News

Home goods retailer blends art and e-commerce with dynamic imaging

Shibumi Home launches an interactive e-commerce presence on Shopify where shoppers create custom products with instant, photo-realistic visualization.

April 15, 2015

Julie Wienen, Shibumi Home's chief creative force, launched her business with the twin objectives of engaging online buyers with customizable home goods, and of highlighting individual artists' outstanding work in textile design.

Researching how to achieve this goal led Wienen and her team of Web developers at Wick Creative to LiquidPixels' LiquiFire dynamic imaging solutions. Using on-demand dynamic imaging enabled the Shibumi team to build an interactive e-commerce storefront that offers photorealistic visualization of products that are ready to be produced at the moment the shopper decides to buy.

With a value proposition that relies on the high-quality, original work of independent artists, it is critical for Shibumi Home to compellingly and accurately visualize each design. The finished, delivered product must be indistinguishable from its online product image. LiquiFire dynamic imaging allows Wienen to acquire fabric pattern swatches from a designer and apply them digitally to any Shibumi Home product. This eliminates prototype production and product photography costs while enabling Wienen to easily add new fabric patterns to the online catalog as they become available.

"Customers love what they can see. For instance, our interactive designer lets shoppers mix and match pillows on a couch," Wienen said in a statement. "It's a big hit, and it makes it more likely that they'll purchase. Dynamic imaging really opens up the options of what you can show your customers."

Although custom product visualization was what led Wienen to discover LiquidPixels' online imaging solutions, it was LiquiFire's automated Web-to-print functionality that "sealed the deal" for her. She hadn't known in advance about this capability, which can generate print-ready files on the fly from the digitally prepared images already in use online.

Streamlining the asset production and maintenance in this way was a benefit whose value she recognized immediately. "As a small business owner, not having to maintain separate image repositories for online and print use is huge," Wienen said.