across 400 different industries, serving everyone from fashion retailers — such as Armani — to gaming companies. They continue to grow rapidly, bringing in retailers and companies from every industry imaginable. 

“From the beginning, we set out to work with customers spanning multiple industries,” explains Coletta. “Any retailer who wants to provide a better customer shopping experience is one that Zakeke is equipped to work with.” 

Zakeke’s tiered system ensures even the smallest of mom-and-pop businesses that they, too, can have cutting-edge Visual Customization tools, AR integration or 3D renderings on their e-commerce sites. 

Coletta and his leadership team continue to grow Zakeke by leaps and bounds, hopping on the fast-moving technology train that is wildly transforming e-commerce. As the business scales and expands globally, Coletta hopes to inspire other entrepreneurs to envision business the way he does. 

“I would like to see a movement that puts the journey at the center, not the result of the journey,” Coletta says. “I would like a cultural movement that has competition and inventiveness at the center, with the values ​​of current capitalism combined with ambition to not only become a billionaire, but to find as many people as possible who can benefit from the success you’re trying to build.”