on-demand-manufacturing
(4)
Marleen Vogelaar
Marleen Vogelaar is a Dutch entrepreneur who co-founded Shapeways in 2007, helped build it into the world's largest 3D printing marketplace, left in 2014 to start the on-demand apparel company Ziel, and then returned to Shapeways as CEO in December 2024 after the company went bankrupt - buying back the brand and rebuilding it around a leaner, B2B, profit-first model. A former competitive heptathlete and industrial engineer, she is known for pairing operational discipline with an insistence that a company's mission should not be hostage to its investors, an idea she put into practice by converting Ziel to steward-ownership.
Alexander Tschopp
Alexander Tschopp is the co-founder and CEO of Tailored Industry, a Brooklyn-based on-demand knitwear manufacturer and software platform that uses Shima Seiki WHOLEGARMENT 3D knitting machines to produce luxury sweaters with zero minimum order quantities and 3-to-6-day turnaround. A Cornell Dyson School graduate who hooked into business after reading an Andrew Carnegie biography at age 12, he started selling college-branded products to hundreds of retailers as an undergrad before setting out to revive American knitwear manufacturing - eliminating overproduction by matching supply precisely to demand.
Alexandra Zhang
Alexandra Zhang is the co-founder and CEO of Factorem, an AI-native, on-demand manufacturing platform born in Singapore that connects hardware and photonics teams with a vetted network of factories across Southeast Asia. After hitting sourcing walls as an engineer building EV transmissions in Toronto, she built the platform she wished she'd had: instant quotes, no minimum order quantities, and lead times cut from months to days. A Forbes 30 Under 30 honoree, she relocated from Singapore to Colorado to open the U.S. market, which now drives nearly half of company sales.
Joseph Heller
Joseph Heller is the CEO and founder of THE/STUDIO, the company behind TheStudio.com and SuppliedShop.com, a supply-chain platform that connects creators, brands and small businesses with vetted factories worldwide so anyone can make custom products - patches, pins, apparel, medals and more - without minimum orders or sourcing expertise. After more than a decade working with factories in China, he built a low-MOQ, on-demand manufacturing model and a fully remote, globally distributed team, raising an $11M Series A in 2018 after 18 months and more than 150 investor rejections. His through-line is democratizing access to manufacturing as a path to broad-based wealth creation.