Aaron Conant 0:18

Happy Monday, everybody hope everybody had a fantastic Thanksgiving weekend, long weekend and everybody got their Christmas trees in there. The Christmas shopping done. By the way, if you if you haven't, and you're going to, I think you probably have about five days left, they say now before, you probably won't get it in time unless you order it unless you're paying, you know, the extra shipping charges. So, but we're gonna kick this off. My name is Aaron Conant. I'm the Co-founder Managing Director at BWG Connect. We're a networking and knowledge sharing group of 1000s of brands who do exactly that we network. And now we're together to stay on top of the newest trends, strategies, pain points, anything that shaping the digital landscape as a whole, I talk with 30 Plus brands a week to stay on top of those trends, what's working, what's not, would love to have a conversation with anybody on the line today, you know, more than happy to now share across the board, what we're seeing here, you know, things that are working that that aren't new tactics, new technology that's coming out, always love those conversations. So don't hesitate to reach out a couple housekeeping items as we get started here. The first is we're starting this at three to four minutes after the hour, and we're gonna wrap this up with three to four minutes to go and the hour as well. So around, I don't know, to 26 to 25 to 26. Eastern time, just they want to give you the heads up, you know, if you're looking at your watch, we're gonna give you time to get on to your next meeting without being late. The last thing is we want this to be as educational and informational as possible. So at any point in time, if you have a question, drop into the chat drop into the q&a section there. Or you can always email me aaron@bwgconnect.com that includes an hour after the call tomorrow, next week, whatever it might be, don't ever hesitate to shoot questions our way here in the digital space more than happy to get you an answer. Usually in under a day, we've got 1000s of brands in the network that we can, you know, bounce different ideas off from if we don't already have an answer for you, then that includes partner selection. We, we during a lot of conversations, we got to we're developing a short list of the top recommended partners up every vertical from Amazon to content, which we'll talk about today, to international expansion to marketplaces to platform selection. So never hesitate to reach out. So as we kind of kick off this conversation as a whole content is come up so often, it's probably one out of every three conversations that I have. How can I create more content, not just for my direct consumer site, but maybe it's for paid media across the board? How can I add test, I don't want to do another creative brief. It's the cost has gone gotten kind of out of control. And that's directly related to the amount of content we need to create. And so we got some, we found some great friends, great partners have a lot of brands and the network, great partners have been a big connect as a whole over it Nfinite. And they're doing some really cool stuff in this space. And they're helping a lot of brands Talk Tech, a lot of the issues here. And so we asked them to jump online today and kind of like share what they're seeing in this space. You know, how they're helping people out. And so again, if you have any questions along the way, don't hesitate to drop in the chat or q&a. But so Alex kick it over to you. It'd be great if you want to, if you could jump in, you know, brief intro on yourself, Nfinite, you know what you guys do, how you're helping people out, and then we can kind of jump into some of the knowledge sharing today. Sounds good.

Alex de Vigan 3:24

Thank you very much. And hi, everyone. So happy to be here again with BWG and this great, great network. So I'm Alex, I'm the Founder and CEO of Nfinite and Nfinite is a visual merchandising SaaS solution. So our mission is to empower brands, retailers, e commerce players to create unlimited visual to showcase their products online in order to improve their online sales. So we've been around for over four years, we were over 100 people in France in the US, and now in Taiwan, and we work with over 50 brands, retailers and eCommerce players around the globe. So our thesis is not a thesis, you know, our, our vision of the of the market today is that visual needs are just exploding. I mean, we know content is very important. But what we've seen with the digitization of the eCommerce space, which was accelerated by the COVID, in the pandemic crisis is there is a hyper consumption of visual by consumers, meaning that brands in order to stay on top and to achieve their business goals. They just need to create more content, more content for more audiences, more content for more outputs, more content for more segments and different, you know, types of consumers. And what it means is that, you know, contents of a much shorter content lifetime then then two years ago, we were with Luann here in Europe, and they said to us that two years ago visual content of a product could you know have a lifetime of like six months, a year a season. Now, when they publish it on a social media on Instagram, it is consumed within a day. And last thing, you know, just, you know, consumers, they need more customized content customized to their path to their, you know, customer has history. And what happens is is that, you know, today, what it brings to is that the visual, the product visual is the single most important asset to sell online, it impacts over a 4.3 trillion eCommerce business. It's above the ratings. It's above the comparison, it's above the video, the first thing that consumers take into account before purchasing a product is the product visual problem is that our clients in all basically all the industry, whether again, brands, retailers, e commerce players, while they don't have a simple, scalable, and cost efficient way to create this visual to match this hyper consumption. They're still using today classic photograph like they did 5070 100 years ago. And it's expensive because it's human powered. It's a lot of logistics, it's transport. It's has a lot of hurdles today with the shipping crisis. And its timing, it takes weeks to organize a photoshoot. And at the end of the day, what happens is that the brand retail the eCommerce player after shooting after spending money and time, only gates as JPEG. Well JPEG is just perishable. You can update it, you can customize it, you can animate it, or it's very complex. So we create an Nfinite and I'll show you very quickly what it is Nfinite is a solution again that empower brands and retailers, eCommerce players to create unlimited visual directly from their desktop. Visuals are everywhere. They're the most important thing for selling products online. producing these visuals is costly and time consuming. studio light teams could do all that. Without any knowledge in graphic design. Nfinite allows you to do some use needed to easily create and manage 3d visual content with your own product catalog. You can generate a passion, create an ambience without any technical ability and then publish and access a great selection of templates and use drag and drop features to create inspiring content. Enhance your visual content and increase engagement with Nfinite and it's unlimited dynamic. Still, photography is limited, replace it in 3d technology to get a well crafted online catalog in one place. Unleash creativity, empower your teams.

Alex de Vigan 8:14

So basically what what we again we tackle is the hurdle of eCommerce player brands to create visual to showcase their product online. So we created a software which we plug into the information system of the of the client and we receive product information. From that we take care of the digitization of their product catalog, meaning we transform their whole product catalog into 3d models that we push into the platform enabling their business operatives, marketers, merchandisers, eCommerce, UX, whatever even in store people to create the visual they need to publish it online and to update it a B tested track it and manage it directly with one single solution. So basically, the idea is you will create with the CGI which is computer generated imagery, you're able as a brand to create an asset which is your product in 3d. And therefore from that create unlimited types of visual silos product on white background product variation product and context 360 spins videos whatever 100% of your visual merchandising need can be done through the platform to the exception of human animation. So we do not we're not in the animation world. So we do not put human on pictures. The idea from our solution is to match something that is very very well known in the you know digital space for four years, which is the the need to to a B test. So what is the right content for the right audience? So we know how to a B test you know I us on a webpage color messaging, but basically the only thing that we cannot AB test today is visual. Why? Because you're constrained by a physical, you know, shoot, well with CGI, you can, in a single click on the fly, create any variation to a B test what content performs better, to which audience or even to which consumer, it could be done through an ad, on the website, on social media, wherever you want.

Aaron Conant 10:29

Just a quick question coming in. So how much content are you seeing brands you work with? Now switch to generation wise? So, you know, the question, I think is referring to the fact that, you know, basically, you need a creative brief, you need a photoshoot. Right? As this completely replacing that, then.

Alex de Vigan 10:49

So so this is a very, it's amazing, amazing question. So we still need a creative brief. And there are two ways of working it with it with a lot of brands, and basically, it depends if you're talking about luxury brands, we working with Gucci Chanel LMS, these these very high end, or if you're talking about, you know, the Walmarts of the world, but basically, you can still have a creative brief. And we just you we we replace the photoshoot, and we create digitally, the visual space that was described in the digital brief, we can also match an existing, you know, photoshoot, so you had a photoshoot of a one single and we just transformed this into a CGI. So computer generated imagery to enable you to swap products to customize the space to change the colors to move the camera around to augment what was done in a. In a physical studio. This is what we do for the luxury. And the last thing is for a lot of brands, now we provide 1000s 1000s of templates. So like like a Shutterstock, you you choose a visual and you just drag and drop your product and boom, you showcase your product in an environment in a click.

Aaron Conant 12:06

Do you have a standard number of images? So a couple questions that come in, there's just around, you know, standard number of images that can be produced in a on a weekly basis, you know, what are the limitations there? And then what are you see people up being a B testing?

Alex de Vigan 12:22

So a great question again. So for first question. So again, depending on what you want to do, if you want what we call custom images, meaning we create, we have a digital brief, I mean a brief from you. And we create a digital custom scene, we are creating over I mean hundreds a weak. However, if you're taking one of the templates, and you want to create, you know, any kind of variation elimination, where limit variation of product variation style, well, I just give you an an example, we had a pilot with a very well known eCommerce player 500 products 20 visual types. Well, we deployed 3.2 billion visuals. So I mean, once you have a templates, the variation with with a product range, colors, camera angle, whatever is unlimited.

Aaron Conant 13:16

I mean, this is what I mean, I think this is where I hear a lot of it, it's just a B testing, right? It's where it's gonna come in. If you miss it on a photoshoot, you missed it. Right? And the cost of that, or reshooting, especially if you get into like furniture or right now. You don't have the product, it's on a boat. Right, that's coming over from China still in a container somewhere. So are you that was the other side was around AV testing. And then we have another question that comes in, can we upload our own environmental background? So can you upload your own background?

Alex de Vigan 13:49

Yeah, so So great question. Again, for a B testing. Yes, we see a lot a lot of AV testing. But the first the first pain we're solving for a lot of the players is they just don't have the basic content, you know, on a webpage to Google studies showed that in two Oh 14, three images on a on a PDP product page was enough than to a 16 it was five and then now you need to spend you need to put it in context. So first, we have you know, client and this is where we're scaling very fast. We have clients solving the existing pain of having to the minimum content on their webpage. And now once you have that, well it's great. You have your digital product in 3d. And now you can really see the growth and the value of it where you have AV testing and what you AV test what type of content is it? Is it a lifestyle like you see here? Is it a hero? Is it a close up? Is it is it the color is it the product so you can AB test everything is it from and you do that you can do it geographically. So one one pain we're solving for a lot of brands is you know you do a shoot in Northern America but you are selling in Australia. Why would the Australian public Population need the same, you know, visualize the Americans same. And you can do that in, in as a town or as a segment of audience. Basically, we're enabling retailers and eCommerce to do what they already did in stores, which is customized merchandising to an audience. And so this is for the a, b. So yes, the more the more AV testing, and it's becoming more and more, you know, common for the big players. And the last question, can you upload your own environment? Well, if it matches our specification, yes, you can, or we will rebuild it from the ground up. But you can come with any kind of background that you want. And either we it's it matches a specs in 3d, and you can directly upload that in the platform, or we just rebuild it and put put it into platform.

Aaron Conant 15:45

Awesome. I just, I was just the call we did with like Walmart another company called visit right where they were, they done some analysis, were just shifting the shape of the, you know, the 12, pack a pop, right, soda, depending on where you're at, in the US, I guess, shifting it over and over again in different directions and laying it out over and over again, until they dialed in platform by platform to from DTC to Amazon to Walmart to target. Which one was the best performing on each one of those sites? Yeah, I know, it's just you know, you maybe think of that when you're talking about eight different marketplaces, even different countries are now requiring different content, if you want to, if you want to win in that in that segment.

Alex de Vigan 16:32

Yes. So I think this is great. So for me, there are two different things. First thing, why would you have the right content? You know, you don't know. It's like, in like, 20 years ago, Omniture, you know, that you would build a website and you didn't know what to improve? What Why would it work? So Omniture came in analysts is, you know, what kind of button what kind of UX, what kind of color, what kind of image what kind of funnel? Well, it's done for the whole website for the messaging, but not for the visual word, we're doing that for the visual wear. And guys like visit amazing companies that analyze the performance of visual, you know, are able to analyze what performs for which kind of audience so and as they, as they do studies, they did, you know, a visual can work on Walmart, but in the same visual for the same product can not work on target. And so it's as small as exactly the lightning, the angle, the distance, or the type of visuals. And so this is the I think the something which is very, very interesting about what's coming into what we call the visual merchandising, tsunami, the ability for a brand to, in real time customize the visual to improve their sales.

Aaron Conant 17:40

I mean, we're rapidly getting, you know, it's just really apparent to me over the past two months or so, to like, digital 2.0 is just something that's here, and it got here faster because of COVID, that it's not just enough to have images, and create content, it's pray enough content, so you can analyze and make sure you have the right content in front of the right audience at the right time via the right platform, whether it is your direct to consumer site, or it is social media. Right? That's, I mean, it's across the board. I mean, it overlays into, you know, what can your platform do? It goes into what methods or payment are you accepting it is, you know, user experience as a whole is through the roof. And a lot of people, you know, are over indexed on Amazon right now. And they're shifting their focus to, hey, how do I get stuff to my direct consumer site? What are the right ads to use, it's just it's crazy how quickly we got here, and then the new demands that the issue at hand was just creating it at a scalable cost.

Alex de Vigan 18:41

That's exactly and you were mentioning, Amazon, Amazon, I mean, they're the first one which, you know, for, for what we call necessity, goods, goods. So like, I don't know, toilet paper or Pepsi cans, they're already proposing to the brands to to have what they call rich media. So it shows that in the largest e commerce players, you know, shows that by improving the content and customizing it on the fly, you improve sales, this is why at some point, everyone in this space will will begin doing it. And to this point, again, the idea is we're getting and what we're seeing in industry is getting more and more and more immersive experience. So we started again, from then five years ago from that kind of image on the left, which is you know, the product on just on a basic, you know, white background, and then we got, you know, we said okay, all consumers since the visual is the single touch point between the consumers the product, they need to see it in a context. Okay, so this is what you have on the left, and then you're having new experience, like the 360s that that are coming, becoming and becoming more mainstream. And basically, this is what the CGI enables you to do is, you know, you solve your existing pain your needs about visual, but you prepare for yourself for all what's coming and at the end of the day, you know, maybe in the very near future It will be the metaverse while you can Metaverse will only be accessible through the brands and players that have invested in digitizing their product count in 3d.

Aaron Conant 20:10

I mean, the metaverse is here. I mean, I was just looking, you know, just the news article that came through that somebody just bought, like, I can't remember how many acres of digital land for a couple million bucks. Right? It's, the transactions are already are already happening. So that's it. I don't know, if you have thoughts on the meta versus whole, I know, meta, you know, Facebook, now meta is dropping 10 billion into it. Like how quickly do you see it being here? Like on an everyday basis?

Alex de Vigan 20:42

And, you know, it's it's a very difficult question to answer because my, my, you know, my, my heart wants it to be here right now. And my my mind says, there might be a lot of steps for a lot of a lot of players. But guess what I think this is where it's amazing is that you can prepare for the metaverse while, again, solving your existing pain and your existing needs in even saving money. Because you know, and this is why I think that there is a path and it's accelerating. More and more brands are going to use 3d for VR and AR for their product catalog. They will just you know, prepare the steps for the metaverse to come.

Aaron Conant 21:25

Some love just reminder others you have questions keep dropping them in the chat the q&a or emailing them to me aaron@bwgconnect.com Can we export static files for traditional print media?

Alex de Vigan 21:40

This is a great question. Yeah, this again is amazing for thanks to the 3d technology, the CGI computer generated imagery is used for any outputs that you need. And in Europe where we are originally based. A lot of the players in the industry like the Walmart of Europe are using us to save cost and to use that on the printed catalogs. So we're replacing the whole visual by CGI for printing catalog, which is kind of crazy. Because you're using a technology which has 90% of their of its use and error or return on investment while online to create immersive experience, but they already see return on an investment in a value even for printed catalog. So yes, you can.

Aaron Conant 22:27

So next question. So it'll kick out any file type?

Alex de Vigan 22:34

Basically, yes, I mean, and you will find an exception to that I'm sure but we're we're exporting a JPEG or PNG, whatever kind of mp4. So if there is a fight that that we don't know about, we will be able able to match it. But today we're exporting to, I mean, any kind of any kind of file type.

Aaron Conant 22:57

Awesome. I think the next one was just around, you know, I think everybody wants to know right now. You know, what are the results? Right? Is it worth it? time, effort, money, what's the, you know, what's the return on investment. So I mean, it's great to this slide is up next, I think a lot of us in the marketing space, you know, have more pressure than ever, right to justify any kind of spend whatsoever. That's just the reality is like in 2020, there was like this overarching, like, you know, pass, hey, we're not going to dive deep into you know, digital spend whatsoever, just go make sure that we get business done. And now in 2021, there's a lot more people having their feet held to the fire to justify any kind of spend, what's working what's not on any investment across the board. So yeah, now this is a perfect slide like to walk through some of this stuff as well.

Alex de Vigan 23:49

Yeah. So yeah, again, this is this is a great question. And basically, and the history of the company, I mean, we created the tool with CMOS, with with the marketing teams, you know, what do they need in order to be more efficient and achieve their goals. So the first value of the CGI is increasing sales. And this is what this slide is about is the ability for our brand and our eCommerce player to showcase the right content and to customize the ad the visual whether on site or in an ad just drive performance. This is what you see with one of our clients, you know, the ability to customize the visual just drove the conversion through the roof. Now, of course, it's not these statistics cannot be you know, just apply to any brand. It depends on the brand. The category types, a lot of the website of the audience, but its mechanic, the more visual you have on the webpage. The more conversion you have, the more customization you have, the more the more conversion and sales you have. So the return on investment is in sales is is obvious. And there is also another return on investment and I think it's a go to the this slide is So shifting to CGI, while increasing sales because you improve the client experience online, also it is what's crazy, it also saves cost, it is cheaper to shoot a product in 3d and to create your digital asset base of product, then to shoot it in with a picture. Not only it's it save cost, but it save times for our clients. Some of them photoshoot was 10 weeks, you know, we do it in one week with the digitization of the catalog. So we onboard their catalog and shoot the event and create the visual they need even for their printed catalog 10 times faster than what what was done with with the classic Photoshop, and of course, reduced logistics so so you have like two legs in the the return on investment. First, you save costs and time, but the real of and this is 10% of the value. But the real real value is the 90% is we will increase sales dramatically. And and basically this is, again, two sides, two sides of the same coin of our solution. On one side, you get like a digital studio like a PowerPoint, enabling anyone in your company to create unlimited visual on the fly. And you can also drive conversion on the front end on your website by enabling your consumers, your clients to customize the visual to the new, what if you could showcase their product in the context that relate to a specific consumer. And this is where you see almost 2x growth in conversion rate. And this is for Nfinite.

Aaron Conant 26:42

Do you have an ROI and how this solution decreases returns?

Alex de Vigan 26:49

And so this is a this is a very good question. And although we the we are sure we do reduce returns because again, we increase the numbers of touch points. So we avoid deception by showing you the product in in more angles no more because it's unlimited and more context. We do not have not have yet a specific data but return reduction.

Aaron Conant 27:15

Next question. So is it a SaaS base product? Yep.

Alex de Vigan 27:21

So a very good question. Yes, it's the SaaS base product. And the way it works is you pay a price per product per year per SKU unique Park reference and you get unlimited visuals.

Aaron Conant 27:32

Unlimited, so awesome. The next question that comes in is what kind of, you know, staffing or training is required to make it work?

Alex de Vigan 27:42

So I love this question. Because this is one of the biggest hurdle we had was we you know, we went into this big enterprise brand and say, Hey, guys, we will change the way I mean, you know, fascinate your work will enable you to create unlimited visual and they say, you know, but no one does that in our you know, no marketers no merchandisers. So, so we built a tool made for my four year old girl. So it's really it's it basically it's a drag and drop, you don't need any any, any kind of technical, graphical 3d photo, nothing. You just You just drag and drop, you put your products you try it, it works great. It doesn't work. We try it again, then, but even though we also provide, you know, account managers and customer success managers to enable the teams to show you how to make it more performing. But basically to your question, nothing is required as as even a training for that. We have webinars where a lot of things, but it's very, very simple.

Aaron Conant 28:41

Do you have a configurator tool to send out everybody thanks for sending in the questions you can keep dropping them in, you know, the chat or the question here to configurator tool to allow dynamic product images for color and pattern changes on a PDP.

Alex de Vigan 28:57

So it's an amazing question. Yes, we have. We have tools that so basically just a step back. So we are our r&d, we are an r&d startup so we have like 60 our PhDs working on computer vision 3d pipeline love that stuff. So we're building tools to to augment the capacities of the CGI. And one tool that is just been released is what we call the recoloring. Which would enable if you look at the image on the on the left column change of anything, the so five it was one of your products, the walls the ceiling anything so the the recalling what we're deploying in q1 2022 is what we call a retexturing. So I don't know if it matches so with includes which includes pattern so we you will be able automatically to read texture from leather to velvet to anything directly on the fly is awesome.

Aaron Conant 29:57

Another great question that comes in. I love this one. Who owns the visuals and copyrights? Right? So this is something that I ran into on the brand side all the time as I do a photo shoot. But maybe we had models in, right, we brought in people, maybe there's all this different, you know, things going on, there's additional sign offs on the back end, who owns the visuals and the copyrights to them?

Alex de Vigan 30:17

So this is a great question. And basically, you know, when we built the solution, we didn't know anything about the the hurdles that the brands were having with the photo studios where you have, you know, copyright for like, Oklahoma, but you cannot use it for New York, or you can use it for web for we give it

Aaron Conant 30:32

to you been there. Yeah, least you've heard the the y'all heard it

Alex de Vigan 30:35

was great, because we never thought of it. So the tool is made to give 100% ownership. I mean, we don't you, you you create it, it's yours as a client, you you own it, it's the you don't have any restriction on whatsoever. I mean, we provide 100% of the rights as legally permitted by the IPL

Aaron Conant 30:54

as well as the time for rollout, right. Like what does it take to get somebody on boarded up and rolling? They right now is budget season. You know, a lot of people also having issues with getting product just as a whole, even if you're going to try to schedule a photo shoot to get it, you know, stuck in a container somewhere. What are the origin files? So a couple questions that come in, what is the the time to get up and running? And then what are the origin files? Is it just a is it a photograph? Is it tad drying?

Alex de Vigan 31:27

So both amazing question again. So as for the rollout, or rollout phase, a little step back. So our solution why why is it working with a lot of clients is that we take care of one of the biggest pain in the industry of computer generated imagery, which is digitization of the catalog. A lot of the players in industry to software players, they will go to a brand and say guys, we have this software, you can create visuals, but we need your 3d file. Well guess what? No one, almost known no brands or retailers have the 3d files of their podcast. So we embed in our solution, the ability to create the 3d model. So and this is the bottleneck, but we have the largest capacity in the world of product digitization for commerce, it's in the world. And so I don't know you have 1000 products, you'd be up running in a month, because we have a lot of clients. So today we onboard 1000 products a month and not a week, sorry, we are going to reach within four weeks 2.5 I will be over a month 1000 already. And we're targeting 10,000 products per week by the end of 2020. So usually you're up and running in a month. And now again, since we have embedded the the ability to digitize the to create in 3d the product catalog of our clients, we own the production flow. So we are very flexible about the inputs, we only need the inputs that you have. But we need an input, whether it's a photograph done with your mobile phone, or it's very, you know, it's I don't know, a video of the product. It's a CAD, it's a blueprint, any input that you have you send it to us and we'll make we'll make it happen. But we are we do not invent what we don't see. So if you only send us you know, a picture of a product from the front angle, you will have a 3d model, but you will only be able to use the 3d model in the angle that you sent us because we cannot imagine what's behind.

Aaron Conant 33:29

Awesome, just reminder, everybody keep dropping the questions there. They're awesome. That's this question is no CGI with people? Images?

Alex de Vigan 33:43

I presume? Yeah. So. So it's a good question. Again, only good question. Today, it's not open. On our platform. We're working on it. We have pilots with some of the big big brands in the industry where you will have like CGI, avatars, and and fashion on it. So it's something we were deploying in 2022. But today, if you were to sign with us now you would it's not open.

Aaron Conant 34:12

Yeah, I mean, it's always interesting, because you look at like this cow chair table, it looks real, even though it's fake. But when you get into people, animals, even plants, right, it's a lot of times the human id Tech said immediately, I mean, we all watch, you know, movies, when you see, you know, a digitally rendered elephant, it looks you know, immediately it's not a real element. It's

Alex de Vigan 34:39

yeah, this is the this is exactly the issue. Aaron, we're in the business of photo realism, because again, we're here to avoid deception and to to make the product as real as possible so that your eye would not differentiate it from the real product or fotografie or CGI. And this is the whole problem with human and Humans, I mean, what's difficult? There's first of all, and humans and animals and as you said, planets is the the rendering is very difficult. But also the it's the life, you know, how do you when you put a CGI person in an environment? How does it look live, really, and this is a very, very complex technical issue. And we're on it. It's not open, because it's not achieved yet. But it's it's very complex. Yes. And by the way, I forgot to mention that all that we're doing here, and I'm showing visuals and photographic pictures, spins, it's also available for videos. And so the same exception is also true for videos with human there. It's not open on the platform yet.

Aaron Conant 35:42

So I'm going to add, I'm going to have two questions here. You know, are you a PAM or a dam? Right? That's kind of one that comes in, but I don't believe you are you're you're creating the content that will go into it. The other one, is this compatible with content management systems like saucify? I'm just wondering if these images could be uploaded there. Right. So my company is in direct to consumer, you know, we're dealing with all these different retailers who carry us we want that we want to be able to push images to them. So you can read damn or mean, you can fill that in, but I'm just from what I'm picking up that I understand. The other one is, you know, then are you connecting into like a pin, like a salsify?

Alex de Vigan 36:27

Great question I get so no, we're not I pemra. Damn, although we have bricks of both permanent and Damn, because, you know, we provide a solution where you can manage your assets you can, but it's not. It's just for the your purposes of visual creation. But we're our our mission is to connect to your global ecosystem, software ecosystem, where the pin then CMS whatever, in order for you to have a seamless, you know, use and visual creation for your product. So that brings me to the second question. Yes, we're actually discussing with salsify and integrated partnerships. Today is not integrated directly. But we provide an API and we provide, you know, the ability to connect directly to salsify. Yes, but the ability Yes, it's not to be a standalone, it's to really to integrate, although you when you try us, you can try it in standalone. So you don't have any difficult integration and anything. But once you say, okay, it works, then we work on integrating to your existing tools. It's the next

Aaron Conant 37:29

question people that just use it just for content, you know, so in that case, not connected to anything else. I think we're kind of on a trend here. And you were just mentioning it. It's just a standalone for content creation.

Alex de Vigan 37:41

Yeah, yeah. I mean, again, the idea is, we are only in the business of making our clients successful. And some some of them you know, find that to start that it's easier to have it in standalone, they don't have to integrate it with it, they just, you know, create, download a JPEG or whatever, mp4, whatever they need, and then they publish it wherever they want. So yes, some of them do. Even though we provide a lot of other tools, like scripts to display directly dynamic content on their website, it's very modular, so you can use it really the way you want. The I mean, from from top to bottom, the from bottom to top, the bottom would be, you just, you know, have your user access, and you create your visual and you download that, and the most integrated that you could have is connected through API and have automated visual creation directly from API calls from any software that you have integrated in your in your own company.

Aaron Conant 38:34

Yeah, I think that the question, yeah, kind of what you're saying is what I was getting at was, what's the load on my IT team? That was? Yeah, that's the question I think, is, you know, every IT team now has got, you know, a queue that's a mile and a half long, a lot of stuff they've never worked with before. Because it's, you know, it's all on the.com side, or in the digital side. Right. And so they've got this mile and a half long. Is this another thing in the queue? And or is it something that can be used to say that you can just get up and running with limited, you know, it? I mean, outside of, you know, on large corporations, you're gonna have to do security and everything else. But

Alex de Vigan 39:12

so yeah, I mean, again, this is, I mean, this is great, because it's exactly, you know, you the lifecycle of our product, you know, iteration is that at the beginning, we we embedded, like the integration, and we realized that it was very complex sales cycle was very long, and it was that hurdle for our clients. So, I mean, although we provide the ability to integrate, I mean, 99% of the time, we start, you know, with no IT integration, so we don't even go see it. It's like, you know, and we pitched it like that, like the Canva of merchandising, so it's a product purchase by the marketing for the marketing people, and they can just try and begin using it without any integration. Now, of course, as long as they move on, and they Learn the tool and they appreciate it in the get value that they will, they will want to have an integration, which will make all of that but it's down could be in six months in a year in 18 months doesn't matter.

Aaron Conant 40:11

Awesome. Next question, curious about the sports and recreation industry category, right, we've got a lot of hunting, shooting, camping, hiking, you know, fishing products as a whole. So I don't know if we can, so if you want to address that particular category, sports and you know, recreation, but also, do you see it over index on any categories in particular, and are there any that you say, doesn't really work for

Alex de Vigan 40:38

I don't see a product category for which it doesn't work. I see a product category, which is more complex, although we again we started is fashion because for fashion, a lot of it, you know, makes sense when you have a try on, on, on on, on a model. So this is what we're working on. But aside from that, you know, CGI can work with everything, there are hurdles, you know, like, you know, for the recreation, you know, a fishing rope, if you want to show it outside, when a fish, you know, you know jumping out of the water, then then it's complex, but it works. So, again, no real limitation, the sweet spot for us, because this is where we come from is all the home and living DIY for the house, electronics, everything, that kind of goods CPGs very works very well. FMCG. And then we're going through more fashion oriented among which among which sports and and you know, recreation and fashion. The thing I want to enter that we're not in what we call technical products, like we don't do cars, we don't do planes, we don't do anything that involves highly technical products, which were for which a configurator would be, which would be much more suited. Awesome.

Aaron Conant 41:58

Love it. Are there any other? I'm just going through here looking at if anybody else has questions, drop into the chat or email him to me, or just put them in the q&a as well. Are there other things that come up routinely, for you or things that are on the horizon? You know, that, that you guys just deal with so many different brands? They like, Hey, I thought this would come up today it didn't or this is a question we get asked routinely. Or this is a new thing that we're working on. I don't know if there's

Alex de Vigan 42:26

any of those things that pop up. Something that pop up for me, which is kind of very interesting is while working again, with mass, mass market retailers or very highly luxury brands, some of them for the prints, some of them for the you know, only the web page, some of them for the media, is how silo, the organization which we're working on, meaning that often and it's crazy for me, but they the shooting for the web and the shooting for the prints are not the same. And the assets done for the web are not reused for the print. Or same for media sent from advertising. Same for social media. So I think something which is very important, I think with CGI is like one asset to rule them all. Whether any kind of visual merchandising that you might need, online or offline. And any channel that you might have could be served with one single asset and one single platform, which means that you mechanically, even though Imagine we didn't have any, you know, impact on sales, which we do have, or impact on cost, which we all have also you would that directly have an impact by the reusability of the asset on an omnichannel bank basis.

Aaron Conant 43:45

Awesome. Yeah. I love it. I'm just looking here. You know, one last time in the chat or q&a? I don't have any other like questions coming in. Oh, just want to drop in right now. Do you ever run into issues with the same background being used by different brands?

Alex de Vigan 44:02

This is this is a an amazing question. We don't We never had the issue, but we always have the question. And, and now have to two answers to that. So first of all our platform is made to to make the background so customizable, that you couldn't you would not be able to recognize it from brand A and brand B. First of all, second of all, I think it's it's about you know, it's a transition. You know, it's it's a big it's a revolution that we're you know, into. And something I always say to clients is it's like Henry Ford, when he used to say, you know, if I had asked my client what they would have wanted, they would have asked for a faster, faster horse. Well, for us we're unleashing so it's so much capability so much saying that we're impossible that it's it needs a transition. So this is why a lot of our clients start by creating asking us to create custom templates, custom backgrounds, and then once they begin using it, they access our own templates and then it grows and grows more. And the last thing on that is a lot of clients say, Okay, it's unlimited, but why do I use need unlimited visuals. And because they were, they were buying 1000 visuals in that last year, and now there may be need 1500. Again, it's an evolution, the, you know, educating and the declines to what they can do with customization A B testing in real time is something that that will take time.

Aaron Conant 45:33

Yeah. Awesome. And last one, is there, is there a, is there like a trial program? Is it? How do people generally get started? And then, you know, just others have questions, drop them in? That might be the last question we have here.

Alex de Vigan 45:48

Yeah, great question. So before you commit to a price per per SKU, so per product per year, we have, you know, what we call pre package. So we set up a team, where you have account managers, customer success manager to, and merchandisers and we work on it on a small scope of products, and it's between 50 to 300 products, it could be less and less be 10. So and we create different types of visual and you as a client, you can test them, and it cost not a lot of money. And when you get the value for that, then then you you decide to go and scale it and usually, we say we have an AV test for three months. And then we have first we'll have six months, and then and then it keeps on growing by the numbers of skew you putting in the platform.

Aaron Conant 46:35

Awesome. No, I love it. I love it. And I'm going to check just the spin. Awesome, you know, questions popping in today, if others drop it in, feel free as we kind of get to the end here. I do want to say quick things you know, Alex, you know, you guys are great friends, partners, supporters of the network and a ton of brands in it. And you know, others if you have a chance, the platform is pretty amazing comes highly recommended from a ton of brands, the network as a whole, it's worth setting, you know, 30 minutes aside, just to take a look at it. Just the feedback on the cost reduction, as well as the quality is is phenomenal. So we're setting 30 minutes on the calendar and have any follow up conversation. If you have other pain points, anything from Amazon direct consumer to shipping or drop shipping or platform or international expansion, never hesitate to reach out we've got a shortlist of top service providers that the network has provided as a whole more than happy to share those in more than happy to jump on the phone and just have a fun conversation as well. You know, we'll make sure to connect you with Alex and the team. You know, Alex, any key takeaways as we kind of wrap up here and give people some extra time in their day back?

Alex de Vigan 47:42

Yeah, no, for me, I mean, great, great conversation. Love the question. You know, it's directly on the spot. And yeah, happy to connect, to discuss even about content us or any other things about what's what's going on in the industry. Happy to do that. Thanks. Aaron was great.

Aaron Conant 48:01

Yeah, no, it's been an awesome conversation. With that, I think I don't have any other questions that have come in over email over the chat. But so with that, I think we're gonna wrap up. Hope everybody has a fantastic week. Everybody takes care. You know, stay safe. I look forward to having you at a future event. And again, look for follow up email from us. We'd love to have a conversation with you and we'll be sure to connect you with Alex as well. Thanks again, Alex and everybody. Have a fantastic day. Take care now already. We'll see you again. Already.