INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
Wonderbly, the personalised book publisher backed by Google Ventures and best known for the breakout hit “Lost My Name,” is unveiling
Wonderbly Studios in a bid to make it easier for other brands to offer personalised and bespoke printed books on-demand.Initially,
Wonderfully Studios will work with select partners to provide access to its personalisation API and help create new books using its
technology and expertise in the space
However, longer term, Wonderbly co-founder and CEO Asi Sharabi tells me the plan is to continue developing the platform and eventually open
up the whole thing so that anybody can offer high-quality and data-infused personalised books via its API.“Selling high-quality
personalised products — products that extend beyond the trivial ‘put my name on a mug’ — is no easy task,” he says
“Meaningfully personalised products and businesses are still quite complex to operate at scale
You need a rendering stack, integration with a local print house, couriers, customer support and more
These technical and operational hurdles are a barrier to entry.”Sharabi adds that although Wonderbly is aware of some “cool”
personalised book ideas already on the market, he says that very few are reaching meaningful scale
“We hope to change all that with our personalisation platform and provide a fast, seamless experience with responsive previews and
high-fidelity physical products for multiple and complex personalisation logics,” he says.The first project to come out of Wonderbly
Studios is an interactive journal from Wizarding World (the Official Harry Potter Fan Club), which is a joint venture between Pottermore Ltd
and Warner Bros.The “Keys and Curios” journal is described as full of interactive surprises and secrets that can be unlocked using the
It incorporates a fan’s name, house traits and more to take them on a unique journey through the wizarding year.The book’s contents were
written and designed by the Wizarding World Digital team, and feature images from across the Wizarding World, artwork by illustrator Jim Kay
and specially designed Hogwarts house covers by MinaLima (the graphic designer design team behind some of the visuals from the Harry Potter
and Fantastic Beasts films).Meanwhile, the personalisation technology, e-commerce integration and on-demand printing/logistics is powered by
Wonderbly.“The end customers interact via the partner’s e-commerce stack,” explains Sharabi
“These stacks (e.g Shopify or Magento) were not built for personalised products and customisation
Adding this functionality is hard — we know, we’ve been doing it for five years
This is why we developed the Wonderbly Personalisation API.”Products created on the Wonderbly platform can deliver a “limitless amount
of creativity, constrained only by imagination,” says the Wonderbly CEO
That’s because Wonderbly takes cares of a lot of the remaining heavy-lifting.“Products are rendered in real time at scale for customers
as part of the shopping experience,” explains Sharabi
“The platform handles the complexities of integrating with e-commerce systems in a developer-friendly way, making it a simple task to add
a personalised product to a cart
When an order is completed a simple web hook ensures that the products are rendered, printed and shipped to the customer, while feeding into
our partner’s systems for progress notification and customer support.”The breadth of personalised books we might see come to market as
Wonderbly Studios opens up further is impossible to predict
That’s because the full range of potential experiences is something that no single person or team could ever imagine, which, of course is
the whole point.As Sharabi previously told TechCrunch, you can’t scale creativity in the same way as tech — you have to allow creativity
to come from anywhere.“What if you can create a customised art, poetry or recipes book at the same ease you make a Spotify playlist?” he
“What would gaming printed yearbooks look like? What if travel guides and language acquisition become more personalised? What if you can
order an ‘I was there’ personalised keepsake for live gigs and festivals? These and more are questions that get us very excited.”
