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Industry: Furnishings & Decor Solution: Dynamic Imaging, Visual Configurator  L'Usine à Design, which means "design factory" in English, is a Paris-based startup, positioned as France's first online destination for affordable, user-designed, customizable furniture. Over the course of 2010, the company expects to expand its current offering to more than 300 products. Challenges:
L'Usine à Design sought a cost-efficient online image creation and publishing solution that doesn't compromise the richness of the online user experience. Because it offers many configurable options for its growing furnishings line, the company also wanted an online tool that would enable customers to choose and visualize all the merchandising combinations made possible by a wide menu of customizable options. Short of that, L'Usine à Design must manufacture every sofa, then photograph them–an impractical feat since the customizable options for a three-seat Chesterfield sofa alone yields about 12 million possible combinations. Best Practices: Initially, L'Usine à Design was set to standardize its image creation and management process using a combination of an open source graphics library, PHP for scripting and a Flex application. But for cost reasons and the lack of flexibility in image production, L'Usine à Design explored Adobe Scene7 and immediately recognized its benefits, including a truly rich viewing experience. Adobe Scene7 enabled L'Usine à Design to offer enlarged and multiple views its products, including side, rear and frontal views, plus contextual images, to deepen shoppers' understanding of the merchandise. L'Usine à Design also deployed the Scene7 visual configurator, enabling customers to tailor the furnishings to their taste, then view and evaluate each option in real-time as the item is being configured. Customers can select from many customization choices, such as the sofa upholstery, as well as a variety of colors. As shoppers see their creations immediately, the configurator eliminates the guesswork of how well the chosen options will play together. Results: Since implementing Scene7 in August 2009, L'Usine à Design's online sales has grown by double-digit, driven by significant improvements in conversion. Additionally, L'Usine à Design achieved a 95% customer satisfaction rate, versus the 61% industry average. This is because online customization is front and center of the user experience, from the main product views right through the alternative views and zoom views. Without the Scene7 visual configurator, each of the customizable furnishing would need to be manufactured and photographed, raising costs significantly. Yet with Scene7, only digital images and swatches of the customizable options are required. "Globally, the collaboration experience with Adobe Scene7 is a real plus for us," said Nicolas Thouzeau, technical director of L'Usine à Design. "We would be hard-pressed to run our business without Adobe Scene7. It has had an undeniably positive effect on our conversion rate." "By using a solution other than Adobe Scene7, we would have easily spent 10 times more in the image production," said Nicolas Thouzeau. |
“Globally, the collaboration experience with Adobe Scene7 is a real plus for us. We would be hard-pressed to run our business without Adobe Scene7. It has had an undeniably positive effect on our conversion rate.” |
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