Soon, Jiang found himself deep in a big data project at Deloitte with Ravi Pidatala. The two got to chatting and decided to start a business leveraging data to do something completely different–they just didn’t know what.

Jiang thought again about the tie bar–and all of the other products that people must be searching for and not finding. He and Pidatala decided to analyze data on e-commerce marketplaces and found countless unaddressed and undervalued markets for goods that don’t have enough demand for large companies to produce profitably, but still presented an opportunity.

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“We wanted to figure out how to address this consumer demand in a way that economically makes sense,” Jiang said. The solution Jiang and Pidatala landed on: 3D printing. They brought on Jiang’s longtime friend and experienced marketer, Alice Hu, to build the business.

The pitch

Jiang, co-founder and CEO of Rockville, Md.-based BigSpool

“BigSpool is an e-commerce company. We use data and rapid production tools to make consumer products that people want, but can’t find. Our initial data analysis of what consumers were looking for and couldn’t find pointed us to our first market: cookie cutters. We launched CookieCutterKingdom in July of 2015 and we found a lot success in this niche market. People were really looking for unique cookie cutters. Now we have the largest catalog of 3D-printed cookie cutters.

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Alice Hu, co-founder and chief marketing officer

“You might be thinking about cookie cutters only in December with holiday baking, but people who bake as a side business or full-time always need new and custom cookie cutters to fulfill orders. The beauty of our model is we offer a large catalog of designs that people are looking for, but we also give consumers the ability to personalize and customize orders. People can upload an image to our web tool and immediately see it as a cookie cutter, choose a specific size and create it.”

(Some hot cookie cutter shapes right now: Donald Trump, pineapples, anchors and llamas.)

Jiang

“We have expanded into 14 other product lines – including, laser-cut wooden accessories – which, of course, features tie clips. Other items BigSpool produces under the WoodenAccessoriesCo. brand include badge holders, coasters, cuff links, lapel pins, keychains and more. All of these items can be customized with logos and names. We currently have around 50,000 total products. The model that we’re growing toward is hyper scaling-out this idea of finding the untapped markets of goods people are searching for, but can’t find and meeting that demand.

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Pidatala

“People don’t realize that all of these searches for obscure items like ‘llama cufflinks’ or ‘octopus cookie cutter’ actually comprise the majority of e-commerce searches. So we’re really about consolidating these opportunities and we’re able to do that because we’ve looked at the data and we have the tools that allow us to create these things quickly and meet market demand a lot faster than the traditional retail and manufacturing processes, where it can many months before a new product is ready. For us to create a new product is less than 30 days. We plan to introduce another 50 products in the next year.

“We found that a lot of our products are very popular in gifting — both in weddings and in corporate gifting. We are always looking for the right people in companies that handle corporate gifting. We want to be a resource for gifting nationally. How do we establish BigSpool as the go-to place for gifting?

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Hu

“We are also always looking to connect with people who have traditional, larger-scale e-commerce experience to learn from them. There seems to be a dearth of people with consumer experience in the Washington, D.C. region, though I think that is changing a bit. Where can we network with the right industry veterans to connect with them in an advising role?”

The advice

Elana Fine, executive director of the Dingman Center for Entrepreneurship at the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business

“You have a big market opportunity. The fact that you’re using 3D printers to do a lot of your manufacturing gives you a lot of flexibility. Being able to do things at lower quantities quickly is really valuable for small businesses.

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“If you want to focus on consumers, you need to do a broader brand awareness campaign like Framebridge or CustomInk does – they spend a lot of marketing dollars to make consumers aware of their services. A lot of this marketing also targets small- to medium-sized businesses, because it’s a lot of the same sales channels. Look at the successes of other companies that use technology to meet small-scale consumer demand in the same way you do. Vistaprint is another company that you could learn from.

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“Companies like Vistaprint and CustomInk not only offer good business models to emulate, but also great people who could act as advisers for you. You don’t have to only seek advisers in this region. Use LinkedIn or other referral networks to connect with the right people at the right companies.”

The reaction

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Pidatala, co-founder