Alexandra Groot's Profile

Great article that definitely inspired me to check out some 3D printed jewelry myself!

In my opinion, the question of whether 3D printing precious metal molds will ever completely replace eclipse wax-casted molding is a purely economical one, as the technical aspects already seem to outweigh the wax technique. For fully 3D printed jewelries, the situation is more arbitrary. Especially for higher priced jewelry, I can imagine there being a large demand for “hand-crafted”, “traditional”/”original” jewelry as you see in other segments of the luxury goods market.

Interesting article written with a great eye for detail!

To me, the Speedfactories seem more than an expensive marketing ploy (or at least a rather ineffective one, since awareness on this concept is relatively low). Rather, I believe they are an adequate response to the market demand for speed you identified, and to competitors (i.e. as you noted, Nike is taking similar measures). However, I wonder whether Adidas is focusing its additive manufacturing efforts too much on the speed aspect of production, where competitors (including Nike) are focusing mostly on improving performance. If you can get an Adidas pair of shoes two times faster, or a Nike shoe that is two times better – what would the consumer choose?

I loved reading this article, as I had never heard of open innovation being used in the beauty industry!

The main risk I see to a community-based brand is losing its credibility as it grows – as you also indicated in your closing questions. As a parallel, consider famous bloggers/vloggers. The vast majority of them earns a living of their brand endorsements. However, as their accounts grow, so does skepticism on the sincerity of their endorsements (further exacerbated by governments forcing famous bloggers/vloggers to explicitly state #ad whenever a post is sponsored). For Glossier, as the amounts of comments on their platform grows, how can we trust they actually invest in the capacity to take all input into account? And is that investment even realistically feasible?

Fantastic and eye-opening article!

I agree with your notion of the app’s suggestions becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy. Especially in fashion and other consumer trends, the masses have proven to be terrible at predicting what becomes the next big thing. Instead, we are all influenced and prompted by media and the people around us. Alibaba is taking over that role by exposing us deliberately to very specific things – thereby adjusting our future tastes. So even though right now I believe we still know ourselves better than Alibaba does, we are at risk to slowly grow into the human beings Alibaba has predicted us to become.

Very well written article on such an interesting topic! I actually went to Clover last night and had no idea…

I think the answer to your questions are related: When the Food Dev Meeting is purely used as a method of developing the menu, only one such meeting is required to update the menu of all (or at least many similar) Clover locations. These meetings could either be held centrally in Massachusetts, or Ayr and Chris could hold these in different locations as they are traveling there for other reasons. However, when the meetings are more of a promotional nature, simultaneous meetings would have to be hold in all regions. These will not always be able to be physically attended by Chris and Ayr, thereby losing some of its appeal.

Great essay and very impressive startup to work for I imagine!

When reading your title I was sure marketers could not be fully replaced. However, after reading your co-founders view on letting robots observe managers, I am starting to be a believer. Why not could they be fully replaced? Equally, a smart drone could fly around the company/its markets to capture the correct images. With digital marketing, we can approach marketing in a trial and error way – and combined with machine learning, will human input and creativity really still be required (especially for SMEs)?