Digital Content Strategies for Converting Website Visitors into Shoppers

Jan 24, 2022 11:00 AM12:00 PM EST

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Key Discussion Takeaways

Commerce trends are shifting, and shoppers are now looking for more engaging virtual experiences. So how can your brand take advantage of 3D software and give consumers exactly what they’re asking for?

A recent survey of eCommerce shoppers in the US shows that 60% of shoppers want a more interactive 3D and AR experience — and are more likely to buy if it’s presented in this virtual capability. Investing in 3D and AR software not only satisfies the customer shopping experience, but also allows your brand to overcome marketing, photography, and supply chain challenges. How else can 3D and AR software benefit your brand?

In this virtual event, Tiffany Serbus-Gustaveson is in conversation with Marc Uible, VP of Marketing and Alliances at Threekit, to talk about leveraging virtual reality tools for driving higher conversion rates. Marc shares how specific companies have utilized Threekit’s 3D and AR software, how this software goes beyond eCommerce, and the many benefits of implementing 3D and AR capabilities into your customer experience.

Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:

 

  • Marc Uible discusses the current trends of eCommerce shoppers
  • Common challenges that can be solved through 3D and AR
  • How can you quickly customize objects and cater to customer needs through Threekit’s tools?
  • Marc shares some examples of companies using Threekit models to build configurable solutions
  • Creating elevated online experiences that not only convert shoppers but engage them
  • How Threekit integrates with PIMs to offer rich visual content
  • Beginning your 3D and AR journey
  • How Threekit onboards their clients
  • Why is it beneficial to fully immerse your brand in the virtual reality space?
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Event Partners

Threekit

Threekit uses 3D and augmented reality to improve the eCommerce landscape and provide better customer experiences for shoppers and business buyers everywhere.

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Guest Speaker

marc uible

Marc Uible LinkedIn

VP of Marketing and Alliances at Threekit

Marc Uible is the VP of Marketing and Alliances at Threekit, a visual commerce company that helps brands increase sales by using 3D and augmented reality to customize and configure products so customers can interact with them as part of the buyer experience.

Marc is also a member of the board of advisors at LIFT and has worked at companies including Braintree, Avondale, and The Claro Group. Marc received his bachelor’s degree in international business, business economics, and public policy from Indiana University’s Kelley School of Business.

Tiffany Serbus-Gustaveson LinkedIn

Senior Digital Strategist at BWG Connect

BWG Connect provides executive strategy & networking sessions that help brands from any industry with their overall business planning and execution. BWG has built an exclusive network of 125,000+ senior professionals and hosts over 2,000 virtual and in-person networking events on an annual basis.

Event Moderator

marc uible

Marc Uible LinkedIn

VP of Marketing and Alliances at Threekit

Marc Uible is the VP of Marketing and Alliances at Threekit, a visual commerce company that helps brands increase sales by using 3D and augmented reality to customize and configure products so customers can interact with them as part of the buyer experience.

Marc is also a member of the board of advisors at LIFT and has worked at companies including Braintree, Avondale, and The Claro Group. Marc received his bachelor’s degree in international business, business economics, and public policy from Indiana University’s Kelley School of Business.

Tiffany Serbus-Gustaveson LinkedIn

Senior Digital Strategist at BWG Connect

BWG Connect provides executive strategy & networking sessions that help brands from any industry with their overall business planning and execution. BWG has built an exclusive network of 125,000+ senior professionals and hosts over 2,000 virtual and in-person networking events on an annual basis.

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Tiffany Serbus-Gustaveson

Senior Digital Strategist at BWG Connect


BWG Connect provides executive strategy & networking sessions that help brands from any industry with their overall business planning and execution.

Senior Digital Strategist Tiffany Serbus-Gustaveson runs the group & connects with dozens of brand executives every week, always for free.


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Discussion Transcription

Tiffany Serbus-Gustaveson 0:18

Welcome, everyone. Happy Monday. I'm Tiffany Serbus-Gustaveson and digital strategist here at BWG Connect. And we are a network knowledge sharing group, we stay on top of the newest trends, strategies, challenges, whatever it is that might be shaping, that ever changing digital landscape that we all live in. We are on track to do almost 500 of these virtual events this year, due to the increase of demand. With everything that is digital, we'll also be doing 100 in person small format dinners throughout the year. So if you are in a tier one city, definitely shoot us an email. These dinners tend to be 15 to 20 people having a discussion around a specific digital topic, and we're more than happy to send you an invite. We spend the majority of our time here BWG Connect staying on top of different trends by speaking to a lot of different brands. So I'd love to have a conversation with you feel free to drop me a line Tiffany@BWGconnect.com, that's Tiffany@BWGconnect that comment, also put it in the chat for reference. It's from these conversations that we have that we generate ideas that people want to learn about. And it's also how we gain the resident experts, such as Threekit. So anybody that we ask to teach the collective community comes highly recommended from multiple brands within the network. So if you are ever in need of recommendations, or anything digital, please contact me. But some time on the calendar, we have a very short list of the highest recommended service providers across the industry. And we also note that a lot of people are hiring right now, I do know that we do have a talent agency BWG Connect that I'd be happy to put you in contact with. So just a couple of housekeeping items. We want this to be as educational conversational as possible. So drop as many questions or comments you have into the chat throughout the discussion. We started this about three, four minutes after the hour. So we will wrap up about three to four minutes before the end of the hour to give you plenty of time to get to your next meeting. So with that, I will give the introduction. And let's start rolling to learn more about converting shoppers using digital contents. The team at Threekit they've been great friends, partners, supporters of the network, I will kick it off to you, Marc, give a brief introduction about yourself Threekit, and then we can jump into the information. Thank you. Wonderful.

Marc Uible 2:42

Thank you, Tiffany. Good morning, everyone. Happy Monday. If you're like me, you're coming off of a cold weekend. And yeah, well, my family still recovering from COVID. So, but we're here and feeling better. And thanks for joining us. So what I want I want today to be educational. And with that in mind, I'll introduce myself and talk a little bit about, you know what's happening in the world of 3D AR and how you might be able to leverage some of these tools to drive conversion. My name is Marc Uible, I'm the Vice President of Marketing and Alliances at Threekit. Threekit is a company that helps brands create incredible 3D and augmented reality experiences. We do that for to drive conversion and eCommerce. But we also are seeing more and more of our customers use 3D has a design tool, a prototyping tool, a marketing tool, and even a tool that helps them in their manufacturing processes and supply chain issues. So I'm going to go through that today. But the first one talk a little bit about what's happening in the world. You all have shoppers, and those shoppers want more engaging experiences online when they're shopping and by 60%. A recent survey of eCommerce shoppers in the United States 60% of shoppers said they want more interactive 3D and AR I'll give you a quick example. And again, I'm biassed because I live in the world. But now when I am making a really high considered purchase, and I'm looking at the photo, I often find myself pinching and trying to zoom in or rotate that object because it's a very expensive thing and or customize it. And when I can't do that, that's a disappointment. More and more. This is a nascent but growing industry where people will your shoppers will expect a more engaging experience. Another Survey said 42% of people are willing to pay more for a better product experience. Or if they could see it in 3D AR people are willing to pay 20% more for a product that they customize and a recent search Shopify survey, actually this was actually a study of one of their customers. Conversion rates went up to 100% when augmented reality was used. So just wanted to set that up. hear that? 3D and augmented reality are incredibly important for creating a better experience and customers are already asking for it. I also want to say so you've got customers asking for it on one, one ID. On another end. I shouldn't have to tell you all this I'm sure you know that already. The market making platforms are very, very keen on 3D and augmented reality. Obviously, everyone's aware that Facebook changed their name from Facebook to meta. They’re a Metaverse company now, they are investing over $10 billion dollars a year in 3D and augmented reality. Google came out with interactive 3D ads. Tim Cook for the last few years has been advocating augmented reality as the core strategy going forward. In fact, the most important sort of innovation on the latest iPhone and iPad is a Lidar scanner so that augmented reality works better than on any other device. These are really, really important things, you guys Shopify, announcing 3D support. Gartner is calling out visual figuration as a top 10 things that are most important with COVID. So it's not just me, a vendor out here saying 3D and AR is important. You've got customers saying it. And all of the platforms that our customers and consumers live on, are making huge moves into 3D AR because they see this as the important next computing device. And way that people want to interact with the world is more engaging and rich online, but it's in 3D games and 3D products. I want to bring it so I talked about consumers and talked about the platform's I want to bring it back to you, the brands themselves. You might say, Oh, that sounds sounds like a novelty, 3D and augmented reality. But I want to talk about some problems that we solve that 3D AR can solve for you. So here's some common challenges, scaling custom visuals, if you have a product that that's customizable. You might have 10,000 SKUs, or 100,000 SKUs based on different materials that could be customized, different looks different sizes, all of a sudden, you want to sell all of these different things online. If you don't have a visual, you can't sell that product. And if you if you don't want to pay a photography team that take 10,000 photos, you can't sell that product effectively. That's a huge problem. And one that platforms like Threekit solve where you can, 3D is sort of infinitely scalable and configurable. And then you can create a 3D image of that thing

that was perfectly real. Second is, let's say you're a b2b, or b2b, b2c company. How do you sell this product through different channels? So you have a product you want to sell through Amazon, which by the way enables it allows for 3D objects in AR. You want to sell it through Target, you want to sell it through 100 different channels. So how do you enable clear rules to channel partners, maybe the channel partner says, I want 10 photos, or I want 15 photos, or I can enable 100 photos of this product. If you are paying a photographer again, you're saying I can only afford five photos of my product, then all of a sudden, you're going to look suboptimal on those on those retailers or distributors who allow hey, I can offer 15 photos because you know what customers want 15 photos of product. If I'm going to buy something, I don't care how small purchase and there's 15 photos of it, guess what, I'm going to scroll through all 15 photos. And so this is something that Threekit enables where it's not just one photo or two photos, you can now create hundreds or 1000s of photos, I'll show you that in a minute with one of our customers. And then finally, lack of autonomy. So let's say you are able to have a huge photo photography team, and clear rules and guidelines with all of your different retailers and distributors to selling points. What happens when your photography team gets COVID? What happens when supply chain issues mean that your product actually isn't even showing up in your warehouse for three months? So you can't even take a photo of it? What happens when let's say you make a product that relies on pined? Well pines out of stock, do supply chain issues. But you know, it'll be in stock in three months when you can deliver it. You're losing your autonomy as a business to be able to deliver products to companies and to customers. And so you want to be able to show this product so people can buy it or get interested in it at least using a tool like Threekit enables you to do that and say hey, I don't remove a pine from my entire product portfolio because it's not going to be in stock next six months. Let's replace pine with oak. Gentlemen material, you can do that across your entire portfolio and click a button. So those are some of the powers that you get some of the comments challenges that we hope that 3D and AR can help you overcome.

Tiffany Serbus-Gustaveson 10:05

Awesome. And just a reminder, if you have questions, comments, drop them in the chat and we will get to them.

Marc Uible 10:13

So, when it comes to eCommerce experiences, here are the three experiences that I've been talking about. Just wanted to show them how quickly a 3D configurator allows you to build allows a customer to build, rotate and adjust your product in real time. Zoom in get really comfortable with it. Augmented reality is the process of taking that configured product in 3D and showing it in your space. Again, on Shopify, that's shown, Shopify did a study where it increased conversion to 100%. And I really would encourage you all to think about augmented reality as a lower funnel device. So customers are only gonna use augmented reality, when they're really thinking about buying this thing, to give them confidence that it's really going to fit in their space, it's not something people, you generally will want to show someone an option of an of an image, and then a 3D object that they can engage with. And then augmented reality. And then finally, verse photographer, which I just spoke with is super popular in a lot of industries, you create 1000s, or millions of real, live looking images of your product without ever having to take a photo. We work with hundreds of brands. We are super deep in furniture, and custom apparel, and sporting goods, building materials. And then also retail products. So but also we do a number of b2b as well. So like Sloane Heiser, Yonyx, forklift. So we're kind of, we do a lot of different things, but different industries. And I think different people on the call might be a little more comfortable with 3D. And that's particularly in furniture, building materials, custom apparel, and sporting goods are usually a little bit more further along because they usually have more custom products. I'll hit on this a little bit. But again, I just talked about and it's important for everyone on the call, like, obviously, the eCommerce experience is extremely important for driving conversion, I showed you a lot of those stats about 200% increase in conversion 60% of shoppers and buyers want to see 3D and AR. But in this new world, I really want you to think about demand testing, which is you don't know what your customers want, necessarily. And if you are in the business of let's say, selling couches, or shirts, or other materials, you want to test out new materials or new colors. Obviously, Pantone came out with this kind of a Periwinkle color of the year. What if you could say instantly, hey, I'm offering a Periwinkle, let's say if you sell watches a Periwinkle wristband for the color Pantone color to celebrate the color of the year, check this out, you are now able to do that in a click of a button and offer that across 100 Different watches. Because you're able to edit that and change those things in Threekit or another tool, you can now use it for a someone landed on my side to configure a custom object, you can now track that person with the custom configured one of a million and change that in for display ads, you can get the first market because hey, I'm able to configure my product and offer its customers in real time. We've got customers who use this for eCommerce and in store. So all sudden, if you're a rep in the store, you're configuring that product the customer together, or you're doing something called clienteling, which is someone's on your website and a chat bot pops up. And it's an associate in store who's saying hey, would you like some help configuring this brain. And I'll show you that experience in a minute as well. All sorts of things out here, dealer support 3D printing, you can use the 3D models, 3D printing, for manufacturing instructions, what we call bill of materials, etc. Again, so our customers here, tailor made great golf company, they use Threekit for 2x increase in conversion rate, their interactive 3D player for their stealth driver. Lovesac uses us as an add on tool, which is hey, I'm configuring a sectional. And I can add in things like speakers I can add in things like extra pillows, and you can see that in real time customers like oh, I want that thing in my sectional. Cool. I can see it. I'll buy it. Cramer. I'll show you here in a minute. We were rendered 3 million visuals for them in a month. They're beautiful. And then a number of b2b use cases here that I won't go through. Great example here. Lovesac

just want to call this out and we'll jump into some demos. I think their stock price has more than doubled since they went live with us. And you can see Hear their chief operating officer saying, we have seen an enormous increase in attach ratios, which is basically add on sales. So these experiences really matter. And now, I believe that's the end. Let's jump into some demos. But before that, if anyone has any questions, I'm happy to jump in on those.

Tiffany Serbus-Gustaveson 15:21

Get here, I had a question or comment just because my last job, I lived in home decor furniture, and every one of the pain points challenges you talked about I personally experience and going down that road of trying to get the organization to understand the importance of investing in optimal content was a challenge in itself. But then when we finally got there, the new challenge was opening up to the organization of these images are no longer just siloed. Within the marketing world, we saw the impact of those images, when we did the things that you were explaining, of being able to accelerate our supply chain pain points, not having to have the product, being able to get it faster online, I would say anybody who can do that, and then also enable a pre order option on top of that. Now, you might not physically have the item in your warehouse. But you have optimal content combined with a pre order option, you can start selling that and that takes away a pain points. And then it goes down the line of obviously a better user customer experience. But the one that we weren't thinking about at the time that really resonated was the reduce and returns. And you don't think about this tool in the operation side. But when that started to really show true, the operational team got very, very excited about these type of

Marc Uible 16:47

marketing solutions. Yeah, yeah, there's about 80% of our customers are using Threekit for something beyond just eCommerce. You know, I mean, just, if you if you're thinking about this, just as oh, I want a pretty pretty thing on my website to show in 3D, you're probably under, under estimating what you can do. I think a great one is like what you're talking about is like what we call demand testing, which is testing something before you actually have the products in your warehouse for photography. We have another customer, a forklift customer, actually, who was spending up to 100k a year, just shipping their forklift to the photography facility, rotating and getting every shot of every single forklift, bringing it back to the warehouse, adding all of the add ons taking more photos. I mean, there's so many different use cases. But that same company is using us as well, for when something is configured, it spits out what's called a bill of materials, which for a lot of eCommerce people on this call, but basically, it spits out to the factory, hey, here's all of the parts, the picklist and the assembly instructions for this new product that just got configured online. And so talk. So instead of it used to be as a human sitting there spending a week looking at what the customer wanted, adding up everything together, you know, creating the pick list, I could sense the people on the factory floor. But now there's machines can do that. And it then sped up their delivery time on the back end as well. So for them, it's actually for this company in particular, it wasn't even so much about the eCommerce experience, it was about reducing this huge photography burden, getting the market faster and having a more efficient manufacturing process. But I'll get I'll jump in and show some demos now if that's Yep, cool. Great, let's jump into let's jump into I just loaded this. This is love sack. They are a company that makes love sacks and sectionals. And this is kind of this this product, they're sectional has driven a huge portion of their growth. And it relies almost 100% On Threekit. And what you're seeing here is you have a couch, obviously in a 3D space. And you can see it's hugely configurable. And you can add seats have all sorts, you can zoom in, zoom out, you can kind of plug it together as you want. I'm able to rotate it. Let's see. You can add as you see, you can add siding. It's got rules. Let's see. There we go. And then you can go into what type of cover Do you want. They have 28, quick ship coverings, and 153 custom. And again, if you're that customer, you want to be able to see that in real time. So you can zoom in, you know, hopefully I know it's very hard with latency over zoom. But I hope that you guys can see just how high quality That material is certain able to zoom out. You can select pieces, move it in. And of course, you can price in real time. So I can see that it's $7,575, you can add things like, hey, I want the cushy blend. And then of course, you can do accessories, you know, like a power hub, or sectional table. And these are just things that, you know, you can add in real time. And that's pretty cool. So you say, and then there's obviously rules about where you can add it. And you can add it on that porch. So you have a nice area to hang. Put your drinks and things. So again, we're talking about a real time experience here, that Lovesac drives a huge portion of loves tax revenue, that and of course, you can do things like change the floor setting. So I can have a really look like my living room. We'll jump back to that. And of course, there you are, you've got a visual that you can see in real time. So that's, that's this, that's Lovesac, I also want to jump in over to. So that was what we call 3D configuration. I also want to jump in here to what we call virtual photographer. This is Crate and Barrel, the customer of ours, every single one of these visuals is created by Threekit. There isn't a photography team. And I'll zoom in a little bit more, so you guys can see the quality of it. I don't think any person on here would be able to tell the difference between these photos, these virtual photography, and real photography.

So you've got here, millions and millions of images. And then of course in real time. And again, this is so good for them because they have a configurable post this, they have a configurable product. This one is 289 inches wide. But what if you wanted it 78 inches wide, or 69 inches wide. Or if you wanted to design your own sectional real time, which is similar to the great the Lovesac experience we showed? Well, I wanted it 69 inches wide, let's say. And now there's 189 fabric swatches. And most companies at this point would say great, I'll send you a fabric swatch if you're interested. But now with Threekit, Crate and Barrel is able to capture that in real time. So this is what's called Birth photographer, videographer. And then we're also able to use this and show this product in augmented reality if we want. There are a B testing that so it's not doesn't look like it's on this particular couch, we can jump into that later. Another customer of ours is a company called California closets. They're one of the largest closet makers in the world. And you can see here, a closet, this is a pretty cool experience. They actually had a customer by an $1,800 closet within five minutes at this point live. And so you can see a closet is a purchase. So you can add in all of your configurations here about your wall. You can add columns. Let's say I want to add a hanging for shelf. And maybe I want to add I don't know maybe a a shoe shelf. Again, you're looking at all these things, you can change the color of say I want to do graphite. You can rotate it. Again, look, you've got a $1,700 system that now you feel a lot more confident about you can look at the measurements exactly. You can go back in 3D You can also see this in 3D in augmented reality. So if anyone wants to open up their phone, you can scan this QR code and it'll take you to the experience now we can see this closet in your own closet. So that's the type of experience we're talking about. It's really special, it starts to give someone a confidence on an $1,800 considered purchase. I'll jump over now to I'll just hit a lot of examples. So hopefully this is okay with everyone. This is a customer of ours called Lindsay Scoggins. Lindsay is a jewelry maker out of New York City. And her process is to sit down with usually high, high wealth clients and design. Really, really high quality rings and she used to sit down and draw with someone but during COVID That was obviously something that became very difficult. And so she was looking for a way to create an interactive experience online that matched the in person experience. And so how she starts is hey, I want to know, what kind of diamond Are you looking for? Well, I'm looking for around you No, actually, I'm looking for an emerald shape diamond. And so then you're kind of looking at this drawing aspect of it. What comes next is the setting style. So hey, I'm looking for a double Halo. Actually, maybe I'm looking for a track episode. And so you can see this kind of beautiful engaging process, you kind of able to look at it in a drawing. Let's say we move it on, I'm looking for links, and many 1616 link. And again, now you're starting to see oh, wow, that's really looking beautiful. And then move on to the metal color, I'm looking for rose gold. Next, it spits it out. And so this is a one of one, literally, there are hundreds of 1000s of potential configurations. But if you're that buyer, you're now able to see a beautiful rendering of what that ring would really look like in verse photography, as well as on different skin tones. And then, of course, in that drawing able, and of course, you can mail this to people to your friends, you can send this to your spouse, your partner and say, Hey, this is the ring that I'm looking for, or do you want to configure it together. And again, I want to this is not just about creating an experience for something but it’s but it's creating an experience where someone feels really engaged and feel special about the brand. This is a kind of a unique way also to share. So you can say hey, I want to share this with my spouse, or hey, I want to do this live, you know, over the computer with a sales associate and love these targets.

And then also, hey, I want to see it on my skin tone. You know, I don't want to see it on, you know, this other person's skin tone, I want to see what it would actually look like on me. So again, really great for consider purchases, I'll jump into one more. This is Baker's boots, this is one of my favorites. I'm a big, I'm a big fan of shoes, and boots and high quality ones at that. So let me jump in here. And just kind of a beautiful, you know, leather boot here. And and just the ability in real time to say like, Oh, actually I want a little bit higher, I'm gonna go with seven inch. And you can look at some external features like do I want the pole loop, as you can see right here on the back of the shoe? No thanks, no pull loop. And I'm looking for a cut top versus a roll top. You can see here, I'm looking for the cut top. lace design. Again, we're talking about a world where someone if you have a highly customizable products, how are you going to show that highly customized product and get people really engaged with it? If you're not, you can't even do this in a store unless you have a tool like this. So I want to place to tell option. Or maybe I want the plain toe as you can see here, hardware, you know, so those are the eyelets. Again, you can just really, if you're if you're someone who's passionate about shoes and boots, which is what the boots audience are, they really care about these things, hey, I want white laces or white thread. And again, what's so special about the experience is not just the commerce experience, but the fact this spits out something, a bill of materials that goes to the factory floor where the person spits out all of the things that Baker's boots needs to manufacture this thing. If you don't have this experience, and you just let's say have a pretty 3D experience on the front end, someone on your team is spending their entire life just translating what was configured online into what's going to get manufactured on the floor. Instead of using a tool that can automate and say, here's all of the skews and pick parts and assembly instructions for this particular show. So just showed a bunch of examples. We have hundreds of other clients to show, but I just wanted to share that and maybe that will excite some questions. But if not, that's that's kind of a high level where we're at. That's awesome.

Tiffany Serbus-Gustaveson 29:16

Like curious about the consumer lens. When they're customizing that product, are they able to save the different versions onto their accounts so they can come back

Marc Uible 29:25

and refer to them at any time? Absolutely, yeah. Well, we're seeing a lot of different ways to do that. You can do a social share a message share, you can save it to your account. Yeah, that's a that's an important part of it, right like these consider purchases. I want to buy a $700 pair of boots I might need or want to check with my spouse. And what's cool about that is you can send them your configuration, and then your spouse or partner whoever can configure it themselves. and save their configuration, send it to you as I do this style instead of back

Marc Uible 30:05

and unlimited options that you can save. Yeah, cool.

Tiffany Serbus-Gustaveson 30:15

So a couple of questions that are more like the technical aspect is how do these play with any sort

Marc Uible 30:21

of PIM that might be used? Yeah, we have a number of PIM partnerships. We partner with inRiver with salsify. These are just the these are the ones that our customers have requested. So we're, we've integrated into them. If someone uses a different pen, we integrate it depends. And I mean, it's hugely beneficial. Like I just, there's a stat, which I didn't show. Three years ago, the average customer expected three photos per product per per product. One year ago, they expected eight photos per product. I guarantee you right now, it's like 10, or 15 photos per product, I promise you, you want to give a tonne of content, if you're the customer, no matter what you sell as much content as possible your customer when they're making a purchase, especially consider purchase. And so you want to fill that PIM with tons of rich visual content. That's what we get does. And we make it easy to partner with PIMS, where we were very comfortable integrating independence wherever they may be.

Tiffany Serbus-Gustaveson 31:31

I also remember the saying of the top of the fold versus the bottom and how that content and the carousel of images is critical, because it was very small percent. And you probably know, that actually go below the fold to really dig into the details of the product. It's very top of the fold imagery, focus, that's what's catching their attention. The few seconds you have their attention. It's all about

Marc Uible 31:55

the imagery. Starter. I mean,

the second most important reason someone buys something after price is how does it look? So yeah, that seems like a very obvious, right, like, I'm buying something online. Okay, what's this? What's within my price range? Something I want? Okay, now, what does it look like? That's it. That's literally the most important thing after the price. And I think we've, it seems so obvious, but I think we've all kind of lost the narrative a little bit when it comes to those visuals and focusing on that, and saying, like, I'm going to provide the absolute best visual experience in any methodology, whether it's a picture via verge photographer, or interactive 3D or augmented reality are all three, give options, like customers engaged how they want to engage?

Tiffany Serbus-Gustaveson 32:49

Definitely. So from

a supplier lens, let's not say you are a direct to consumer brand, but your supplier or you're selling on a marketplace, how does this tool play nice with a marketplace platform? Or if you were looking and selling on a Wayfair? Platform? Is it compatible? Or have you had experience with that?

Marc Uible 33:14

Yeah. Well, I think that's also where pins come in really handy. If you're selling on other marketplaces, you can use a pin to help ship these assets to, let's say, a dozen different suppliers. If you are selling directly on Wayfair, we can help with that as well. That's like kind of its own connection. And we've helped companies do that before. Yeah, I hope that answers the questions.

Tiffany Serbus-Gustaveson 33:46

Let me check this out here. Keep it rolling. Um, since we're on the tool of the idea of using this tool for suppliers, or wholesalers, how could a

Marc Uible 33:57

wholesaler use this? This is not really a great tool for people who don't manufacture. So if you don't have access to

the CAD files are the 3D files or other design files of your product? We generally struggle a little bit with that because a huge factor of all this is knowing the customizable bits of the products knowing like what is the product strategy? And if you don't have access to the product strategy and roadmap and new designs and templates and what can be customized and what can't, you're going to have trouble. Let utilizing all of the benefits of this tool. Of course, we can help you create hundreds or 1000s of 3D models, but if it's not, if you don't know like how to customize it and the exact data behind all those customizations. It's a little bit tough to leverage

this full tool. Got it.

So we're great for manufacturers are great for the people who make the product

Tiffany Serbus-Gustaveson 35:04

that make the product. And then if you're just getting started with this tool, and you're in phase one, where do you start in what teams within your organization? Do you need the engagement from off the bat

Marc Uible 35:18

to make it successful? We typically work with the eCommerce and marketing teams first. And then often we start getting involved like the we need to be get access to sort of the design files, which might sit with like the office. Sometimes the office of the CIO, sometimes the operations team have access to those files. And we take those and then from there are able to basically take your merchandising list of options and, you know, everything that can be customized, and the files themselves. And then we create, we mash those together. So you can take you can see a 3D file, your 3D object customized and all the ways that are possible according to your product portfolio. And what is I know, it varies

Tiffany Serbus-Gustaveson 36:18

by organization, but an average onboarding period.

Marc Uible 36:22

Yeah, it does vary. You know, a typical project that we'd like to start with is what we call it, Threekit go. And that's where customers take a best selling product. That is it's a little bit more like the boot that I showed you, which is like something that is configurable, but it's a kind of one product. And that those usually go live in about three months. And it costs like about 48k. Three months.

Tiffany Serbus-Gustaveson 37:00

Is there a certain price point that brands should be looking at to invest into a tool like this?

Marc Uible 37:07

Well, I think it really matters. If you have to be selling something, you have to either be selling something that is a considered purchase, or best fit right now as men, it's considered a purchase. So usually starts at a couple $100. Or it's a purchase that people are buying a tonne of. And, you know, they want to customize so if you're selling a million of these, you know, that we do have customers that sell mugs, customizable, customizable mugs. And so they sell millions of them, and we help them do a fully customized experience in real time. That's one way. But we have a lot more customers who are like tailor made we sell a $600 driver or boots, or luxury goods or sofas or forklifts. That's generally a barrier where we say hey, listen, we have seen customers double their conversion rate, and the ROI for you is somewhere around 500%. Now, if you're selling something that not as much, then the ROI goes down a little bit, but it's still a good investment.

Tiffany Serbus-Gustaveson 38:22

That's a really good takeaway, because myself included when it looked at this tool as Oh, high price point has to be selling at retail to 500 plus dollars. But it's it's not it can be this volume game as well. And it may be a low retail price. But like you're saying the volumes are to warn the investment. Yes. Very cool. So everybody keeps bringing in chats via the chat bar or my email, Tiffany@BWGconnect.com TIFFANY, we have about eight more minutes here and I still I have a laundry list of want to keep on trucking through here. Lots of questions. So do you have to go the 3D augmented reality? If that's not on your roadmap, and the company is not ready yet? Can you piecemeal the project or is it an all or nothing

Marc Uible 39:18

kind of package? Um, I might be more context on the question. Here's, I think there's basically here's what a piecemeal route would look like. Hey, and, you know, piecemeal route would look like hey, I'm gonna find a 3D designer to mock up some of my products in 3D. You might find them on Fiverr or Upwork, or some other network. And that Designer comes back to us great. Here are your three 3D renders, I need 5000 $10,000. The difficult thing about that is That 3D Designer is an artist. And when you ask someone, how good are you at art? Their answer could be like, I'm good. But like, there's a very, very stark difference. And so difficulty, we very commonly see our brands going in trying to say, Hey, I'm gonna go hire 3D artists or an agency to build me some 3D models or kind of a configurator. It gets built. And then the customer says, but this doesn't look, I don't, this doesn't look the way I wanted it to look, or it doesn't work the right way. Now, the issue with that is now you're going back and forth with an artist who's already built something saying that needs to be fixed. But oftentimes, it's very difficult to give them the right feedback, even how to fix that, just like a piece of art, like, You're not an artist. So it's very difficult to explain that to that person. Similarly, if you get an agency, let's say to build you a configurator, they might build you that configure it that works. But all sudden, you say, I want to change that material, or that material is no longer available. Guess what, they hard coded that configurator. And it's going to be a nightmare to try to just remove one thing or add one thing to that product, let's say the boots example, oh, hey, we can't offer brown leather anymore, it's out of stock, black leather, let's make that the default option. If you didn't already have that pre loaded, you have a huge problem. You're going to spend 10s of 1000s of dollars, just getting that out and making sure it works again. And that's on top of the issue might have with it doesn't look great. And so I don't

you know, I,

I say this, obviously, that's like some Fudd in the air. If you really want to just like hey, I just want to see the product in 3D. Yes, you can hire someone to go do that. If you want to get good results, you're putting yourself at risk by going sort of half in, and then you get bad results. And the 3D isn't right for me. AR isn't right for me because, well, it's because you put out an experience that's not good. And customers will see it like oh, that looks that doesn't look good. And it doesn't operate correctly. Guess what they're not going to buy? They're not going to say that. That's great experience. So that's a kind of a long winded answer button.

That's a good color. Yeah. And is there a specific files

Tiffany Serbus-Gustaveson 42:19

of the output, I'm assuming the output files can be in many different formats, if needed?

Marc Uible 42:26

Yeah, we take over 75 different file formats. So all of and we can accept more depending on client, but we've never not been able to work with someone because of file types imported or exported. We also have a new feature recently, which is export to CAD, which is super valuable for anyone who's kind of into medium or heavy manufacturing, which it then exports. It's a really, really big differentiator for someone who's kind of in the manufacturing world. So that's great.

Tiffany Serbus-Gustaveson 43:00

Okay, here's an interesting question about the product development team. So think about product development and their future forward. Have you seen synergy with the product development team looking at what the consumer is customizing and leveraging that data to make better decisions about what they bring to market in the future?

Marc Uible 43:20

100% Yeah, so three, Threekit spits out analytics. And wouldn't it be smart if the material that people will just keep gravitating towards you now make that your header? Your header image, right? Like is a people are customizing and zebra printed, they keep moving this object to a zebra print. Okay, well, then, like, let's make that the, you know, the hero shot is the product in zebra because people keep selecting that. tonnes of tons of insights to pick out of that even like, another way to think about it is saving Where do people stop the configurator? So like, what angle of the booth? Do people want to see oh, they like they typically go to the back. People keep zooming in on the back or the the foot or the bottom of the shoe? Okay, well, let's make that a predetermined option already. So people start there, because people like to see that.

Tiffany Serbus-Gustaveson 44:17

So that really plays into the traditionally, well, we don't have a crystal ball. We don't know. Well, no, we do know now. The consumer now holds the wheel and can actually tell you what they want. And as long as you're looking at that data, there is a crystal ball aspect for a product development team to really hone in and be very strategic in their future developments.

Marc Uible 44:39

So that's really cool. Yeah.

Tiffany Serbus-Gustaveson 44:43

Awesome. Well, we are probably good wrapping up here. Marc, thank you so much. Thank you for being supportive friend of the network. I suggest anybody who's on the call out to Marc, reach out to me directly as well. I'd love to have a chat with you. Tiffany@bwgconnect.com Like I said, we connect and work with 1000s of brands, talking to them weekly, monthly. And Marc I thank you. Great Intel great insights, and I hope everybody has a fantastic week. Take care stay safe.

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BWG Connect provides executive strategy & networking sessions that help brands from any industry with their overall business planning and execution. BWG has built an exclusive network of 125,000+ senior professionals and hosts over 2,000 virtual and in-person networking events on an annual basis.
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