Artgeist's CEO: How One Centimeter of Packaging Generates Million-Dollar Costs

In this episode of Rozmowy Logistyków, Piotr Skobało talks with Olga Adamkiewicz, CEO of Artgeist, about operational challenges at a company selling over 2 million SKUs to 26 countries. They discuss how one centimeter of packaging can generate million-dollar costs, and what Olga learned about supply chain running a Just-in-Time manufacturer.

A COMPLEXITY YOU WON'T UNDERSTAND IN A MONTH

A company selling over 2 million SKUs (from small posters to large room dividers), manufacturing only after an order is placed (Just-in-Time), with customers in 26 European countries plus the US and Canada — every product has a different set of technical parameters, different packaging solutions, and a different price structure. On top of that sits a mosaic of local logistics operators of varying quality across different markets. The CEO admits: understanding this complexity took far longer than she expected, despite the first-month impression of "already understanding everything."

1 CENTIMETER OF PACKAGING CAN COST MILLIONS

At a revenue scale above 100 million PLN, a small change in packaging size translates into several million złoty in savings or losses. That means a "bird's-eye view" (typical of the CEO role) simply doesn't work in logistics — you have to get into the detail. It echoes the well-known retail saying "retail is the detail": a single missing field in a product's master data (e.g. the lithium content of a battery) can end with a shipment held up at a customs border check.

ENTERING A NEW MARKET: THE LANGUAGE MATCHES, NOTHING ELSE DOES

The company assumed that expanding from the US into Canada would be simple — same language, seemingly a nearby market. In reality, the logistics structure, taxes, and logistics operators turned out to be completely different — "two different worlds." Similarly with a project to enter one Latin American market: months of work went into a drawer once it was discovered that the return rate (driven by an immature courier logistics market) was financially and operationally unsustainable.

CASH ON DELIVERY AS A DECISIVE FACTOR FOR MARKET ENTRY

The company deliberately pulled back from expanding into the Romanian market once it discovered that without offering cash on delivery (still a significant share of transactions, despite dropping from a historical ~45% to ~30%), customers simply don't choose the offer. In the United Arab Emirates, on the other hand, the cash-on-delivery mechanism itself generated extremely high return rates (30-40% for some categories, like toys) — customers would order several variants of the same product as a gift, pay only for the one that arrived first, and send the rest back.

DELIVERY TIME MATTERS LESS WHEN THE PRODUCT IS UNIQUE

A key strategic distinction: if a product is easily replaced by a competitor's substitute, delivery time becomes a critical selection factor (which is why marketplaces like Amazon or Allegro rigorously monitor seller performance on this metric). If a product is unique — the customer is buying the brand and a specific desire, not something interchangeable — delivery time loses importance relative to the simple fact of owning that product.

TEAM CULTURE: BRING THE PROBLEM FORWARD, DON'T HIDE IT

The key expectation from an operations team isn't the absence of mistakes, but diligence and quickly flagging a problem when it appears — work in logistics and manufacturing is more about avoiding mistakes than delivering spectacular wins, unlike sales teams. An important caveat from the speakers' experience: not every employee needs to arrive with a ready-made solution — sometimes people need room to say "I don't know what to do about this," without fear that they have to have a dozen ready options in their back pocket.

RETROSPECTIVE ADVICE: START ONBOARDING WITH PRODUCTION AND LOGISTICS

If she could turn back time three years, the CEO would devote more attention to understanding the supply chain right at the start, instead of beginning with areas closer to her own background (marketing, communications, product, HR) — because it's precisely a poorly organized supply chain that has the power to bring down even a very large company.