Free Newsletter
CINCINNATI — Tennis great Andre Agassi once said, “Image is everything.” Nowhere is that truer than a retailer’s webpage.
Cincinnati-based Furniture Fair found itself wanting for imagery, particularly 3D imagery, after a former partner ceased to offer the service, but it found what it needed in a new partnership with Nfinite.
The French company, which has U.S. headquarters in San Francisco, helps retailers develop product imagery at scale without needing photography by using 3D and CGI to automate product visuals for hundreds and thousands of products for a retailer.
“We’re getting so many more images,” Craig Daniels, Furniture Fair’s marketing director, told Furniture Today. “We’re bulk uploading the required images, and they’re building these beautiful CGI room settings and white room settings in a fraction of the time.”
Bradley Anderson, who handles strategic sales for Nfinite, said the company’s offerings enable Furniture Fair four advantages.
“Our work with Furniture Fair centers around helping their team develop compelling product visuals without the need for photography and helping them with providing greater context through visuals online and in printed materials; enabling flexibility for the team to customize and build each visual scene quickly using only Furniture Fair products; differentiating Furniture Fair from competitors working with the same vendors; creating rich/full product detail page that inform and inspire, which drives conversions both on- and off-line, and helping to materially drive down item return frequency, which is an expensive problem for many retailers,” Anderson said.
Daniels said the speed in which images are turned around is a potential game changer. “It’s cutting back on time. The person running the photo studio is just taking photos on her iPhone of angles they need, bulk uploading, and we’re getting a plethora of images for our website and ads,” he said.
One specific project involved a high-resolution image for a print display for a “small space living” area for products that fit dorm and apartment living.
“The original layout needed product adjustments and scaling for print; in a traditional photoshoot this would have been difficult to accomplish after the fact,” said Anderson. “Our team expertly moved products and scaled the image to fit their desired output in a short time. The finished output is an inviting and natural looking space with warm tones.”
And while it’s early in the relationship, Daniels is hopeful that having more, better images means more clicks and more online sales.
“We haven’t had enough data yet to do a case study, but we’re hopeful this will boost average ticket, engagement and will help lead to longer time spent on page because they’re looking at more photos and obviously conversion rate on the website,” Daniels said.
