Aaron Conant 0:18

Happy Monday everybody. My name is Aaron Conant, I'm the Co-Founder and Managing Director of BWG Connect we're a giant networking and knowledge sharing group of 1000s of brands who do exactly that. We network and knowledge share together to stay on top of the newest trends, strategies, pain points, whatever it is that shaping digital, I connect with 30 plus brands a week just to stay on top of those Digital Trends would love to talk with anybody on the line today, just to have some time to talk kind of give you an overview of what we're hearing going on across multiple different aspects of digital. That's everything from Amazon, to direct to consumer to shipping to performance marketing, to content to international expansion, whatever it might be. Always love a great conversation a couple housekeeping items as we kick it off. The first is if you have any questions at all, we want this to be as educational and informational as possible. So at any point in time you have a question drop in the q&a section you can drop into the chat and you can always email me Aaron a a r o n at BWG Connect.com we'll get questions answered any way you send them in with an email, I mean, that's even an hour after the call tomorrow next week, don't ever hesitate to reach out we've got 1000s of brands in the network, we usually get an answer pretty quickly. The other thing is, is we're starting three to four minutes after the hour and just you know, we're gonna wrap up with three to four minutes to go on the hour as well, we'll give you plenty of time to get on to your next meeting without being late. And with that, I think I'm going to go ahead and and kind of kick it off. So, you know, in talking with, you know, 30 plus brands a week, you know, there's been this huge pain point around content as a whole, not just, you know, we talked a lot in some of these columns about you know, the type of content, the amount of content, how you source the content, where's this coming from? Is it UGC? Is it not, but also had this movement now is the files like, you know, Facebook coming out and talking about the metaverse and you know that there's AI and involving creating, you know, different content. Now, there's virtual reality and augmented reality that's like this huge. There's a huge is this new bubble that's starting to percolate. So we had a lot of questions in the space around like, Okay, well, what is 3d look like? What is the importance of it, and I put that up against the side with, with the brands that I'm hearing a lot of, you know, in 2022, or 2020, there's a kind of a pass on ROI on different investments on the digital side. But in 2021, and especially heading into 2022. There's a huge focus by CMOS and CFOs and even CIOs on new technology and or investments in what's the return on investment there. So what's worth it and what's not. And so, we got some great friends, great partners and supporters, that network, over three, get there. You know, partying with a lot of different brands come highly recommended across the board. And they agreed to kind of jump on the call today, because they're leaders in this space and talk about, hey, what does this space look like? What is content look like? How important is it? What results? does it drive? Is it worth the investment? Is it not? So this is, like I said, an open q&a, throw out any questions you can think of along the way. But with that, I'll kind of kick it off, Ben, I'll kick it over to you. If you want to do a brief intro on yourself. And the company, we can kick it over to Matt and he can do an intro and then we'll kind of jump into some of the thoughts and the content here. So I'm good.

Ben Whitmer  3:30

Yeah, that sounds great. Thanks, Aaron, and for everyone joining in. Thanks so much. It's a pleasure to meet you all. As Aaron mentioned, my name is Ben Whitmer. And I am a senior account executive here with the Threekit team. I've been with Threekit for going on about three years now. But I've spent about a decade now in the digital commerce space, working with all different types of brands and their go to market strategies. So excited to be talking with you here today. And Matt, maybe I can let you introduce yourself before giving just a little bit of background here on Threekit

Matt Seeger  4:04

Cool, thanks, Ben. Everybody, thanks for joining. Matt Seeger here. I head up bar solution engineering team here Threekit. My background is in product catalog management, configure price quote, and integration DRP. And all the things that happen between selling a product, building it and shipping it out to people are going to be showing you some demos of people doing immersive things with content here today as well. So I'll kick it back to you. Awesome.

Ben Whitmer 4:27

Yeah, and you know, maybe With that said, what I can do here is is share the screen. And while this is being pulled up, just by way of some background, so for anyone that isn't familiar with Threekit, we can share a little bit more dialogue on just two Threekit is what we're all about, maybe at the tail end of the presentation here. But Threekit is a software company, we help companies really unlock immersive commerce experiences, we can double click into what that means. But one of our key verticals here a lot of the companies that we end up working with are in the furniture space. So I think when Aaron It kind of brought up this theme that people were looking to better understand, you know, how can 3d unlock new possibilities with content and how you engage with your buyers made a whole lot of sense for our team, you know, to come in and start to maybe see what share what we're seeing in the market. And you know how that's starting to create a new reality for how people share content moving forward. So, you know, with that said, maybe what I could do is talk to you a little bit about what we're seeing. So I always like to flash, this slide up here, when we're just talking about overarching themes in the market. So this is a slide that our organization created in 2018. And you'll notice that in 2018, prior to all the craziness that's happened these past few years, when people looked at saying, hey, how do we go to market and create content online, the thing that they were seeing in their core buyers, is that products, images, were the most important thing to help differentiate how people ultimately made decisions when they're making some type of purchase online, whether that's furniture, whether that's an automobile, what you know, you name it, people were using their eyes to make informed decisions on which products that they would end up, you know, ultimately purchasing. And the reason that it's kind of funny is, Hey, you know, fast forward three years, we're in a much different position than we were, I think, you know, over the course of the past three years, we've seen a pretty radical transformation into what's happening in the market. And I don't want to spend too much time on the C word here today. I think we've all we've all had a lot of that over the course of the past three years, but it has really started to unlock and make people think a little bit more about, you know, how are we engaging and driving towards these these digital experiences?

Aaron Conant 6:57

So yeah, just one back when so I mean, that's super interesting. So 83%, in 2018. So I mean, I would have thought it would have been higher on the star ratings, right, or ratings and review site. So that's pretty crazy. It'd be interesting to see, you know, to, to do that, you know, maybe in 2022, but that has active only have grown. Right. I know, we, if you look at everything that went on with, you know, ratings and review manipulations, and Amazon trying to cut down on it, but not really cutting down on your time. Yeah, you know, there is this, what I hear from a lot of brands is there's a lot of, you know, there's consumer mistrust in some of the ratings, right? The the new person that pops up on Amazon, right, in in four weeks says, you know, 12,500, you know, 4.9 star reviews? Yeah. So,

Ben Whitmer 7:49

yeah, I mean, without a doubt, and, you know, I think the way we were thinking about it in the past, and in frankly, how a lot of our customers were thinking about it in the past is they had a scale problems inherently. Right. So they knew that, you know, if they were gonna, if somebody was going to consider buying your product, first and foremost, the thing that you would need is to be able to see an image. And then that problem became a scale problem, because it's okay, well, if we want to be able to see a product, and we have 100 products that come in 1000 colors each, well, how do we start to throw dollars at this, you know, X amount of dollars in results in X amount of images out? And then how do we become more efficient getting there. The idea is the stars and ratings and those types of things still absolutely play a part. But what we're seeing is that stars and ratings play a much larger role, when it comes to service oriented sales, as opposed to tangible products that somebody is looking to purchase. You know, majority of the market still learns visually, 100% of your target market has been taught visually, since since birth. But you know, it's still people trust what they see with their eyes in order to make an informed decision about what they're going to purchase. I love it. Awesome. Yeah. And I think that's where this has been, you know, pretty crazy is, hey, people, we're looking to say, okay, we take photos today, what can we do? Well, let's try to, you know, create a faster horse to get us there. But the faster horse game doesn't work in today's age, because the markets evolved, right? People want more than just an image to tell the story of a product in order to feel confident in any type of purchase decision moving forward. So as we start talking about this idea, 3d content, it's like content is king, people want to be able to surround that type of experience. What we're seeing is that the type of engagement that people are looking for with that content is really what's driven this transformation over the last three years, there's people that are really excelling, and accelerating their go to market strategy, and this is kind of a consistent themes that we're seeing across our customer base, whether it's b2b or b2c buyers don't want to talk to anybody at all. They they want 100% would prefer to one, they don't want to read content. Now I want to interact with it.

Aaron Conant 10:16

Now that makes sense. I mean, it is you connect the dots here. So the oldest millennial is like, 3839 out, right? Right. So they're in a buying mode, they're in a buying role. And they've said their favorite website is Amazon, which we all know has limited interaction across the board, on the b2b side, I'm thinking but on the, you know, on the even on the consumer side is difficult to even get customer service at Amazon, they Well, you can find it buried somewhere in there where you can chat with somebody. But so you're seeing, you know, buyers here, this self guided Digital Research is that on both the direct consumer side like and as well as on the b2b side, this is kind of what I'm seeing here.

Ben Whitmer 10:59

It is, right, people want to go faster, they want to understand the exact product that they're going to be purchasing to fit their use case. So whether this is you know, let's say an assembly of a sectional that's designed to fit in your back room, or this is a commercial bathroom, and you want to be able to design a station with six sinks, that also has a baby changing place. All of those buyers want to be able to answer things like is this product appropriate for my space, was able to assess and determine that without having to get really Farley her really deeply involved with a technical expert at the organization, you know, that we're working with, and most people don't want to invest that time and energy, they want to be able to say, hey, did we pass a litmus test to say yes, this product, we're in the horseshoes and hand grenades, we're close. Now it's worth investing the time to, to talk further and educate ourselves with an employee at the organization. Which is, you know, pretty exciting. And I think that kind of lends itself irony into that second theme that we're seeing. So, you know, especially with the lead times, and these are things that we're gonna, you know, kind of bring up later when we talk specifically about furniture. But oftentimes, what people are really double clicking into is saying, hey, well, not only do I want a product, I know that I need a couch, I want the right couch for me, I want to make it my own, I know that I have 12 devices that are consistently on the top of my desk. So there better be 12 outlets that I can plug all these things into in order to make this the type of desk that's right for me. And, you know, ultimately, this is leading to a more dynamic type of experience, right? So buyers are saying, okay, it's not just about being able to see it, I want to be able to answer all those questions myself, I want to be able to make the product my own, and I want to be able to do that incredibly fast. You know, it's, it's fine for me to invest five minutes in building out the product of my dreams, I'm happy to do that in your website, I'm not gonna sit down and spend an hour and a half working through this with a sales rep or going to your store in order to do those types of things.

Aaron Conant 13:10

No, it makes sense. I mean, that the trend you know, is this spoil me now trend. Right? That, you know, everything's at my fingertips. Why not? Right and it's this weird though balance between asking and wanting personalization and, and a lot of people that identify and interact and at the same time people are saying to ASCAP not to track but when they land on a page, now it is spoil me now I want to be able to find exactly what I want or create exactly what I want, you know, in near real time. So now I love It's It's It's same transcript that I'm seeing as well. Yeah, well,

Ben Whitmer  13:51

and that's where it this becomes really interesting. So when Matt had brought up this idea earlier, this idea, we're referring to it as immersive experiences, right? People really want to engage with content in a new way. You can engage with an image by looking at it, which is great. I don't think that images are going anywhere in the go to market you need the ability to have images. But people also want that interactive, personalized, customized experience where they can make a product their own. So it's, hey, we want the ability to see it in all shapes and sizes. It's a product that I'm interested in help me better understand it. I want to see it in polka dots. I want to see it with zebra, you know, Stripes, I want to see it when it has different types of finishes associated with this. They want to be able to answer those types of questions that frankly, historically have relied on you know, tape measures, or you know, marking things off on your floor with tape in order to say does this fit my space they want things like augmented reality and then they want to be able to see these things in context. So you know when we can refer to this as you know, brilliant images, but Whether this is lifestyle, whether this is you know, white sweeps, the full assortment, so they want something that, that Okay, now that we've answered all the tactile questions, the spatial questions, do we also have, you know, a realistic expectation of what the whole thing looks like?

Aaron Conant 15:16

It's a quick question comes in. So do you see people using, you know, 3d configurators to generate 2d images to enhance the content image catalog? Yeah,

Ben Whitmer 15:27

without a doubt. And you know, I think some of the examples that, you know, we tried to pull a variety of different types of customers that we're going to review in these demos, whether it's furniture outright, or its decor, but they're all trying to say, Okay, well, we need to check the boxes on that tactile 3d configuration experience, we also then want to be able to, you know, deliver a print catalog, or we want to be able to recycle this content in a variety different ways. And that's actually a big theme that we're seeing in the market is okay, before making the investment here, a picture is only ever a picture. But 3d can be a lot of different things in the go to market.

Aaron Conant 16:06

Yeah, I think it it comes out of this, you know, the side of how much content brands are being asked to create at this point in time. Right, right. It is the catalog. It's also the Facebook ad, right? It's Instagram, it is, you know, the the direct mailers you're doing it is literally, you know, not images on the website, like, all of a sudden, you know, email, whatever it is, the amount of content that somebody was required to generate, you know, a year and a half ago is now completely different. So

Ben Whitmer  16:43

I'm sorry, it looks like I got just got kicked out of the presentation there for a second. You guys still have me yet

Aaron Conant 16:47

still have you. But we see. It's not in the presentation, though. All right, let me

Ben Whitmer 16:57

back up. Sorry, everybody. But maybe this is kind of a good transition point. Because Aaron, this kind of speaks on some of those themes that you're referencing. So when we start thinking about immersive experiences, the reason that people are turning to 3d as that focal point is they want to be able to use it in a variety different ways. And they go to market strategy. And, you know, I think when people are saying, hey, what is 3d do to unlock these types of experiences? And companies are embarking down this path for the sake of flip spin and rotating something on the screen like, Okay, why? Why would you do that? They're doing it because buying behavior is directly asking for it, the buyers are saying, I want the ability to understand dimensions, I want the ability, you know, I personally have never cared about the underside of a couch. However, people commonly now turn to see what the underside of the couch is like, because I don't know, maybe you have a cat and the cat constantly is pulling away at the stuff underneath the couch. And that's important to buyers. You know, folks are looking and exploring this content in a new way. So this is what we're seeing in the marketplace, just in general, buyers are directly asking for it. 60% of buyers want this type of interactive behavior and want to start to say, Hey, does this fit my space? People are willing to

Aaron Conant 18:15

bowl losing the sale to the competition. Right? So to your to your point, right? Is You're right, I never, you know, you go into a traditional, you know, furniture store, you never look underneath the couch, right? But if you can do it online, and I can see that, hey, there's actual fabric on the bottom, and I go to another website, and I can't spend the image and I can't see it. Is there a UCS shift there?

Ben Whitmer  18:43

Without a doubt. Yeah, and you know, I think if we could all just like take a step back for even a second here, and put your own just consumer hat on. Like, I know, personally, I will not buy a couch that cannot sit flush against a wall. Like that's me. And so if I'm on somebody's website, and frankly, you know, being in this space is kind of broken my shopping experience, because now I want to rotate everything and I can't everywhere that I go. But you know, if you don't show me something that sits flush against a couch, well, then I'm gonna keep looking till I find the right type of product that I know sits flush against the couch. And whether that drives me towards a transaction online, or that drives me into the store to make that purchase. What I'm investigating starts off with that online journey of answering all the questions I want answered before then driving towards that buying decision. And so that's where 3d becomes this really big differentiator for brands in the furniture space. They're saying, Okay, well, when I give people these controls, they can answer all the questions that they would do if they were in store. You know, we can explore all elements of the couch, we can understand some of the things that you can't even understand in store, like how does this fit in my space? And that's why people are typically saying okay, well if I'm looking online And I'm looking at a couch that's 15 $100 versus a couch that is 18 $100. Well, I have a lot more confidence in the 18 $100 couch that I've been able to place in my space. Which one would you go with if you're going to make a purchase decision online. And that's why we're starting to see, hey, you know, people are willing to pay more, if they can personalize a product, drop it in the space, understand how it fits with all their decor, you know, it's making a really big impact. And that kind of factors into this, it's not only just placing it in space, but it's being able to personalize it. So maybe, that pink polka.is coming back baby. And you know, people want to see what that specific pink polka dot fabric will look like, in their own environment. And maybe it matches really well with all their other decor. So that's why we're starting to see things when people are leveraging AR, they're leveraging 3d of increasing conversions. And the average, you know, order value is growing pretty exponentially, right? Hey, we're getting a buck and a quarter for every dollar that we would traditionally get. And to your point, this is kind of a stat that drives at home. So people are looking for that type of customer experience. So if we're talking about 3d content, a lot of those themes that we're seeing in the market that buyers are asking for, is this interactive, dynamic shopping experience. And so if you're getting an interactive shopping experience with one brand, why and not another? Well, wouldn't you go with the brand that's delivering and checking those boxes and making it easy to do but you know, making themselves easy to do business

Aaron Conant 21:35

with? I mean, for me, I think that goes back to the AR piece, if I can see it in my room and know, if I'm deciding between two and I can see it in my room. And I can know that it fits right then that helps with conversions. So another question that needs to just, you know, top of mind because a question that comes in around returns, what do you see, this has to have a drastic impact on returns as well.

Ben Whitmer  21:59

Yeah, pretty substantial. Now, this isn't unilateral. We just have our, you know, different customer stats, but there's about an 80% reduction in returns when it's to fit items, right? So oftentimes, that's one of the core categories for why things are ultimately returned is Hey, it didn't fit my space. And if you're just cutting out that alone, I mean that shipping, it's it's a pretty substantial ROI. for that type of reduction. Awesome. Love it.

Aaron Conant 22:33

Just a reminder, for those who have joined almost halfway through here, I'm just having a great conversation with Ben and Matt over Threekit. It's all around digital content, 3d ar impact that it has on overall, you know, your digital presence and conversion as a whole. If you have any questions, drop them in the chat, drop into the q&a, or just keep emailing them to me, Aaron, a a r o n at BWGConnect.com, so

Ben Whitmer 22:58

awesome. And so you know, Aaron, you had kind of posed the question earlier, it could have been somebody in the audience that was asking this question. It's saying, Well, you know, what are we actually seeing in this space? So, you know, oftentimes, we're really honed in on the buyer journey, but the digital teams, the marketing teams have been asked to define that holistic customer journey. And so when we start thinking about 3d content, well, 3d content isn't just in that go to market operations, it has an impact in a variety of other ways throughout the business, too. And that's what we're seeing from a lot of these digitally mature organizations that we're working with is they're saying, okay, we're going to deliver a superior customer experience and immersive experience to start in that initial transaction. But then what happens when they go to assemble the product that they purchased online? Well, we want to be able to provide some type of insight and directions when somebody logs a case, or interacts with our customer service, can we have a digital twin, that, you know, our customer service person can see the exact representation of the product that somebody has, has purchased, so you can log cases and communicate with your customer around those visuals. Maybe somebody didn't actually check out as they went through the whole buying journey, you know, when we're using 3d, we can start to then leverage this in a variety different ways for how you then come back and ultimately target, you know, somebody for this buying journey. So we know that you've specifically looked at this, you know, chair on the right, well, let's Let's feed this into how all of these other technology companies are optimizing for delivering ads. Let's leverage this 3d content, you know, inside of Google or other ad platforms that support 3d. It's been pretty exciting in the results that you know, our customers are giving us feedback on when they're loading their 3d content into these experiences. Not only are they creating it normally just for cold market, but they're noticing that their ads have much higher returns as you know, much better results than they have traditionally as well. Because it's something that somebody can engage with, it's this type of immersive, dynamic

Aaron Conant 25:04

experience. So, hiring those super interesting is, yes, this feeling that, you know, we're at this digital 2.0. And we got here faster than we thought, right that, you know, I mean, COVID accelerated us into it. But I mean, 3d Google ads, it's the next level, right? It's not just being there and being present anymore. It's not just SEO anymore. It's not just having the right image or the right accessories or right background. Now, it's a whole new technology level that stepped up the game that if you want to be able to play in this space, this is the new reality, right? I mean, you can still continue to grow. But it's that we've written we've gotten to a new level of maturity, I guess what I'm trying to say I didn't realize it was, you know, that impactful, especially, how many people are engaging in, you know, threes, you know, these 360s? You know, 3d ads on Google? Right? Well, I

Ben Whitmer 26:04

mean, it depends on everyone's ad strategy, right. But I think the thing that's really interesting is there are brands out there that are now doing this, and they're driving these types of results. And so if you unlock the power of 3d, you have ownership over your 3d, you're solving for your scale problem inherently, right. And now you can also recycle your content and much more meaningful way. And so I think everybody on this call is likely faced with the exact same challenge that everyone we're talking with in the furniture space is challenging, which is, there is a relentless amount of requests everywhere for the types of content that you need to be producing, we can't produce it fast enough, we don't have the resources of the budget to pursue those things. And so when you're working with a 3d asset, it becomes something that can be recycled very effectively, and how you go to market, making it much more nimble, in just how you deliver this type of content to customers. Yes. And

Matt Seeger  26:59

if I could add one thing there actually, just because I've been working with the Google products here for a little bit, is that recyclability of the content is really important. Just through the lens of Google alone, Google's a great way to drive people to your business, so they can discover it, even if they weren't, you know, actively seeking you. And ad is one way to do that. But if you think of where many people start their shopping journeys for anything in the world, it's likely Google or Amazon. So just as Google has these tabs up at the top, when you search for something like I want a blue mid century modern sofa, you get the web tab, the images tab, the video tab, Google is currently indexing 3d content. So knowing that they're indexing, it is a good way to look into the future, they're likely going to be surfacing search results for this too. And it's a good way to use the content you might be using for an ad to differentiate yourself in search and make people find you quicker, because you have the ad that are sorry, the search result that's gonna let you pop a sofa into your room versus read a description and click into a link. It's kind of the way we see it moving.

Aaron Conant 27:59

is awesome. So a quick question comes around on photo realism. So right, there's the concern, you know, that it's, you know, it's not photorealistic? Can you can you address, you know, quality of imagery and everything else? If you're going to use it in a Facebook ad? If you're gonna use it in Google ad, if you're going to, you know, repurpose some of what's going on. How photorealistic does it get?

Ben Whitmer  28:25

Yeah. Well, it's a great question, right. And I think people are looking at their content strategies in a variety different ways. One, the quality of 3d is consistently improving, but your 3d asset can become a photorealistic image. Your 3d asset can also be this interactive experience, your 3d asset can be an augmented reality experience. So you have control over how these things ultimately look and behave in your go to market strategy. And that's I think the, the, the core value proposition of why 3d starting to unlock a lot of these possibilities for companies is you can have your photorealistic image if your starting point is 3d. So if you want to get there, you absolutely have the the ability to and I think some of the examples that we're going to look at for companies that are dominating in this immersive game, right? They've chosen to surround that buying experience. They're delivering photorealistic images, they're delivering this interactive content, and they're delivering augmented reality, to shoot, you know, a boat through all of those different types of use cases, in our customer experience.

Aaron Conant 29:35

It's interesting because I just think I completely agree with you, I think, you know, the fact that Facebook, Google Amazon are all working on, like 3d, like universes, right? The metaverse where you will, you know, basically some, you know, immerse yourself in it, you'll put on an Oculus headset, right, you will interact and they aren't doing that just for entertainment. They're doing that to make money. Right, and they're all over investing in it right now. This is then driven by that. So now love it. Awesome.

Ben Whitmer 30:10

Yeah. And you know, I think it's it's kind of interesting. You're looking at this example on the right and is it photorealistic now, but if you were faced with two ads, and one of them was a picture, and one of them was, hey, this thing I can spin around, flip and rotate on the screen, you're probably going to click into the one that can flip spin rotate on the screen, so that you can understand if there's more images that are photorealistic, or does it fit in my space, because you've already started that interactive behavior.

Matt Seeger 30:36

Now another thing that I think is always interesting to think about with 3d is, it's kind of like the right tool for the job in a way, like one trend I see a lot is that people want Personalized Products more so than just off the shelf products. If you sell just 10 things, and they're off the shelf, you may never need a 3d content tool, right? Maybe you want to go online and get to AR and but nothing's gonna be more photorealistic than a photo itself. But in a world where we demand the ability to change every single thing, the ability to just simply get photos of things that have never existed and will never exist until someone orders it 3d offers you an avenue to actually give that experience at least have a very good representation of what something's going to look like, without ever having to think about it ahead of time. And then when you think of personalization, from a more macro scale, people want to customize, like the entire setup of a living room made building like sectionals or multiple pieces of furniture together where those types of experiences simply can't be put together with photos period, because I can't look at a big walk in closet take you know, look at you know, Ben, whatever the closet in that room is it doesn't look like it's gonna be a massive walk in closet. The one behind me certainly isn't either. But that's somebody else's world. And they need to see that 3d allows you to take the kind of parameters of any of your shopper and make it applicable to everybody.

Ben Whitmer 31:57

Yeah. And, you know, this might be a really good opportunity to shift gears, because this Matt's talking through some of those experiences. And you know, how these can come together in a variety of different ways. I think walking through a few examples of companies that are doing well could be impactful. Like, could we actually switch gears and maybe I could have you walk through a few examples?

Matt Seeger 32:20

Yeah, I've got a few queued up here in mind based on what you've shared here. So let me go ahead and share my screen. Ben, if you could just give me a thumbs up or something that I'm sharing. All right, I'll continue through here.

Ben Whitmer  32:32

We're looking at CB two. Yeah, perfect. Yeah.

Matt Seeger  32:35

So here's an example CB two it's a you know, trendier brand of Crate and Barrel. Been a customer of ours for a long time, mainly starting with the photography problem. They make a lot of things and a lot of colors and a lot of fabrics. And they could not produce them. And we actually started by producing photorealistic images for them. But because they made that investment in kind of the early investment in the metaverse, if you will, of digitizing their products in 3d, it actually allowed them to shift gears and now address the new type of buyer who's going to find the product online and not necessarily want to move to the website or go to the store to see if something fits, they've actually enabled augmented reality from those same assets. And what's great about using all these new pieces of technology to enable the experiences, I didn't start on my augmented reality enabled device I'm starting on my desktop computer as you can see in front of me, the technology is actually going to make this super easy for me to zap this over to my phone where I actually could show you this experience so let me do that actual thing in front of you right now. And I'll pull up my camera and pointed at that QR code. This is going to push me right to the exact same page I came from prepare me into my augmented reality space and you guys are gonna have to see my office from behind me as I placed this item next to my existing TV set here. If I was shopping to see if this was going to match my furniture would there need to talk about lowering the rate of returns why not know if this was something I wanted to match this is not the product I want to get because the woods not going to be close to I might be able to adjust the fit and finish of it like to see if it fits in an area but now I'm a more informed buyer by putting something into my space without ever having to go into the store and the flip side of AR works to I can't bring that piece of furniture with me to the store to see if the wood matches this is really the only solution for that problem.

Aaron Conant 34:25

No I mean it also answered the the earlier question around you know companies using it for you know 2d images as well. So we're all those images of the individual pieces generated from a 3d image and just fabric or texture put over top of it.

Matt Seeger 34:44

for that particular product. I don't really know if you're looking at one of their soft goods like an ottoman sofa, loveseat those those are okay. So here's another example and I think this is a really great thing about augmented reality to talk about Because most people when they think of basic augmented reality, they're thinking of things you're just dropping under floor. But you can open up the world of possibilities here because this works on anything in wall art is a an other types of home decor huge in this area. So yellowkorner saw the really interesting problem made by photographs from well known photographers, and they run the exclusive prints of it, their limited edition. So as I come through and kind of pick my size, you can see how many prints are going to be left in the world, the problem that they face was a huge cart abandonment problem, people would shop people seem interested, but they just aren't buying. And that's because I have really no idea. If 30 by 24 is really the right fit for anything. like am I going to go get my tape measure while I'm ready to buy, I might not and this is a pretty concern purchase, right? You're almost in three figures for a piece of art. So again, back to the returns thing, the world is really, you know, I'm going to pop this do this exact same thing, bring this over to my phone, so I can show you what this will look like on the wall behind me. But the other way to think of a return right is like if somebody is not buying from you, they're buying it from somebody else. So when they were having all these carts get abandoned, they were done, are you seeing my phone, I just don't see it on my computer.

Ben Whitmer 36:17

Now we're looking at the URL still. See, now we're looking at your Yep,

Matt Seeger  36:27

in my hand, I saw that there. So yeah, they're not buying from you, they're buying from somebody else. And if you can increase the rate that you're getting things in your cart, you're gonna be getting more of those. So here's that actual piece of artwork, I'm gonna let the air find my wall, got that book right there ready to go where I want to put this, I can actually confirm that that piece of art can fit, I no longer have the hesitation on fit or finish, this is actually going to fit and finish my space really nicely right there. And you can see like the AR tracking is getting very good on all the devices. Notice I did that right through the web too. Not everybody's the size of Amazon or wayfair and can ask people to install apps to do augmented reality. This is done directly from the browser. So your eCommerce store is ready to work with this stuff, I got two more examples, I promise I won't flip back over to my phone again. So here's one of those solutions that really only 3d consult, take photorealism aside, California closets is allowing you to customize a full personal closet organizer here. So it actually begins by asking for the dimensions of the space, we're going to work with them, because that's going to greatly restrict what we can or cannot use. So I'm going to move along to design my system, I'm going to add just another rack or two here. So we can actually start configuring these all independently. But let's, let's happen to that middle one. First, I might say I want to put a dresser down at the bottom, we're solving all the itty bitty fitting finishing things here along the way too. So if I add another coat rack, I can actually move these along to any area that'll fit it and it'll stop me from moving too high or too low, which means I can never accidentally add, say the shoe rack into an area that won't fit. In fact, I've got this constraint so well that this is exactly how it's going to work, I don't need to worry about it not fitting the system is assured me that it will fit. And what I can also do is see the aesthetics of these things, maybe my walls aren't white, maybe my floors are not Brown, I can actually see what this item will look like. And it's a highly complex item. And the initial results that they've seen from this is like really, really sounding. They're kind of testing through different channels right now, the original one which is work through designer, the other one which is work through here, the carts created through the design your own system are 25% higher, and they don't have the added costs of a designer being involved in the system. So this looks like it's gonna have a great ROI for California closets here to enable people to buy things that are incredibly complex build complex carts all on their own.

Aaron Conant 39:02

So it was it was the I felt website speed.

Matt Seeger  39:06

What does it do to website's speed, so that our platform in particular is going to work in a way that allows your websites to work, whatever speed they work, our player is pretty well optimized, it loads asynchronously. So even if it's a little larger than other parts of the site, this will be loading in the background. And our system is optimized to only take content on demand as needed. So this sofa that you see on my screen right now the sectional from leadsec, it comes in, I mean literally hundreds of different colors, all of this other color content. This isn't loaded in you know beforehand, chances are I'm only going to click through 510 of these things. We don't add hundreds of superfluous things to your page that you won't be visiting, it's all pulled on demand. So we do a pretty good job of enabling the technology that's you know, kind of hard to wrap your arms around period by optimizing it with the you know the platform tools up and on like we talked about a minute Awesome. Yeah. So this is another, like, just great. You know, I guess you could call it a great COVID story, as I actually went to the lovesac, down here in Chicago where you can design these things. And it's a kind of a cool experience, you take these cardboard ish cubes and move them around and see what they're gonna actually look like. But once COVID hit, all of those experiences went away to everybody, but they still had to, you know, move these sofas. So what they did is actually created a full 3d experience where I can design something that is fully custom to my space, and my, my room as well. So if I actually come in here, I can say, you know, I have darker floors, I want to see what that's going to look like here, then you can move all these different pieces around to really build a piece that is truly what you needed to be from just these basic shapes. And again, similar to what California closets is doing, you're actually building up a pretty complex part. And it's a pretty considered purchase, but you're able to design these things. All within, you know, from my own desk here, Ben, you're mentioning what you know, the Zebra printer, the leopard print earlier on, maybe I'll, I can go ahead and put one of those prints on there trying to zoom in for us because I know the question of photo realism was always coming up. I'm not sure what the zoom is doing here. But I zoomed all the way into my lovesac section that I've designed here to show you that I can actually get a sense of what this fabric does look like as I get closer and closer to that material. So Ben, those were just a few of customer examples that came to mind of how they're taking 3d to really make the shopping experience for their furniture products, immersive online solving fit and finish what they are allowing you to personalize products in your space, as well as handling the aesthetic issues of it like what's it going to look like in my room, my floors are darker, or my walls are a different color. Those are some things that came to mind. But as Aaron mentioned, feel free to keep it conversational, ask them questions, I'd be happy to answer.

Aaron Conant 42:05

It What does the integration look like the next question that comes in? But yet, you know, ar 3d, you know, platform like you guys, but is it a heavy lift? Is it you know, three months? Is it six months? Is it is this a SaaS based platform? These are questions that people are trying to figure out.

Ben Whitmer 42:26

Yeah, and this actually might be a good time to switch gears. So I know we're talking through maybe our experience and what we've seen for customers, but we haven't talked too much just about Threekit in our technology. So maybe just to give like a, you know, a 62nd overview here. You know, Threekit is purpose built to create these types of immersive experiences. You know, traditionally, when we're working with furniture companies, they're trying to solve for the scale problem. They're trying to solve for the experience problem they're trying to solve for, hey, we have an ever changing catalog. And we need the ability to create this content quickly, efficiently and in variety, different experiences. So Threekit is a cloud based software solution. It's for visual commerce. And it's purpose built for this content problem that's existing in the marketplace. And part of the reason that we've we've partnered with so many companies in the furniture in the decor spaces, that those challenges that we're seeing in the market are challenges that are really near and dear to the furniture space. So for us being able to say, hey, we've got this cloud based software solution that can plug in anywhere. If it's that interactive 3d experience, great, we can just create a little div, drop it into your web page, and you're off to the races, we can integrate it with your commerce cart, fantastic. If it's an AR experience, we can include the button to launch those types of things from your website. And if it's creating, you know, this via images, we have an incredibly fast CDN, to be able to serve things up directly from the platform driven lunch, this type of meaningful content and these immersive experiences. So we could definitely spend, you know a good deal of time talking to you about Threekit and the technology and the platform just outright. I think the thing that's most exciting is what you know our customers are doing with the technology is there saying hey, not only can we use this as part of our go to market, and marketing for eCommerce, for social media for sales, but we can start to plug this in into a variety of different ways. So you know, that lovesac example that Matt was mentioning before, right, not only are they leveraging this in a digital presence, but they're also then leveraging this in an in store kiosk. So people that are coming in are, are now able to configure these things with the design associate who's on site. And after launching this interactive experience online, they actually saw their highest in store sales rates ever. Because people were looking online, they were coming into the store, then they were using exactly what they built online, to aid the sales rep in store to sell more effectively, right they had 15% higher than they've ever seen. And that's kind of carry Through Since launching the product. And that's where this whole concept of what we're doing with with our technology starts to really shine. When we start talking about maybe features that are built specifically for the furniture space, incorporating things like data automation, being able to do advanced configuration, being able to serve as like the asset management system, for then how you create a variety of different endpoints becomes pretty, you know, exciting, being able to understand what customers are doing with the data and being able to store all your materials, upholstered options finishes, become a really effective way to stay organized, as you launch more and more content. But that was kind of a long winded way of saying, hey, ultimately, what we're doing is we're driving towards results. And I think everyone's on this call here today saying, hey, how can we weaponize our content strategy to start achieving the results that we're after, as a business, you know, hey, we want to improve improved conversion rates. While more engagement, we want people to come back and not only spend more on their initial transaction, but come back and start to build out, you know, additional systems, like they're doing the California closets, they're optimizing initial purchase, and then people are coming back and buy more.

Aaron Conant 46:14

Which is question comes in, what's the internal lift for a team? So they hire somebody? And then the other question that comes in is around where do the original content files come from? Are the CAD files, are they you know, photos? Are they you know, renderings? How do you get the word of the original files

Matt Seeger  46:31

come from sort of the spectrum from the original file standpoint, so if you're a company that's already investing in some of the stuff like you've been doing rendering on your own, that 3d content can be reused. If you're more of, you know, designing this stuff for build, you'd likely have CAD files depending on the type of furniture that could be a good fit like hard goods, those are really good fits to start from CAD files because a right angle and would typically comes out as a right angle, you might not have any experience in this so so you know, images of what you have even physical material samples that you have to create these materials, which you can then use all throughout any catalog you create, those are things that we can help with, either with our own in house teams, or connecting you to our network of people who are certified implementers on Threekit. And then the other part of the lift is integrating it into your your front end stores. Right. So this is likely whoever your this is, you know, one of the special sauces of three kiddos you take the complex 3d stuff out of the equation for the people who need to operate the eCommerce store. So they're just going to be either your front end developers who build your front end site, or even using one of the connectors to our eCommerce tool to glue those together. And, again, if that's an in house resource of yours, there's typically training for it. If not, we can work with a three good team here or connect you to one of our certified partners to implement this.

Aaron Conant 47:49

Awesome. So another question comes in Can you speak to integrations with mainstream eCommerce platforms such as Shopify? bigcommerce, Magento?

Matt Seeger 47:57

Yeah, for most of the mainstream eCommerce platforms, we have a connector, which would allow you to connect your what you've set up in Threekit to your storefront, we have mon Shopify Magento bigcommerce eCommerce tools, just recently released one for the Microsoft commerce, the headless on that they've just rolled out, there's probably some others that are slipping my mind right now. And then if the connector for your particular tool is not mentioned, what's nice is that, you know, being a headless platform to begin with, makes it very easy to integrate to the front end experience of any eCommerce store that there is out there. And you're never limited to just using our connector because of that same design, we have been headless. So if you want to go with a very specific, you know, experience for your user, you're you're free to use our headless tools to build enroll that experience exactly as you see fit.

Aaron Conant 48:50

Next question that comes in is like, how long does it take to roll out?

Matt Seeger  48:55

Yeah, I mean, it usually depends on how much of a catalog that somebody wants to cover. Because there might be some work to actually you know, get that information from the catalog, digitize it, etc. But three buckets you got to think of are getting the catalog synced up, we are thinking of things as configure configurators in your catalog and what you can sell. Setting up the visuals is a second bucket. So the bigger that is, the longer it is Luckily, none of these things actually have to happen in sequence, they can be done in parallel, even the artwork to create these things can be done in parallel, you have a big catalog, you can have more people working on it. And then third bucket is the eCommerce bucket. So you know the bookends, setting up the catalog and integrating to the eCommerce tool that you do it once and you get to take advantage of that whether you're doing your whole catalog at once or you're rolling it out in phases. And you know, that could take anywhere from like three weeks to you know, a couple of months depending on how sophisticated your environment is. But we've had folks go live in for weeks just because they're trying to do a handful of items in their catalogue, test it out and then do it for you know either rollout stick you know, to backup into the rest of the catalog or only use it for new items moving forward. So it's a you know, unfortunately, I don't have an exact answer to give you a lot of it depends on how much of a catalog you're looking to cover right out of the gate. But the nice thing always is you don't need to commit to the whole catalog, when you start, you can, you can get ROI really quickly with your new line are your best sellers.

Aaron Conant 50:21

So, you know, just kind of get into the last two minutes here any, like, key thoughts, new things that are popping up things people should be aware of things you thought would be asked today that, you know, you'd ask all the time, but didn't get brought up. We'd love to hear any, you know, kind of things that kind of wrap us up here.

Ben Whitmer 50:40

You know, the thing that typically comes up is, you know, how do we create a strategy to get started is probably the biggest theme. And that's a lot to unpack in just a couple of minutes here typically, you know, having an understanding of the organization, just the goals that that our customers are kind of coming in with maybe some of the challenges that they're seeing today. and building a strategy out together becomes a really effective way of doing that. You know, for some of our customers, they do like to go with the boil the ocean approach, other customers we're working with, they're saying, hey, these are our most profitable items. We're seeing growth against our competitors in these ways. We want to start with this subset of products, you know, kind of coming up with a strategy is a really effective way to think about, hey, how can we scale this thing out over time? That's generally the biggest steam that that maybe we get on a recurring basis, you know, hey, how do we work together to turn this into a reality?

Aaron Conant 51:40

Awesome. Love it. Yeah, that that makes it we're here

Ben Whitmer 51:42

for that. Yeah.

Aaron Conant 51:45

Yeah, I mean, well, that's it right? Is that is taking the first step is the hardest, right? And, and I think the other one is, hey, do I need to do this across my whole website? Or can I do this individually? You know, like, with my top performing items, and sounds like you can break it down individually to top performing items. And so, you know, Ben, Matt, thanks so much for your time today. Thanks to everybody who dialed in, and for the great questions that came in. You want to follow up conversation, you know, more than happy to put you in touch with Ben and Matt here. They're great friends, partner support is the network and a lot of brands in it. You know, even if you're looking for that first initial conversation, is this right for me? Like how does this fit in? What is you know, what does this scale the program look like? You know, what should I be thinking about for the future of 3d and ar 100%? We're setting up, you know, a time to connect with Ben and Matt. They're all around great people and more than happy to share across the board. You know, on my site, I'd love to have a conversation with you to kind of go over what we're seeing, you know, across the digital landscape from Amazon, direct consumer to international expansion. Do you ever have any pain points, you have any questions, need help find any service providers don't ever hesitate to reach out. We've got a short list coming top via the top recommended service providers that come through brands such as yourself. Anyways, with that, I think we're going to wrap up. hope everybody has a fantastic Monday, everybody. Take care. Stay safe. Look forward to having you in a future event. Thanks again, Ben. Thanks, Matt. And we'll be in touch. Alrighty.

Ben Whitmer 53:06

Thanks so much, everybody.