Unlocking the Power of 3D Visual Content for Sporting Goods Brands

Sep 27, 2021 1:30 PM2:30 PM EST

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Key Discussion Takeaways

People are searching for a unique customer experience in the digital landscape. But how can a brand create an innovative web experience? Imagery is one way to stand out amongst competitors, but photography and digital advertisements have always been cumbersome and costly — until now.

For this kind of outreach, 3D configuration stands out from the crowd. How? With 3D, consumers can have configurable choices for experiencing their products before they buy. They can see their product in a room for scale, rotate the picture for a 360-degree view, and compare product color — unlike any other purchasing experience online! So, how can you improve your customer’s experience online?

In this virtual event, Aaron Conant sits down with Tony Lopez and John Wright of Threekit, a leading product customization and visualization platform, to talk about leveraging a 3D model to optimize your consumers’ web experience and scale your brand. Together, they discuss the performance configuration experience, how to build a scalable platform, and creating a practical model for growing your brand’s visual experience with augmented reality.

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

 

  • John Wright talks about delivering the three phases of interactive buying in a scalable way
  • How to configure a technology platform to deliver an unparalleled consumer experience
  • What is a strategy companies can leverage for creating cost-effective augmented reality marketing tools?
  • John describes a client that doubled their revenue using 3D configuration
  • Tony Lopez explains 3D model combinations that are not configurable with photography
  • The versatility of 3D products for a unique user experience
  • How can augmented reality scale your brand?
  • Tony talks about using any web-based platform for 3D configuration
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Event Partners

Threekit

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

Connect with Threekit

Guest Speakers

John Wright

RVP Sales at Threekit

John Wright is the Regional Vice President at Threekit. John is an accomplished account executive with over seven years of experience at companies like BRC Advisors, Cbeyond, Salesforce, and Box. He graduated from the University of Southern California with a Bachelor of Science in Policy, Urban Planning, and Development.

Aaron Conant LinkedIn

Co-Founder & Managing Director at BWG Connect

Aaron Conant is Co-Founder and Chief Digital Strategist at BWG Connect, a networking and knowledge sharing group of thousands of brands who collectively grow their digital knowledge base and collaborate on partner selection. Speaking 1x1 with over 1200 brands a year and hosting over 250 in-person and virtual events, he has a real time pulse on the newest trends, strategies and partners shaping growth in the digital space.

Tony Lopez

Lead Solution Engineer at Threekit

Tony Lopez is the Lead Solution Engineer at Threekit, a leading 3D visual commerce platform. He has extensive experience promoting 3D and augmented reality software. Before joining the Threekit team, he worked for Oracle as a CPQ Solution Engineer and a CPQ Lead Solution Engineer for SalesForce. Tony graduated from the Dominican School of Philosophy and Theology.

Event Moderator

John Wright

RVP Sales at Threekit

John Wright is the Regional Vice President at Threekit. John is an accomplished account executive with over seven years of experience at companies like BRC Advisors, Cbeyond, Salesforce, and Box. He graduated from the University of Southern California with a Bachelor of Science in Policy, Urban Planning, and Development.

Aaron Conant LinkedIn

Co-Founder & Managing Director at BWG Connect

Aaron Conant is Co-Founder and Chief Digital Strategist at BWG Connect, a networking and knowledge sharing group of thousands of brands who collectively grow their digital knowledge base and collaborate on partner selection. Speaking 1x1 with over 1200 brands a year and hosting over 250 in-person and virtual events, he has a real time pulse on the newest trends, strategies and partners shaping growth in the digital space.

Tony Lopez

Lead Solution Engineer at Threekit

Tony Lopez is the Lead Solution Engineer at Threekit, a leading 3D visual commerce platform. He has extensive experience promoting 3D and augmented reality software. Before joining the Threekit team, he worked for Oracle as a CPQ Solution Engineer and a CPQ Lead Solution Engineer for SalesForce. Tony graduated from the Dominican School of Philosophy and Theology.

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Aaron Conant

Co-Founder & Managing Director at BWG Connect


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

Co-Founder & Managing Director Aaron Conant runs the group & connects with dozens of brand executives every week, always for free.


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Discussion Transcription

Aaron Conant 0:18

Happy Monday everybody, my name is Aaron Conant. I'm the Co-Founder Managing Director of BWG Connect, we're a 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, patterns, you know, strategies, pain points, whatever it might be, that's shaping digital as a whole. That's every vertical from, you know, fashion to, on this case, sporting goods CPG, whatever it might be, in a start up the fortune 100 just having a lot of great conversations. And one thing that's come up over and over again, as I was just mentioning, in the pre call, chit chat is just content. And when the same topic comes up over and over again, in those conversations, we put out an event like this, and you know, content is just, you know, something that's in high demand at this point in time, it costs a lot of produce, but it's being consumed faster than it's ever been consumed before. And there's, you know, not just by people, but there's multiple other platforms that are popping up that are saying, Hey, we need new new kinds of content, we need AV testing, we need to first you know, decide which ads are working, what's converting on site. And just enough pain points across the board that we thought we'd kind of put on this event today. And a couple housekeeping items, as we get started, you know, start in three to four minutes after the hour. And just so everybody knows, we're going to wrap up with four, or maybe five minutes to go on the hour as well, we're going to make sure you know by, you know, 226 eastern time, you're going to be able to, we're going to be hanging this thing up and get you on to your next meeting without being late. The other thing is we would like to be as interactive and educational and informational as possible. And so with that being said, at any point in time you have a question, drop it into the question section, drop me drop it in the chat or you can always email me Aaron aaron@bwgconnect.com And that includes you know, an hour after the call tomorrow next week, don't ever hesitate to shoot me a note. If you have any questions in digital space, wondering what's going on, you know, more than happy to share across those, you know, 30 to 40 brand conversations I'm having each week. But in this case, we've got some great friends, partners, you know, supporters of the network in a lot of different brands in it. And, you know, I'll kind of kick it over to you, John and Tony, if you want to do a brief intro on yourselves and on Threekit, that'd be awesome. And then we can kind of jump into some of the content today.

John Wright 2:34

Yeah, yeah, thanks, Aaron. So um, I'll keep my camera on. While I introduce myself, I'll turn off afterwards, that starts to distract me while I talk. But good to meet everybody. Or Thank you all very much for spending some time with us today. My name is John Wright. I run sales for the Western Western Central region here at Threekit based in the Bay Area, and I've actually I've been with Threekits now for about two and a half years and working product configuration for about seven and a half years. So you know, Threekit, what we are is we're a visual commerce platform, really focused on configurable 3d augmented reality and photorealistic 2d renders, we'll see I'm gonna do a an intro and kind of give a some intro slides on Threekit as a company in technology, what we do. And then from there, we'll shift gears, I'm gonna pass over my my colleague, Tony, to walk us through a couple different examples of it. So Tony, if you want to introduce yourself?

Tony Lopez  3:36

Certainly. Thank you, John. Thank you, Aaron. Thank you again, Aaron, for putting everything together. Good to meet everyone. And thank you for joining Tony Lopez. So I worked side by side with with John, but on the solution engineering side of the house. It's a pretty dated picture there on this slide. It's a pre COVID pre COVID picture. I've since grown my hair out a little bit more. But like John said, we can certainly walk through a number of different customers, hopefully some parallel customers. But should we also will have questions that get a little bit more on the technical side or implementation side. Things like integrations or how we set anything up administratively on the Threekit platform itself. more than happy to have those conversations as well. But again, thanks. Thanks, Aaron. And Thanks all for for joining. Yeah, awesome.

Aaron Conant 4:18

So just a quick reminder for those who've joined wants to be as educational and informational as possible. So at any point in time you have any questions drop into the question section, drop them into the chat or email them to me, Aaron aaron@bwgconnect.com we can answer all those real time. But you know, I'll kick it over to you, John. And we can jump into excellent content. That'd be awesome. I'll just pop in his questions roll in. I'll just kind of interrupt you as we go. If that's cool.

John Wright  4:44

Yeah, sounds great. Um, so So why are we here today, right. Reason why you're here is that buyers are really they're signaling and saying that they are craving a more interactive buying experience and when we when they say interactive, buying We really define that as a 3d experience an augmented reality experience. And what they're saying is that there's a higher propensity to buy from, from brands and from websites that offer this experience, whether it's a b2c or a b2b channel, higher propensity to buy there, they're also willing to spend more money as well, right. So it really is making a an impact of businesses that have that have rolled this out. And, you know, what we're seeing with that visual buying journey is really the way that Threekit defines it as three phases were, first is the 2d image that catches somebody's attention and brings them in. Next is that 3d experience where now you can build that product however you like. You know, bringing in all the individual pieces and components to configure this the way you would like, maybe do personalization with like a logo upload or custom text that's put onto it or engraved into the into that product. But but then also interact with it in a 3d manner where you can see it from every angle, and every zoom level, right. And then finally, the last step on that buying journey is augmented reality where it's okay now I built this, you know, piece of gym equipment or whatever this weight set, whatever it may be, I think this is great, I want to make sure that's going that this is not going to fit into the space that I have, from a kind of square footage standpoint. But also I want to make sure that what I've configured what I've personalized fits in with with that space, from a stylistic standpoint. So Threekit, we're really here to deliver all three of those experiences and really do it in a very scalable way. But but one other thing I do want to mention is that, you know, it's not just the buyers and people that are out the consumers in the marketplace that are saying that they want this sort of experience. We're also seeing, you know, the large technology companies really starting to step into this into this world as well, where you have dedicated engineering teams that are all focused on delivering a that 3d and AR an interactive experience, whether it's built into their into their technology platform, or it's actually built into their the hardware that they're selling to people as well. And Gartner actually said that, you know, visual configuration, this whole experience, this is one of the top things to actually come out of COVID. So whether you like it or not, this is something that's going to be happening, if you're not doing it today, your your competitors will. And the buyers are signaling that that's the experience that they're looking for. So it is very important now, quick history on Threekit as a as a company on the technology has actually been around since 2005. That's when Ben Houston, our founder today, he's our CTO now, and that's when he started building the technology. So when he when he did that, and he was actually focused on films and there were really three guiding principles that he had built into into it. Number one is the visual assets had to look amazing, for obvious reasons. If they didn't look great, they weren't going to be in the film. Number two, this had to be a collaborative platform, because there were people that were all over the globe and in different locations that were working on the same shared visual assets. And there had to be one central area for them to work together. And number three is it had to be a scalable platform, because every time there was a slight change or modification to an Iron Man suit, for example, you don't want to have to build a whole a whole new one from scratch from the ground up, you don't have to recreate that wheel, right? So those pillars are really built into the fabric of the technology itself. And it's lends itself very well to to an enterprise grade technology platform today. So fast forward to 2016. That's when Ben was actually approached by companies like Crate and Barrel and Herman Miller, you know, really companies that had very large product portfolios with many different permutations. And it was cost prohibitive for them to manufacture and photograph every permutation for their website. So that's when they asked Ben to start to create these and have them form digitally, for the site at which point he said yes, and then we really shifted focus to start solving business problems. And then again, fast forward again to today. And Threekit today, we have over 100 different employees around the globe, we are headquartered in Chicago. And we have also raised to date $30 million in in funding after we received our series A so the, the team now that we have on board is really a unique, unique group, we're having a very unique DNA because this is actually the same group that has a lot of you know, enterprise grade technology experience where we still do have our

innovation center and the original team that built this visual platform in our auto location. But it's also now the same team that did steelbrick cq or I'm sorry, big machine cvu which was acquired by Oracle. Next product configurating company we did was steelbrick cb Q, which is a card acquired by Salesforce and today we're doing product configurator configuration company number three, I bring that up because with that experience, you know, we've we've built into the platform to be able to support enterprise level, not just workflows, but also integrations with some of the different logos that you that you do see on the side. So really We have this kind of unparalleled level of experience when it comes to delivering an enterprise or technology platform. But again, we're you know, tying the this this beautiful visual experience to it. Now, like I said, we do the three different experiences with configurable 3d. So, you know, as you see here, that's prs, where you build your workbench, see all the product configurations, and options come together from every angle, it's augmented reality, there you see in the center, where you can now take that product and place it into your space. And then virtual photographer, you see on the right there, where now we are actually doing photorealistic renders of those products. Those are the photorealistic 2d renders, we had coined the name virtual photographer for it. Now, what's different about our platform, and the way that we approach these experiences is that it is a very scalable one, the way that we've architected it. So first, you know, traditional methods, you need to have a different visual asset to support each experience. So one asset to support 3d one for AR one for 2d. with Threekit, we actually will build everything off of a 3d model, and then the platform itself will then go and generate or render that that other file type for that other experience. So you have your 3d model, and we'll create an AR file based on what's been configured as an example. The other way that we do keep this very, very scalable, is we will actually componentize the products into their individual pieces and parts. So instead of looking at like that workbench on the left there, instead of looking at that as one kind of unique snowflake of a 3d model, we will break them into the individual pieces and parts. So now you can start to build them and bring them together essentially, like Lego pieces, but in 3d. So why that's very important is because that really helps mitigate any 3d model proliferation, that can really can start to go start to grow exponentially as you have more options available for your products. We take a similar approach with different attributes, material for materials and colors and things like that. So instead of having a really simple example, having one 3d model to support a dream, one another for blue, another one for black, we have one single 3d model, and then just different colors or materials that are built onto the platform. And then we can point those to the 3d model for where they get rendered. I know it's kind of a mouthful, it'll be it'll be more clear as we go through the through the demonstration itself. Now what what's also really important to keep in mind with the platform, is this really is a truly headless platform that can be used to support many different business processes, right. So from a very high level, we're 100% web based, we work on every every web browser, every mobile browser can be put into a mobile app, it really doesn't matter. We're totally agnostic there. But everything that we do is with the customer's experience in mind, right? We're meaning we want everything to be very performant. So we can ingest 3d models really, or different visual assets from from, you know, many different sources. But it whether it's a CAD file, or a true 3d file, or something that we help and help support and help you with building it from the ground up, we'll take it and we'll bring it on the platform, but we're going to optimize it for the web experience, meaning we're going to strip out everything that doesn't really contribute to the look and feel of that product in that in that browser. So that way, there's just the minimal number of things to load in the browser. And again, to make it very performant for your end user. Now, once it gets on the platform, you can start to set up all your different configuration rules and logic. And then of course, generate the different visual experiences, the 3d ar and n 2d 2d images. And then of course, point them to any any area that that you want that visual to make an impact, right. So be eCommerce or support, customer service and support, bring this into marketing sort of service, or magazine marketing sort of processes, or like an in store kiosk. Also like the AV testing that we talked about before we get to support that as well, that Aaron had mentioned. So really, there are a number of different areas that anywhere that you have a visual, anywhere that you have a visual of your product, that's where 3d can start to make an impact.

But the last thing I really want to touch on from a platform perspective, though, is that this truly is a technology platform that our customers can own and maintain, right? We don't want this to be a black box, we want customers to be able to bring on their own new products to be able to bring those to their mark to their website, go to market with those on their own, and we're gonna help help provide all the support and enablement we can to for our customers to do that. Because, you know, we don't want you to be handcuffed to us or a third party to be able to do this. Of course, we can help support it. But again, we want that we treat this as a true technology platform. Now from an ROI perspective, We're seeing increased conversion rates, we're seeing larger shopping carts, we're seeing drastically reduced return rates. And then you know, when you look at photography at scale, there really can be some tremendous value to be captured there. But by taking the virtual virtual approach of doing these, these photorealistic 2d renders, so

Aaron Conant 15:19

and I want to, I want to spend just a little bit of time on this, because I think this is something that starts to make sense, you know, as we look at where ratings and reviews used to be a key driver, right? imagery, content, whatever it might be, seems to be, you know, taking the place of, you know, hey, I have, you know, 5005 star reviews, it's almost like, that system is being gamed a little and there's a little bit you know, I don't want to say mistrust in it. But, you know, I guess I'm not survived surprise that it makes this big of an impact. I mean, these are pretty crazy numbers. A question comes in around the photography savings, like what is, is that photoshoots? Is that we're, we're How is that happening? And then I want to kind of walk through fuel returns and we can pick these apart and obviously anybody has any questions, drop them into the question section the chat or email them to me, Aaron aaron@bwgconnect.com.

John Wright  16:19

Yeah, and, and yeah, it's really the photography savings number that is a large number to put out there. Now where where that comes from, I'll use Crate and Barrel as an example. So Crate and Barrel, they use us to support all the different, you know, all different, like thinking about all the implementations that have their products. So with their couches, as an example, right? fabrics, our styles, leg styles, wood materials, all those different things, right? If you were to go before, before, they had Threekit, I think they had about 30 or 35% of their products on their website, because they have so many different options that they that they do sell. And it just, it wasn't feasible for them to do manufacturer and photograph everything. But from just a cost for traditional photoshoots, to even, almost like taking a risk on maybe like manufacturing the products with maybe some of the more edgy fabrics. And you're investing the time and money to, to photograph that, you know, in the traditional sense. Now that they're using Threekits, they have, you know, I want to say 99% of their products, really new products being developed, right. But they have about nine 9% of their products now available to be visualized on the site. Because we are taking that that rendered approach and component sizing all the different products is it really we we've created a very scalable way for them to update their their CMS system and ultimately get everything onto the site. So you know, not when you really when there are large numbers of products and things to be created and visualized at scale. That's where that where the biggest savings are realized.

Aaron Conant 18:10

Awesome. I mean, interesting, the fewer returns is that just be we'll get a more accurate view, or

John Wright  18:15

That's exactly right. Yeah. So constant because when a customer has a better understanding our understanding of the product, we find that they have you know that they have a better understanding there, they're less likely to actually return it right and within kind of the COVID age, right? Not everybody going into the brick and mortar location actually interacting or handling a product the way that they had in the past, right. So by providing this 3d and augmented reality experience, we're now putting it into my space, I'm going to see if it's going to be able to if I can, if it's going to fit right because everything is rendered out to scale. You can kind of help bridge that gap of somebody not actually having that tangible product in their hand. But Bridgette, via that via their website and kind of in a in a digital manner. So that's really where that stems from people just they're able to interact with the product more and get it as close to being able to hold it in their hand as possible without

Aaron Conant 19:14

actually doing it. Another question is, how often is the AR function used?

John Wright 19:20

across our customer base? You mean? Yeah.

Aaron Conant 19:23

Yeah, it's probably what it means is, yeah, if there is an adoption rate that's out there, you know, ar VR. I agree. I mean, you see Facebook talking about, you know, the metaverse, you know, which is all VR but will have an AR component to it. You know, we'd love to hear your thoughts there. And then how quickly is that adoption changed over the past year and what do you think is gonna happen in the coming year? So I added a couple other questions on there. If not,

John Wright 19:50

yeah, that's a great question. I would say in my two and a half years here I have seen in the last 18 months I have seen the AR the interest in AR and adoption of AR go up dramatically. I would say now probably about 80% of our customers want to start with augmented reality as part of their phase one rollout. Where that wasn't necessarily the case two and a half years ago. It's been tremendous.

Aaron Conant 20:15

Yeah. Okay, cool. Yep. Love it. Guys, thanks for the diversion there. Yeah, let us jump into a couple things. Others, if you have questions, just drop them in the question section to the chat, we'll get them answered.

John Wright  20:26

Yeah, so So today, you know, we have over 130 customers really across all all shapes and sizes, right. And different verticals, but from a sporting goods industry or sporting goods standpoint, we want to just highlight a couple key ones here. And it really does kind of speak to the different size and shape and makeup of the different companies, right, where it kind of speaks to Threekits, you know, we can help support the really small, a small company, you know, the 10, employees just getting something going with their very good Yeah, just getting off the ground with their new configurable products, all the way up to the to the very large companies that have, you know, the physical good, that is configurable, as well. So it kind of speaks to the the flexibility of the platform. And the the relevancy of the of the experience. One customer that I did want to highlight was TaylorMade. So they were going to market with the new drivers their sin two, and this was something that was going to be highly configurable, where you can select a couple different select colors for a couple different zones around the clubhead itself. But then also configure, you know, your grip, your shaft, things like that. And they wanted to make this experience at something that you had, that's only just direct to consumer so that you that you can't have access to, in in any other retail location. So they chose Threekit to help deliver this experience for the scinto. And there were some tremendous results with it. So once they put that out there, they actually doubled their the number of web visits that they had anticipated, and with that revenue kind of followed suit. So great, it's a great experience, I encourage everybody to take a look at it. And that would that also had some some great results. So one of the last things I want to touch on here though is how you actually will approach a product or a project right so first we need to you need to take a step back and look at the business and really understand you know, what's the problem that we're trying to solve is it just you know, increase conversion on a on your your customer facing website is that you want to better enable and arm the dealers and the different reps that you have out there. So really the IRS it just, you know, challenges with with, you know, putting all the different permutations of of your products on your website. So once you wrap your arms around that, then we need to start an insert, identify which products are going to be part of part of this, right. So once you once you identify the products that that you want to begin with, it can be small, it can be large, we can all support either one. But now now we're just gonna have to start to document the different options and permutations. And you have configurable choices that are available for those for those products. And then once we have and once we figure that out, you know, then we also have start to figure out okay, where are we gonna put this again? Is it on a customer facing website? Is it a dealer portal, is it a customer service portal, so that needs to be defined. And then lastly, next thing you really need to do is start to gather the different materials to support it. So the visual so you know, if you have, if you have a CAD file, if you have a true 3d file, that's great, we can work with those, if you don't have those, we can just, you know, work with you to help create those 3d files based off of reference imagery. There are really, you know, many different ways that we can come up with the visual assets. But we seem to start to need to start to think about how those, those materials start to get pulled together. Um, so those are that's everything. I want to talk from a slide perspective. But unless there's any other questions, I can pass it back over to Tony, and he can shows a couple different examples.

Aaron Conant 24:03

No, yeah. Tony, if you have a couple different examples, that'd be great. But also others you have questions? I mean, just a couple that come in, are around, you know, is it a SaaS based platform? Right? What kind of staffing is required? You know, and that's not I guess it's for any of the 3dr platforms. What does that look like? But you know, we'd love to see a couple things that has taken place here. But, you know, how long does it take to implement? You know, when people have questions, I think people are generally interested in content generation tools. Just you know, a little more details about it would be would be great.

Tony Lopez  24:37

Yeah, yeah, certainly. So the first one. Thank you, Aaron. And, as we kind of moved to looking at a couple of customer examples here. Threekit is 100%. Cloud cloud based the cricket platform itself so you can actually log in manage those assets, establish those configurations, make those associations for all the options All of that 100% via the Threekit platform. And then when it comes to implementation, of course, hopefully I can get away with saying that it depends, right, of course, it's going to depend on the volume of products as well as the complexity of those products, not just in terms of sheer individual products, so we can look at, for example, like a Crate and Barrel, as, as John was mentioning, because we were having that AR conversation, I actually pulled up a couple of customers here that are not actually in in sporting goods, they are in fact furniture. But some folks here that are doing augmented reality California closets, Euclid desks that we'll take a look at. As I worked my way back to to tailor made, but again, Crate and Barrel 1000s of products, but they're not terribly configurable. All we're doing there really is just swapping out hundreds in some cases, maybe 1000s of different fabrics. Whereas tailor made much more configurable from the actual driver itself, there are literally millions of combinations of a send to driver that I can configure. And then we'll work our way down PR x, maybe puca with a with a hat customizer. So again, it's going to vary in terms of the the number of products and then how configurable are those products, namely, how many options go into each one of them. But as I worked my way through, just kind of looking at tailor made here, I'll go ahead and expand my browser here. So we get a little bit more real estate. But again, three candidates 100% web based. And so what we're actually doing in the case of tailor made or any customer for that matter is we're actually embedding freecad directly into the website. So directly into those product pages, or anywhere on the website. There's no apps, no plugins, nothing that a user needs to download to, to actually have this whole experience. And what we're interacting with is actually a 3d model. So these are not images that have been stitched together. And kind of given that in quotations, 360 rotation or 360 effect. Again, it actually is a 3d model that we're hosting on the 3k platform, and then actually instantiating there directly on the website. And as I get to my configuration, there are things like very, very simple color changes. But also as I work my way down this set of options, you'll notice the camera is also just going to reorient itself for me. So I may not exactly know where the aluminum ring is, I may not exactly know which crown decals are being configured here. So we're automatically going to just adjust the camera angle for the user. So we don't have to spin the golf club around looking for exactly where it is. And maybe we'll land here on the tuning pin itself. Again, because it is a 3d model, that's what's going to allow me to rotate it vertically around horizontally, zoom in, zoom out. And we'll also notice a lot of the different textures here as well. So from a performance standpoint, from a 3d standpoint, with what Threekit is actually doing, we're not creating a 3d model, for example, for all this carbon fiber here, instead, we're just using image based textures. And that's what allows us to keep that product size or keep that 3d content to a minimum, so that we can actually enable a very performant web experience. And then as I work my way across the rest of the configuration, this is how we start to get into the millions of permutations. So again, hundreds of 1000s of color combinations. But when I start to factor in the hundreds of individual shops that are available, the hundreds of individual grips that are available, literally millions of ways you can configure a sim to driver, maybe I'll work my way down to the fujikura. a second ago, before I had selected a vendor, you may have noticed that there were in fact, hundreds of individual shaft models. Also from a configuration standpoint, we want to make sure that only the eligible and correct options are available. So that whatever the user is configuring is of course something that we can fulfill and manufacturer. And as I go through my selections, and we can see the the addition there of basically the labeling of in this case, the blue Ella core seven, maybe we'll grab the black Bella core six. And then again, just dynamically making those updates in real time to specifically what I'm configuring so I don't have to go through a full form. And click Submit, you'll notice as I went through this entire configuration, everything was instantaneous. And so all of these millions of combinations and permutations as John was describing earlier, we're doing that all dynamically in the browser. So again, we're not setting up or creating 1000s and millions of

golf clubs, which of course would not be feasible, let alone would not be feasible from from a traditional photography standpoint. So again, all we've done here is we've created basically configurable zones, the grip the shaft, those four or five different areas on the head of the club, the the driver itself, and then all of my inputs that are respond directly to those. So as I make each change, I can dynamically update that particular aspect on the fly. So I'll pause there. Aaron, I don't know if we had any questions come,

Aaron Conant 30:09

yeah. What is the impact on here? What's the impact on site speed? This question, I mean, this comes in pretty routinely, right? Is everybody wants to enhance the experience? You know, add additional content, whether it's video or whatever it might be. But there's also, you know, huge push by Google for site speed.

Tony Lopez 30:31

Yeah, yep, absolutely. So so there's a number of things that that Threekit does very intentionally from kind of an architecture standpoint, that lent very well to performance. Some of those things are what we covered a second ago, namely, we're not actually building out hundreds and 1000s, and potentially millions or even billions of different permutations of a product. So we're certainly not loading all of that into the browser, all of that to say we're loading the bare minimum into the browser. And then only as the user is making those configuration requests, do we then bring bring those individual or incremental updates into into the browser. So that's one very intentional thing that Threekit is doing, there's also just the approach to the modeling and applying those textures and applying those material finishes, that keeps the actual download size in the browser to a minimum. And then there's also very practical things that we can do. So if I'm looking at, for example, maybe a sofa, maybe I start off with a 2d image that's essentially just going to load instantaneously. And then behind the scenes, right, candidly, as we're, if we're loading 3d models, yes, it's going to take longer than a 2d image, right. But again, very practically a number of our customers, what we'll do, just from a user experience standpoint, is we load the page with a 2d image. And then behind the scenes, we're loading the 3d assets. So only when the user starts to click on the buttons and inputs that lead to a configuration, do we then load the 3d in, in the browser. So again, architecturally, a lot of things that Threekit is doing to ensure a very performance configuration experience. And then practically, there's things that our customers are doing from a user experience standpoint. And then just to illustrate one of those, one of those approaches, again, when it comes to prs, is if I were to, for example, just kind of hover over all of these different product landing pages from the the racks to the strength, there's about 100 or so different individual product pages that prs has. But as I work my way through the configuration itself, and maybe I want to start to add some, add some options to, to my rack here with the difference of the different pull up bars. Again, instead of loading everything into the browser at once, which again, amounts to hundreds of different products, we're just going to dynamically bring those individual components in as the user is making those configurations. And once I brought that particular product in, I can of course, the things like changing the materials, changing the colors, we'll work our way through, will, of course, put a folding bench in here. And again, for prs, their whole, their whole go to market is, of course that they have very compact, gym equipment for for the home gym. And so the key thing is really being able to understand what is the literal the literal footprint that is going to be taken up in my home. And so we have also the animation for PR x, right. And the idea here being is since I'm dealing with 3d models, I can do things like move them around the 3d space. So not only are are we seeing that via the animation for prs, but I can also grab this entire system and move it around my space here. If I had a smaller room, or a shorter room, now we can see I can also

adjust the dimensions of the room itself. And really just to make sure that when there's enough wall space, assuming that I have a very standard 16 inch spacing in between each of my studs that I can fit whatever I want to put into this configuration. So as we do that, we'll also add, let's grab maybe a bar and maybe some weights as well. The first time I did this, I was I was a little surprised, I asked myself, why are we just throwing the weight and the bar there on the floor. But it wasn't until that I got to the storage, the storage selection, that we're actually going to eventually throw that on the wall once we work our way through the full configuration. But again, the idea here making sure that my room is wide enough just to support those few different products. And again, the key thing from a PR standpoint is we're not loading the hundreds of different products into into the configurator. again as I worked my way across the individual tabs of the navigation here We can see that what prs is actually doing is bringing literally every single one of their products into a single unified, Custom Configurator. Here, which is actually going to be that tab there that I have highlighted a number of things that are also happening, things like saving and sharing my configuration. So if I've done something like this, I, of course, don't want to have to redo it. It also if I need to just share that with someone, I can copy that configurable link. And just share that with with anyone that I please. So I'll show one more quick example here. I know we're running a little bit low on time. But Aaron, any other questions in the meanwhile, as we've gone through the prs example?

Aaron Conant 35:42

Yeah, I mean, just people went out to Crate and Barrel calm photorealism. How photorealistic is it in the end. And then the other one is how photorealistic are, you know, fabrics.

Tony Lopez  35:57

Absolutely. So so with that being said, you can see again, here I have a few other a few other tabs, just very quickly with puca. I'm actually let's just go ahead and jump across a few different tabs here. You can see from a configuration standpoint, from a user interface standpoint, all of that is also 100% in your control. So PR x had those kind of collapsible accordions over on the right hand side where everything was very neatly consolidated into a very consumable user experience, tailor made kind of distributing both horizontally across the top here, with the individual options over there on the on the other half of the screen. Pook, on the other hand, write everything down here across the bottom, and it's kind of click through click through fashion. The only reason why I wanted to just toss this up here, if we were doing things like for example, embroidery, or engraving, or really just personalization. From a text as well, as an image standpoint, what we're doing is we're actually applying that directly to the underlying 3d. So instead of, for example, having just 2d images, and we're trying to superimpose an image or superimpose text on top of what is potentially a rounded surface, as we see here with buka, doesn't really give you that realistic, realistic understanding of what that product is going to look like in real life. But again, since we are dealing, in fact, with actual 3d models, we can actually see how that text or how that image and personalization is going to apply. But Aaron, going back to the most recent question, I'll jump here to my trusty Cabot chair here. So all I shouldn't say all of Creighton barrels images, as John had mentioned, it's in the 90s 95 plus percent or so, over the course of the years, we've probably now rendered, I don't know, three, 4 million plus images for for Crate and Barrel. And there was a question actually, that I don't think we ever addressed a little bit earlier that had to do with just what is the really the ownership, you know, what is going to be the FTP contribution. So we have a number of customers Crate and Barrel is probably one of the marquee customers who actually manages all of their, all of their digital photography in house all of the actual CG and modeling. And they have multiple partners, who will create those models for them. And then a couple of admins who dedicate, you know, maybe 25%, to 50%, of their, of their role to to supporting the 1000s of individual products across their entire website. And then as we land here on this particular cabinet chair, again, all of these images have been digitally rendered. So as I work my way across these dozen or so different letters, none of these were in fact, real photos. Instead, what we're doing here, again, is taking that 3d model, I've got a corresponding material library that John was talking about earlier. So again, I don't have to actually go through and say, if, what is this if livius fresco make it Libya, so if cashew make it cashew, if Emma Reto make it Emma Reto. Again, instead, I have just a library of in this case, only about a dozen different leathers, if we were to go to some of their other, some of their other product lines where there are literally hundreds of individual fabrics. We're just going to have that material library of all those letters, all those fabrics, all those suedes and microfibers, whatever they may be wood as well. So number of their products will have multiple things that can be configured. And then we're just gonna make an association of leather goes here, what goes here, and we let Threekits kind of cycle through all those different combinations and permutations. Once we get some furniture, it's a very good and practical type of product to to have augmented reality. So I'll actually go ahead and just click that button there. If I'm on a desktop That's what's going to allow me as the user to instantly go from desktop to, to my mobile device. And one of the first things that we said earlier is that Threekit is 100%. web based, it's 100%. Cloud based, that means there's no no apps that people have to download no browser plugins that need to be downloaded. Same thing, too,

to augmented reality as well. So it's using just that web based AR directly in your individual devices themselves, just using the camera there on the iPhone or Android devices. So again, if anyone hasn't scanned that QR code, I just have a quick little recording here, I'll go ahead and hit play on. But again, that's that same, that same cabinet chair, again, going from desktop to mobile. Now I see that on my mobile device. And sorry for the shaky camera here. But setting that cabinet chair I guess that's why it's my go to is actually have a cabinet sitting right behind me in my office, along with the the eastern batch there, which I guess is a little bit fitting for for the content of today's today's session. But I won't spend any time on California closets and an opponent of Euclid desk as well. But you can see all these folks also have augmented reality directly on their side. So again, all of these they're just like that's my websites, we can share the links out or Aaron can probably send them out, I even went ahead and pulled up premiere pontine because I noticed John had it on one of the slides I wish these guys were doing doing all the augmented reality because that might be fun to drop a 40 foot pontoon somewhere in the driveway. But a very fun configuration experience here. All the materials, the decking, the the panel colors, even the upholstery of the the upholstery and the trim of the furniture that is inside of these pontoons. So with that want to to pass it back to to Aaron, make sure to answer any final questions. And then of course, as always, we like to end these early so that folks have ample time to get to your next next meeting.

Aaron Conant 42:10

Yeah, just a couple things. The platform, were you able to get Sue, I think you had on there one of the slides it was you know the standard eCommerce platforms, what about custom platforms, were able to plug in there, what is rollout time look like. Um, and then I just one more around type of files that you like to

Tony Lopez 42:30

short. So when it comes to the actual 3d file, a number of our customers don't have anything to start with. So we're actually starting from scratch, maybe it's images, maybe it's two two dimensional drawings with dimensions. And we actually start the modeling from there. Oftentimes customers are in fact manufacturing the product, so maybe they have a CAD file. And then sometimes a customer has actually gone through some level of CG in the past. And they actually do have 3d files. And the difference really, between CAD and what I'm calling a, basically an optimized for the web 3d file is something that has really been stripped of all the internal components, right there springs and framing, and literal nuts and bolts inside of inside of that pontoon, for example, are inside of the sofa, for Crate and Barrel that I just don't need when it comes to configuring on the web. And that's also what lends to a performance and user experience. And so all that to say is there are probably hundreds of file formats across the landscape, whether you're looking at my Rhino and 3ds, and all the Autodesk 3d software. We don't want to force folks into having to use Threekit to create models, which means we want to support everything that's out there today. When it comes to integration as well, same thing, everything is web based. So as long as you can put JavaScript on the website, you can probably put Threekit on the website as well. So all of the eCommerce platforms, we have customers using the big ones like Shopify, Magento, Salesforce, big commerce, we've got a few SAP customers, we've got a number of Oracle customers, we've also got a number of customers who are using internal selling tools. So things like CPU John had mentioned previously, we've got a number of folks at Threekit with CPU in their background, both Oracle and Salesforce. Any of those again, as long as it's web based connection to the Internet, and you can throw JavaScript on it. You can probably put Threekit there as well.

Aaron Conant 44:53

Awesome. So just one just clarification point there so it's not you know, you don't have to use you for the 3d generation of the images, but then you can embed it in the platform for, you know, for the website. The flip side is like, do you take photos as well? Like what are the different types of file types across the board that you can take why people want to send those in.

Tony Lopez  45:23

Like an actual file extension itself, again, there's dozens upon dozens, again, CAD files, 3d files, ar files, just to throw a couple of the big ones. There's things like FBX, OBJ, step and iags. If you're working in the CAD world, and dw G, another, another, another big one from a CAD perspective, the images that we were looking at, for example, with with Crate and Barrel, what we're doing is actually taking those 3d models that are living in a 3d platform, and rendering those out into 2d images. That's what John was referring to its virtual photographer earlier on one of his slides, of course, that's just a regular image at that point. So things like PNG, jpg, etc. And then when we're looking at the, the augmented reality, again, taking those same 3d files, and that's what's allowing us to really enable all three of those experiences so I've got my embedded 3d, but having 3d is what allows me to render 2d images from any angle and any perspective it's also what allows me to make a leap very quickly and seamlessly to augmented reality and rendering those out usdc in the case of IO, iOS and apple and GLB in the case of Android Yeah, but

John Wright  46:39

in any event that a customer does not have any 3d files to share we can take a you know 2d images like like reference photography of a product and then it's at that point that it's it's really just a pure 3d art exercise so the customer will work with with that 3d artists or yeah come to work with the 3d artists then use those reference images that reference photography as like the baseline and kind of the understanding of how this how these 3d models should be built and what what they should be looking like we also have customers that will send physical products physical like fabric swatches or the the product itself to us to us as a as an example of how these things should be represented

Aaron Conant 47:31

awesome awesome.

Love it yeah and I see we have a few minutes left here you know other things that are top of mind that you guys get asked regularly that you thought might come up today that didn't you know obviously anybody wants a follow up conversation 100% worth you know having that with the team over Threekit are great friends partners supporters or the network and a lot of different brands in it so more than happy to make that connection afterwards but it'll fall email for me as well I'd love to you know pick your brain on you know how you're taking a look at the content space is it's it's top of mind for a ton of brands but you know you know if I kick it back over you know John Tony anything you know, key takeaways here as we get to the end of the

John Wright 48:15

time sorry to say you're talking on mute I think the biggest takeaway is you know, as you're as you're going into one of these projects so Threekit you know, it's kind of a double edged sword, right, we can we can help with the with a traditional simple eCommerce sort of flow, we can start to impact other business processes as well. So it's kind of like the sky's the limit on where you can you can take this and bring these visual experiences. So as we go as you start thinking about a project, it's always important to think about not just what products you want there to be, but then also what do you want that experience to be like where is it going to go when somebody clicks a button what happens next what information gets sent where and just start to start to take it just beyond the the process and flow of like a pretty picture and a cool experience but also really start think about how what what the business rules and kind of the business process is going to look like as we go through these these sorts of projects and implementations. It is always a very collaborative effort. There's a lot of a lot of discussion around experience, UI, workflow, things like that. So you know, we look forward to working with with others and learning about their problems and what they're trying to achieve and and helping deliver on that on that vision. Awesome.

Aaron Conant 49:42

Love it. Well, I know if anybody has any last questions, you know, here to to if we have CAD drawings can we get you know, can we create two in 3d image for the for the PDP

John Wright 49:59

Yeah, okay. CAD files are they're pretty, pretty common starting point

Aaron Conant 50:03

for this. Yeah. And that's without a physical sample the product, correct? Yeah. Yeah. Awesome. Yeah, I just, you know, those were coming in off to the side there. So I think, you know, that is I mean, that's key, right is you don't actually have to ship product everywhere all over. You don't have to do a creative brief for a photoshoot. And then hey, oh, we missed XYZ. In the photo shoot, can you redo it? How much does it cost? All that stuff? It's literally at that point in time, once you have a 3d image, it's it's 2d image generation just on demand, right? Like, you just click out. Love it. Right. Awesome. Well, I don't have any other questions coming in here. If anybody else has them. Feel free to drop in the chat or the q&a quick. But if not, we're going to go ahead and wrap up here. Like we said, just a few minutes before the hour is up. Once again, you know, John, Tony, thanks for your time today. Thanks for being such great, great friends and partners and supporters, the network and a lot of different brands in it. Thanks to everybody who was able to dial in. Thanks for the great questions that came in. It was a fantastic call. Look for a follow up email from us. We'd love to have a follow up conversation with you and also more than happy to connect you with Tony and John. That's worth a follow up for sure. They're leaders in this space across the board. So with that, we're gonna wrap it up. hope everybody has a fantastic Monday. Have a great rest of the week. Everybody, take care, stay safe, and look forward to having you on a future event. Awesome. Thanks again, Tony. Thanks, John. Thanks, everybody.

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