In today’s post, we will look at how CGI can help marketing for your furniture business. Furniture businesses have a difficult path ahead of them when it comes time to make their catalog. Customers expect to see new and beautiful designs coming out every year, which means a constant flow of new products entering the catalog. They also expect to see photos of this furniture to decide whether it is something they want to purchase. The problem comes when it’s time to capture the look and feel of this furniture. To help customers see the full potential of each piece, a large and often bulky piece needs to be photographed in the correct lighting, usually with a flattering backdrop. It is acceptable for one item, but when thousands of items need to be photographed in a catalog, that can mean a considerable expense to ship furniture, set up a studio, and take a picture of each item.
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Until recently, this was a burden that furniture businesses simply had to shoulder, but with improvements in CGI designs over the past few years, more accessible options have come to the table. Here’s how CGI services can help your furniture business save money, enhance customer experience, and grow possibilities.
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Setting up a studio for every single item in your collection can cost a small fortune. The furniture has to be created and shipped. Next, furniture must be made, lighting planned, studio rented, and a photography team hired all for one picture. This cost grows with every color, pattern, and item that needs to be added.
With furniture CGI, a lot of these costs are not necessary. The artist can swap the color and pattern on the same furniture piece virtually endlessly, and it’s as easy as a click of a button. There’s no need for a studio, photography team, or even the furniture to exist.
Instead of a long train of expenses and teams you need to hire to get a photo taken, you only need to hire one furniture CGI company to do your work. Tracking expenses is also much easier since you won’t have to calculate dozens of different costs, just one simple bill at the end. CGI can create the same quality or better work, including dazzling backgrounds and perfect lighting, at a much lower cost than traditional photography.
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On top of this, you can often get much more value for your money than you would with a photography session. CGI allows you to make changes later on if you need them. If your marketing department realizes that a sleek dining table would look better at a different angle or with an accompanying piece of furniture, it can be accomplished within minutes.
These fixes aren’t so easy if you use photographs, especially if you notice the problem long after the photography studio has been closed, and they often cost a lot more since they need to redo the whole session for a minor change.
The sooner you can get your catalog into the hands of your customers, the sooner they can start shopping. It could present a problem if you don’t have a sample of your furniture yet or haven’t been able to get it out of the warehouse to ship it to a studio.CGI pieces can usually be finished much more quickly than standard photography, especially when you consider building and shipping sample pieces.
The 3D rendering artist can make an exact render of your furniture piece with CGI before manufacturing the piece. It gives you more time to work on your catalog and make it as attractive as possible, and lets you release the catalog earlier.
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It also saves time by switching the color and fabric of a piece of furniture as many times as you like. Many couches and chairs are available in various colors and patterns. It might not be a problem for a traditional catalog, but on the internet, many people expect to be able to see all the different colors and patterns on the furniture.
With traditional photography, each and every color has to be photographed. It can be prohibitively expensive, even for a business doing reasonably well. CGI allows you to quickly and easily change the color for a significantly reduced price, helping to save a considerable amount of money and time. Your marketing department can take the time they save and put it towards advancing their advertising in the way they genuinely envision. Marketing can sometimes be a dizzying rush between having an idea and getting it out there, and CGI can put that time back into their hands.
Your marketing department has a lot to juggle. Not only do they need to come up with a compelling advertisement and send it to the right demographics, but they also need to balance that against a very complicated schedule. In a traditional setup, they would have to plan for when at least one sample piece of furniture must be produced and photographed and have the photographs in hand before any marketing steps could begin. If there are delays in shipping or manufacturing, delays will also happen for marketing.
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Photography can also take a long time to set up, with studios needing to be built and a team hired. CGI only takes two days to complete—and the furniture doesn’t even have to exist yet. CGI artists can take the exact schematics being used to build the furniture in the first place and use them to make a perfect replica virtually indistinguishable from actual photography.
With campaign-ready photos guaranteed to be delivered to your marketing staff within just a few days, there is no chance they will be delayed or unable to complete their work. This frees them up to focus on their work and create the best possible campaign. It is yet another way to save money on CGI because delays often also cost money, and this is one delay that won’t happen again.
CGI also has another tremendous benefit. Since the furniture CGI weighs nothing and a 3D model can easily be moved around with the click of a button, you can present the image at various angles. It’s easy to change the color and material a piece of furniture is made with and the angle it is shot from. It truly allows you to find the most enticing angle possible and offer your customers several different shots to better decide if the piece of furniture they are looking at is right for their homes.
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3D Rendering services also allow for close-ups of the material and other detailing, so customers can look at the texture and color to decide whether or not it will work in their homes. It boosts customer service and improves sales, as the customer can feel confident that the piece they are ordering matches what they want.
If all the customer needed to see was the piece of furniture to decide they wanted it, showing it in an empty room or a bed stripped of bedding would be fine. Yet, furniture often sells better and has much more appeal if you present it as if it were in a real home. It is where a certain degree of storytelling comes in. A marketing director or another artist might look at the piece and envision what sort of room it would look good in. Is it a rustic-looking rocking chair? Perhaps it belongs in a log cabin with a roaring fire and a plaid pillow on top.
With 3D interior visualization services, it is easy to create the appropriate milieu for your furniture render. Is it a modern-looking bedframe? Perhaps it belongs in a sleek apartment with modern amenities to make it feel as forward-thinking as the design intended.
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This is where the importance of background comes in and is why most online stores and catalogs opt to show the furniture in a fully furnished room rather than just sitting in a warehouse. It can also attract buyers less directly. Many people struggle with interior design and have trouble imagining what a piece would look like in their room.
A fully furnished room helps offer them ideas on how to decorate and encourages them to share the photo—and your business—on Pinterest and other social media. Sometimes the people shopping on your website might not be dreaming of that perfect jungle-themed nursery but have a pregnant friend who is. Framing a crib you are selling in a jungle theme might help you gain a sale because that ‘story’ is sent to the right person.
Stories are essential to furniture sales and should never be overlooked. Your marketing department is probably aware of this and working double-time to envision new and beautiful backgrounds and themes to share with customers.CGI is a powerful tool to place in their hands because whatever they envision, a CGI artist can create.
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Another neat offering that CGI allows is the ability to help customers decide if a piece of furniture is the right fit in another way—by letting them try it out in their own homes. Augmented reality, or AR services, allows users to place an item in their own home and look at it as if it is actually there. CGI models of a piece of furniture can be used in AR programs so that if someone is looking at your product on their phone or tablet, they can layer it over a real view of their home and see how it looks.
It can help encourage customers to buy a product in addition to visiting your site. When users can purchase furniture anywhere in their hometown or on the web, they’ll often choose a particular website based on convenience. A website that allows them to trial run their furniture gives them a unique incentive to make your website their choice over the many others available.
It can help marketers in yet another way since people are more likely to share and recommend a website that offers AR over Dozens of similar websites that don’t have such a helpful feature. With CGI models, it is easy to do and offers so much more to your customers than just another picture to look at.
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Marketing is full of twists and turns in the marketplace. Marketing has to be sensitive to customers’ moods and be able to twist on a dime both to take advantage of specific moments and avoid unpleasant outcomes. If you have to make a sudden significant change to your advertising, it can take days or weeks to get things turned around. It can be devastating for your marketing plans and completely throw off the introduction of new lines or other important events.
If you need to make a last-minute change with CGI, you can have it done exceptionally quickly. With CGI, you can do modifications from anywhere between a few minutes to a couple of days. A last-minute change with photography is often impossible and, if it is possible, ends up being extremely costly. Everything has to be set up again, the furniture brought back, the studio reopened, and so much more to get a picture retaken. CGI photorealistic design services require no such things. All you need to do is email your artist with the requested changes, and they will get back to you right away.
The same ability to make changes in CGI can also be a powerful tool to help take advantage of new trends in the market. If shabby chic was the style last month, but a new trend for a modern look has gone wild, changing your furniture to display this can help sell more products. 3D design services can help companies adapt to these kinds of quick changes, and they can do it much faster than with a photo booth or other traditional means. It leaves your marketing department free to decide how things need to look, not based on time but on all the other details that make up advertising.
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This also gives your marketing department incredible flexibility when it comes to social stories. Market influence isn’t just limited to the whims of fashion but can also interact with the powerful social stories going on in the real world. Suppose your marketing department wants to talk about furniture related to a social story, such as environmental issues or perhaps women’s rights. In that case, they can have a CGI image explicitly made to talk about this. They can also have something removed from their pictures if it suddenly becomes offensive.
While this is unlikely, objects have become the focus of social stories in the past, and something that was previously innocuous can become highly offensive. With CGI, it’s easy to make changes that add or remove things not just for appearances but to better reflect the world around you. When marketing can focus on such small changes, it helps give a sense that your company is with the times and paying attention to the tiniest market shifts, helping their advertising be even more effective.
Most pieces of furniture are sold by styling them in a fully furnished room to help customers imagine what sort of room the piece belongs in. With 3D interior rendering services, you can help cross-sell items in your catalog by including multiple elements in a set, so people looking at one piece have a chance of falling in love with multiple pieces you have created.
It is also helpful for customers who want a great-looking room but lack the imagination to pull it off themselves. When they can buy a complete set of furniture and arrange it just as they saw in the photo, they don’t have to worry about finding similar pieces and whether it will look good enough. If you have sets you want to sell or are just hoping to find another way to boost sales, this can be a great way of doing so.
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One other excellent way CGI can help with your business is by helping you customize your product detail pages or PDP. These pages are one of the most critical parts of your online store because they are often how your customer will determine whether they want to buy a product or not. It is why marketing works so hard to show the furniture off in so many different ways. They may experiment with lighting, texture, or changing the story of the background, all to better match the demographic of your customer base.
This is often lost on many furniture websites, which rely on generic PDPs that everyone else has to showcase their furniture. It’s the exact text, the same photo, the same color for everything. It is a mistake on several different levels. When every website selling a piece of furniture is the same, there’s no reason to choose your sales page over a competitor’s. This leaves you relying on your trustworthiness as a website to gain sales on its own. It’s best to give your customers as many different reasons to choose your website as possible, and having a unique PDP is one way you can achieve this.
CGI is excellent for creating still images for your website, but you can use those renders in other ways. These 3D model designs can also be animated to produce movement and show the piece off from every possible angle. 3D Animated design services can help your customer better visualize your product and help them decide whether it will work for their home or not.
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While it’s true that CGI artists can be of tremendous help to your marketing director, it can’t be just any CGI artist. While it’s true that a talented artist can create a 3D model that’s virtually indistinguishable from the real thing, it does take talent to create something that real. A beginner or poor-quality artist will make something that is obviously not real, which can detract from the professional image you are trying to create.
If you have decided that CGI design services are the right way to go for your business, it’s crucial to select a 3D rendering artist who can do the job well. Many CGI artists will claim they can do the work and then give you something of low quality that is useless. The best way to avoid this is by doing your due diligence while selecting an artist. A good artist will have a portfolio showcasing their work and preferably have experience in your field. They should also have good reviews and ideally references from happy customers, which you can use to confirm their quality of work.
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If you have a large undertaking for them, such as an entire catalog of furniture that needs to be made into 3D renders, it may be best to test them with a small project first. This way, if they do well with one small piece of furniture, you can hire them for the rest of the catalog, but if it subpar work, you can still save money. A good CGI artist is worth searching for and is often easier to find than you think. A great portfolio and top-quality reviews are both good signs that the CGI artist you are looking at has the capability of doing the work you are asking for.
Using CGI for your furniture business has an enormous number of benefits. A good CGI artist can help free your marketing department to be more sensitive to the market and provide better quality advertising. Cad Crowd’s CGI artists can put the power of photorealistic CGI renders in your hands. Contact us today to learn more about what our CGI artists can do for you and your business.
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