by SAN FRANCISCO — Furniture companies wanting to avoid the wait time and expense of having to have their products photographed in a studio, now have another alternative at their fingertips.
By creating product imagery in room settings using a simple CAD drawing, All3D produces imagery that furniture suppliers and retailers alike can provide their customers in a fraction of the time and also at a fraction of the cost.
The company was co-founded in early 2020 by CEO Amra Tareen, a Harvard Business School graduate who previously worked as head of innovation at Bed Bath & Beyond. She also was the chief product officer at Decorest, which was acquired by Bed Bath & Beyond in 2017.
Having developed the Decorest 3D content pipeline, rendering and 360/VR Solution, Tareen knows what tools that the industry, including retailers and manufacturers, need in this area. Thus, the imagery on the site, from the product to the room settings, were created in 3D to help the end user build something that is as realistic as possible for clients and customers to view.
“We give people the tools to do this themselves,” Tareen told Home News Now of the ease in which retailers and manufacturers can navigate the B2B platform. “Of course they need a little bit of creativity, so we also can provide you an interior designer to work with. But anyone can do this today on our platform – and that’s what we have built.”
The settings also allow the user to choose anything from wall color to window treatments to flooring, creating different room settings in which to display the product.
Perhaps most significantly for manufacturers, the platform lets them create a 360-degree image of the product, which is particularly of value for those who want their customers to be able to see the product from multiple angles.
With 83% of online sales being driven by product visuals, Tareen noted that the opportunity is timely for retailers and manufacturers looking to create product imagery for their customers in a quick and cost- effective manner.
“High quality product imagery…is time consuming, expensive and perishable,” she noted. “Once you create an image and that product goes out of stock, or you want to change it, you can only photoshop – you can’t really change a lot of things.”
She also noted that having different images is important to brick and mortar retailers too.
“They don’t want, when they advertise, to show the same imagery,” she said. “Because then the consumers shop for the lowest prices and they lose their margins. So retailers want to create their own imagery with multiple vendor or manufacturer products and a lifestyle image which shows a customer how to use it in an environment in the home. It evokes emotion and it increases conversion by 2x.”
The All3D platform allows the retailer to choose a near endless selection of products and room settings that can be created to allow for this type of differentiation in their marketing efforts.
“First we are targeting the retailers and manufacturers and next we are targeting the interior designers and next real estate,” she said. “Because they all connect together, it is all about creating models and spaces and products inside the home.”
At All3D, she noted, users can create a 3D model within 24-48 hours, thus reducing the time involved in photoshoots by 90%.
“You can create your own spaces within 48 hours or you can choose one of the spaces in our library,” Tareen said. “You can upload the images and architectural spaces and we will create a model for you. Then you use our tools…and you can design it in 30 minutes to an hour and generate 360, silo and lifestyle images in minutes.”
This, she noted, avoids all the time and expense of having to have the sample manufactured and wait 6-7 months for it to arrive and have it shot in a studio setting. Not to mention having to deal with delays and damages to the product that can occur during shipping.
“This is what it takes,” she said of the traditional process involving studio photography. “It is very time consuming and very costly.”
Gene Clark, a senior managing partner in youth furniture specialist My Home Furnishings, said that the All3D process has been seamless and efficient for his company.
“Within 24-48 hours I had product I could show to a customer,” he said. “And with the way things are overseas right now, getting that sample over here, it might be a year or it might be 18 months unless I airfreight it or something like that.”
He added that the cost also is significantly less than photography expenses it has had to pay in the past.
“It is a third, if not less than (the cost of) traditional photography,” he said noting he can do a room scene for $500 that might cost $3,000 previously to shoot. “And you don’t have any damage to the samples. It just makes life so much easier from a merchandising or product development standpoint.”
