Since launching in 2013, Printful has become one of the biggest names in print-on-demand order fulfilment with a warehousing service as well. The company has a team of more than 800 people across the USA, Mexico, and Europe, enabling their customers to sell over $397M+ worth of goods through Printful.

The company has done well by expanding early into the US market as well as by focusing on the tech rather than just the supply chains and printing. One of the big questions now for the company though is how ecommerce fares in the world of coronavirus. Will people be ordering more stuff online? Or will they need fewer novelty mugs?

The company is one of the many peer-to-peer lenders — including Funding Circle, Zopa, RateSetter and MarketInvoice — which have sprung up in recent years as low-rates have left people looking for ways to earn a return on their cash. But it remains to be seen how a recession (if it happens in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic) could affect default rates and people’s appetites for riskier investments. There is also increased pressure from regulators on peer-to-peer lenders, particularly in how they are allowed to market themselves.

Ilja Krumins cofounded Gamechanger Audio in 2015 alongside fellow twenty-something-year-old musicians Kristaps Kalva, Mārtiņš Meļķis and Didzis Dubovskis (two of whom just happened to have day jobs as engineers). It took a little over a year for the team to build its first note-holding ‘piano pedal’ for electric guitars, with most work squeezed in at the Krumins family kitchen table between the hours of 6pm and 1am.

But the work paid off. Now the company counts the guitarists for Stevie Wonder, Marilyn Manson and the Rolling Stones as customers. In 2018 — Gamechanger Audio’s first full year of sales — the company turned over €1.25m ($1.41m), shipping more than 7,000 effects pedals to customers around the world. The company has been funded mainly by crowdfunding though, and has yet to win venture capital backing.