What happens when an upscale cookware and kitchen accessories company acquires a visual transformation and technology company?
If you’re Outward Inc., you become one of the premier visual storytelling companies for retailers across the globe. Outward Inc., started in the typical Silicon Valley-esque fashion before being acquired by Williams-Sonoma and added into their portfolio of brands. On today’s episode, the Co-Founder and Vice President of Development Gaurav Sethi, and Leah Kirkland, Senior Director of Sales, join Quinn and Kinsley to discuss the story and platform behind the innovation Outward brings to the marketing industry through their technology and the automation of product photography and post-production.
They discuss the Aperture Platform — what it is, how it works and how it is different than other technology on the market; inconsistencies in digital marketing; how Outward interacts with major brands; and how they are empowering brands to control their marketing destiny and achieve their dreams.
FULL TRANSCRIPT
Mark Kinsley
Oh, it’s the dust Marco show and we are going to show you how to automate elevate and dominate outward ink is on the show today with innovative ideas to catapult your business to a new level. The dose Marco show begins right now.
Welcome to the dose Marco show. With Mark Kinsley and Mark Quinn. We’re mattress and furniture leaders gathered to grow, get the inside scoop, tell stories and take tequila shots. The galaxy’s greatest mattress podcast has lifted off him
Mark Quinn
Hello, Mr. Kinsley
Mark Kinsley
Hello, Mr. Quinn. That’s a great look in purple shirt you got on there because I have a whale on it. It’s got off. It does have a whale whales yet,
Mark Quinn
right there.
Mark Kinsley
You’re the king of Wales shirts.
Mark Quinn
I am my wife must have found a sale. I’m pretty sure of it. So I’m not very happy with you actually.
Mark Kinsley
Okay, what’s new?
Mark Quinn
Let’s just start with that. Well, this whole toast and roast thing for Vegas market you called me and it told me your idea. And what did I tell you?
Mark Kinsley
You said, I hate that idea. And it’s also going to be a lot of fun.
Mark Quinn
I do hate the idea. Because I don’t want to put any attention on me for that. But if it’s a reason to get the fam together and people in this audience to come together, I just want you to know I appreciate it very much, because I know you’re doing it to be kind and we always talk about you have to celebrate cool stuff in your life. And so this was definitely a cool thing for me. And anyway, I look forward. Hopefully everyone can come. I’ll let you give them the details. It’s England or space, but it’s at Vegas market. I have a feeling there will be about three seconds of a toast and about 10 minutes of people making fun of me. So if you’re if you’re into that, so just come in visit us. What is the England or space number and it’s Sunday night? Is that right?
Mark Kinsley
Yeah, so the Englander space numbers See 1596 And so let’s see 1596 at Las Vegas market, the Englander showroom, we’re having a toast and roast for Mark when because like you said, I think it’s important to highlight life’s big moments, and I want to raise a glass to you and I want all of our friends in the fam to come together to celebrate your new role at Mattress Firm. I just think we need to pause and make sure that we memorialise these moments together. So, at 4pm on July 24, come and join the fam at the Englander space during Las Vegas market. 4pm. July 24. We’ll see you there. How about that coin? And
Mark Quinn
the shots? Yes, I’m a yes, I’m a yes, but I you know, anyway, we’ve already gone through it. We have bigger things to talk about, though, don’t worry, we have outward ink here and I’m really fired up. Great gas, Leah and Gaurav, and we have a lot to talk about Kinsley This is innovative stuff. And that’s the stuff we try to always tell our audience we’re on the lookout for them, we curate the coolest things out there, right?
Mark Kinsley
That’s right, we we try to bring to the forefront. ideas, innovations, processes, tricks, and tips, anything we think that we can curate, that’s going to have a positive impact on your business and move this industry forward. And so when we came across, outward, we’re like, this is a no brainer. And of course, I’m gonna start with Leah, Leah. You’ve been listening to the show, and I’m sure that you’ve caught up on all roughly 365 episodes.
Leah Kirkland
Naturally, I mean, in my sleep, I just make sure to listen to you. So I try to absorb the most messages that I possibly can. But every waking minute that I can spend with the family? I certainly do. I just heard
Mark Quinn
her say we were so boring that we put her to sleep. That’s what I heard.
Leah Kirkland
Hey, us being definitely a loyal listener. Very excited.
Mark Kinsley
Thank you. Oh, we’re excited to have you and it’s Alia Kirkland and you are without word. You’ve been there for seven years, you’re on the aperture sales side of the business. And we’re gonna get dig into what that is and Grace at the co founder of outward inking the VP of Business Development is here. Gaurav, you’ve got 28 years of high tech product engineering, product management, business development experience with leadership roles at companies like Dell compact NEC, Qualcomm, among others. Did I capture enough your history there?
Gaurav Sethi
Yes, yes. That sounds so good. Well, I appreciate that. No, thank you for having us.
Mark Kinsley
Well, tell us give us the backstory. Tell us about outward. Because I think the thing that I start with is, oh my gosh, this company is actually owned by William Sonoma. William Sonoma. Purchase the company’s right.
Gaurav Sethi
That’s right. Yeah, no, we started outward. Clarence chewy, who’s my partner? Her and I, the two co founders, we started back in October of 2012. Typical Silicon Valley fashion, I’d say we raised a little bit of money had some ideas, and you know, our, our careers and background is always been around sort of image processing, computer graphics, computer vision. And we started to look at retail and saw, you know, several kind of universal issues, if you will, certain gaps in the way products are being merchandise or could be merchandise, and we ended up building a highly automated 3d platform. And I’d say most of the lifestyle brands in the US were our customers. And less than five years later, we were purchased by William Sonoma Inc, who was also based kind of in our neighbourhood in San Francisco, we’ve always been based in San Jose, California. So that was amazing. And they have been an amazing parent company. Amazing sort of acquirer, if you will. And, you know, we’re structured independently. So we still got all the autonomy we did before the acquisition, just with a little bit more money. And our charter has expanded. So we certainly, you know, kind of support our parent company brands, with the tech that we build. But since the acquisition, which is coming up on about five years ago, we’ve been, you know, heads down building the aperture platform, because we, we feel like there’s a huge opportunity, there are a platform that can be completely self serve. I think that’s a term that’s thrown around a lot. But really, this is truly self serve, and we hope will help kind of democratise. You know, the idea of creating professional product photography to a lot of people,
Mark Kinsley
okay, paint a picture for us. For those who don’t know what aperture is, you’re talking about self serve, you’re talking about photography. Tell us what,
Gaurav Sethi
you know. So having come from the background that we have, and having gone through the 3d kind of platform building and automation automation, I’d say as a theme has been kind of our core always is to bring efficiencies to look at enterprises and the way they create content and to figure out, hey, this is a core business process, we want to make this more efficient, and generally without any compromise in the creative flexibility and the aesthetics and the intent there. And so we started out defining the aperture platform, we wanted to kind of circle back and kind of look at content, again, and you know, photography is not going away photography, that all the goodness of photography is still very much needed, it’s still very much dominates, how product, visuals are created. Despite, you know, all of this buzz around 3d and augmented reality and virtual reality. These are wonderful things and in some ways, may be the future, but it is super nascent. And there are some inherent issues. And so we wanted to circle back and say, how do we now think about just purely the photography process, we really wanted to focus on that. And, look, it’s a process that is done differently by different enterprises, whether they’re a manufacturer or retailer, whether they’re small, medium, or large companies, but it is cumbersome, and it is generally not something that has evolved much in the last few decades. And so we wanted to build a platform to address that. With the aperture platform, and it, it is not a pure software play. It can’t be when we started to really think through it. There is a need to control the environment, the physical environment in which you’re shooting products. And so we ended up years later, building what we call a aperture capture rig, it is literally a 20 feet by 20 feet by 10 feet high photo studio, it’s like a 21st century Photostudio, if you will, it’s got sensors, a robotic camera system, it’s completely self contained. It’s got his own flooring. And it is connected to the cloud. And we in addition built a cloud SAS web application platform that connects into that controls it and together builds the aperture platform and the idea is super simple. It’s the idea of automation again, so anyone it could be a photographer or creative person but it could be a warehouse worker, it could be a marketing coordinator. It could be the owner of a mom and pop store. It doesn’t matter. It could be a layman of some sort you can load in a product. Could be case good upholstery DeKalb, rugs lighting, leather piece, indoor outdoor, and you hit a button, you hit a button on a PC, we provide the PC as well. And
Mark Quinn
sounds like you just made it. So easy grab that, like anyone can use it. And Leah, I know, you’ve talked to me about like, you know different integrations with people. And you’re on the front line also with the customers, can you take us through? Like, why are people reacting so well to it? Like, what is it about the system you guys have built and Grob and his partner put together that seems to be resonating. And why is there so much interest in it?
Leah Kirkland
Sure. And I know that Kinsley is the IT Master, and the fan space. But even you Quinn could use this
Gaurav Sethi
even me. Thank you, Leah, thank you.
Leah Kirkland
If anybody would doubt its ease of use. But yeah, I think everything that Garth mentioned, I think what we kept on seeing is, as we’re going through websites, as we’re going through marketing, as we’re talking to both manufacturers and retailers in this space, there’s no shortage of marketing ideas and creativity. But there is a shortage of the ability to execute have images to fulfil all of these channels, I think we continue to see product pages that really have a lot of inconsistencies on them, right retailers really want to brand themselves. They don’t always want to use manufacturer images, but trying to tackle photography for their line and their offering is incredibly challenging, right, it’s challenging. From a money standpoint, it’s challenging from a time standpoint, you end up in a bunch of editing loops. And so I think a lot of people just kind of threw up their hands, and quite honestly stopped dreaming about what they could do, and what their brand could be. And so what this enables is this enables somebody to enables a retailer to enables a manufacturer to no longer be limited by just the images that they’re given, or the images that they painfully take, right. You can have consistent branding, you can have great product pages, you can have all of these great experiences. And you know, to garbs point we we have been in the 3d space, right? There are a lot of great experiences on a product page fitting furniture, putting things in room planner, that really help at the bottom of the funnel. But if a consumer is going to be inspired by their product, they need an image, right, they need to understand what this product looks like. And so we’ve had, we’ve heard a lot of frustration about it, we we see people sort of release their shoulders a bit when they start to dream about what it could be. But that’s really, I think, removing some of the editing loops, removing that brand and consistency removing a lot of pain from the process to enable brands, both manufacturers and retailers to do what they never thought that they could.
Mark Quinn
So Kinsley how many Onsager I’ve I just wanted to paint one more part of the picture. And then I’m gonna and then I’ll get to you, Kinsley so this is like, how many photo shoots have we been in? Right? So we’ve conducted photo shoots around the matches category. So the way that looks, now you get a show room, you bring in a line of beds, you get the photographer, you spend at least an hour, maybe more probably more getting the light sets, right, you’ve got a some kind of gaffer or someone they’re like helping the photographer set it up. There’s a lot that goes into that before you ever even are able to take your first shot. And so a lot of coordination goes around that versus you bring a bed in, put it into the outward system, walk out of the space and hit a button and you’re done. Kinsley, how about that for an easy button.
Mark Kinsley
I can’t tell you how many retailer warehouses and manufacturing warehouses slash very, very terrible photo studios I’ve seen. And most of the time, it’s somebody putting up you know, the infinite sweet piece of white paper. It’s walked all over, it’s got shoe prints on it, you got some camera that your brother in law said is a great camera. And the photography really matches the quality that you could expect from an environment like that. And it’s frustrating for people and so they do end up not creating assets at the manufacturing level. And then the retailer gets upset with the manufacturer because they don’t have assets. And so the retailer says, Ah, forget it. I’m going to spin up my own studio. And they have similar problems because they’re trying to run a business with a warehouse where forklifts are driving all over the place. And that’s where they put the photo studio so it’s not contained and it’s not protected. And then everybody is just frustrated with each other and what do they do just what you describe Lea, they say, Okay, I’m going to throw my hands up, and I’m going to move on to something else and I’m just going to hope I’m going to hope that it gets better and it doesn’t and And I’ll tell you, you know, on the manufacturing side of things, there’s more of a mandate, in my perspective for these manufacturers to give really good silo images, good room seen images, being able to provide that retailer with all the assets, they’re going to need to drive those programmes forward. And on the retailer side of things, I’ve seen plenty of retailers say, well, these are great, but for the way our brand is presenting product, it’s not the manufacturer images aren’t going to work. So we need to do our own thing. So you got a lot of these different use cases. And the people that have invested in are doing this well, and I know people in the retail and the manufacturing side have been using that word product, it’s having an impact on their business, you know, and I think that’s, that’s the real, you know, headline here is, is it gonna work? Is it gonna help me make more money, it’s gonna save you money, and it’s gonna help you make more money, we have to get to a place as an industry, where this is just part of the process, instead of an afterthought, instead of something that we wish was better. And that’s why Colin and I were like, Okay, this is time, it’s time to surface the outward story here.
Mark Quinn
Yeah. And the cool thing is, it’s not part of the process. It is the process, right? Like, this is the shortcut to that graph. Right? Before I said something to Kinsley, you’re about to say something, please go ahead and share that.
Gaurav Sethi
I’m just gonna say it’s obviously a fragmented a market landscape. There’s lots of companies, you know, that don’t even have the budgets, they don’t feel like they can do their own photography, whether it’s in house or via third party. So they don’t, and the visual presence that they have, or their promotional aspect really suffers. And so they may have beautiful products, and having been catering to a local audience for many, many years, multi generation generational, we see this all the time. And we’ve got customers like that, that have really started to control their destiny. And I think that’s really what it’s about, you know, you, when you automate something in the way we’ve done, what does that really mean? It means that you can do it when you want, scheduling it, you can do it when you want, you can do as much as you want. So you can be very comprehensive. And you can do it in a way that really targets your customers and really maximises the sort of visual merchandising aspect. If you’re a manufacturer, you can cater to your customers in a way that really conforms to their requirements and aesthetic needs being comprehensive. If you’re a retailer, I think you can really control your destiny.
Mark Kinsley
Well, you and I’ll tell you, one thing that we’ve talked about on the show in relation to visual merchandising, is the idea that consumers want to be able to envision the product in their home in a way that they are going to be proud of. I mean, there’s so many people that want to make that Instagram worthy vignette. And so if you don’t help them go there in their mind first, then they’re far less likely to come into your store and make that purchase. And one of the things I think is really cool about the aperture platform is this sounds simple, but it comes with custom backgrounds. So that will actually fit your brand. And these are not just like custom backgrounds from a ho hum designer, these are the experts responsible for the iconic product looks at Pottery Barn, West Elm, and others. And I’ll tell you what, whenever I first started shopping for furniture when my wife and I first got married, and this was over 15 years ago, we just went to the store that looked like the store where we wanted to have in our home. And it was Pottery Barn. And so if you can help people visualise it for themselves, they’re far more likely to come there and and pick it up. So it’s not just like the silo imagery, you’re helping them complete the look.
Gaurav Sethi
Absolutely, we want to enable folks to really be able to see these products in situ in a way that’s relevant to them in a way that’s photo real in a way that doesn’t look like a traditional background being pasted on to the photograph of an item. And so there’s a lot of kind of, I’d say sophistication under the hood, in terms of how we do background environments, they kind of auto adapt and scale, when you hit that button in our software in a way that looks like it was actually shot in that environment. And I think that’s been a huge, huge value to our customers.
Mark Quinn
Yeah, on that note, so he talks about the value talk about you’re about to say something so vague that end but um, I really wanted to talk to whatever you’re about to say talk about the like for me, I hear us talking so process is good for simplicity, all that. But I think it’s also a control on quality, right? So if you have different photographers coming in, they light it differently. Every time he may not be available, you may have to have another photographer. This makes everything so buttoned up and so consistent, that the images are so good. So there’s that part and then there’s a massive cost savings, right? Because you’re not having to do all the other stuff. Can you talk us through some of that
Leah Kirkland
Yeah, you nailed it with the, with talking about the consistency. And we see this a lot, whether it’s different photographers coming in, or they’re having to move their studio locations around, it’s hard to keep the lighting, it’s hard to keep the backgrounds consistent. And especially if you’re, you know, a retailer or even a manufacturer, right, you have a great selling group, you decide to bring in the chair with that group, and you just had the sofa before you need to photograph it, all of a sudden, they’re on the same product page, they’re on the same thumbnail page. But those pillows look completely different. The consumers brain is going What do I trust? Which one of these does this actually look like? Looks a little yellow over here looks a little white over here, right? It’s important to get colour, it’s important to get quality right with furniture. So that brand, you know, so that consumers know what they can trust. And the point that I was gonna make is, you know, we’re talking about solo photography. And I think one of the things that, you know, probably shouldn’t have surprised us but did is this is not just a small retailer problem. This is not just a medium manufacturer problem. This is a Pottery Barn problem. This is we’ve had retailers from top one hundreds, you know, chasing us down to say, please help us we’ve had, we’ve had this implemented at stores that at retail stores that are $5 million of revenue, right? So it really spans all different sizes. And so if you’re thinking, I don’t think I’m big enough for this, I don’t think I think I might be too big for this. Managing your silver photography should not be as hard as it feels. And this is a problem at all ends of the spectrum and all types of companies sizes, certainly I
Mark Quinn
want to make a comment as a large retailer, now that I’m on the retail side. For manufacturers out there, we’ve been talking about retail, I just want you to know, like part of how retailers pick any of us because I was on the manufacturing side and sold for most of my career. But part of that is how easy are you to work with, right. So when you bring a product, that’s just part of it, right. So the other thing is like your bank of marketing assets, like I can’t do anything with your product, unless I have a way to build value in the products that you you send me to sell. And if you have a killer bank of photography, that makes your products look really, really good, then you’re easier for me to deal with them, the guy that doesn’t. And what I love about your system is that you can literally when you take the pictures of it, you hit the button, it goes into the cloud, and then you can link me directly to that folder, and I’m seeing the shots in real time. And then that whole folder is available to me and my entire team anytime we need it. I think that’s brilliant.
Leah Kirkland
1,000%. And what are you what are manufacturers doing right now we hear a lot that containers are coming in, people are finally having inventory they need to move inventory. What a great way to enable your retailers to move that right give them lots of shots that they can use on social, but they can use a retargeting ads that they can use in print. So keep on moving product, make them really high quality, make it so it’s a no brainer for them to help sell your product.
Gaurav Sethi
You know, it reminds me of how West Elm installed our capture rake, they installed it in Brooklyn a few weeks ago. And they put it right in their receiving area of their sample warehouse. And so as soon as the product comes in, it gets unboxed. It goes into the aperture rig, they hit a button, they go put it in inventory. And that’s been their take on kind of operationalizing silhouettes, small vignettes, close groupings, elevated shots, all of it. And so the velocity without the loss of creative sort of flexibility, because they have a very different look and feel than a lot of our other customers, I think is has been really key.
Mark Kinsley
Such a great point operationalizing the input the photography, it’s in inventory, and now you know you’re gonna have the assets you need, because like you said, it’s that that one capture, and now you have that isolated image, that image that silhouette photography, which can effectively be automated into other environments, you know, with different backgrounds and different use cases. And now you’re not having to worry about, oh, gosh, we gotta get that one off the floor. That’s our model, or we’re gonna have to unbox something and then box it back up and put it in inventory. I think that’s that’s, that’s really good. You have teams that help people understand how to how to make this work, how to make it flow.
Gaurav Sethi
Absolutely, yeah. Part of our onboarding and also kind of customer support that’s ongoing is the idea of training anyone who will train anyone because it’s so simple. And we also take kind of account we have a creative group. So one of the kind of interesting aspects of our platform is it’s on demand, but you can also To hit a button in our software and get creative support, so that if you’ve never thought about a style guide for your brand, or you want to refine that brand aesthetic, or you’re trying to create one for your customers, because you’re a manufacturer, you want to create something that’s really on brand for them, you can get help from us to set up these custom templates within the software. So you, again, are just hitting one button to get that lighting and shadow and post. Done automatic talking
Mark Kinsley
ahead of time, Leah, and you said one of the biggest opportunities is using technology to improve the consumer browsing experience. And I like what you said about make it as fun and inspiring to browse or daydream about home furnishings as it is to think about your next vacation. That seems like a tall order. Can we get there?
Leah Kirkland
I think we can get there. I mean, I think if 2020 has taught us anything, people can be inspired by home, people are excited by updating their home people are excited by reimagining what their home can do for them. And I think now that we’ve got everybody sort of scratching that itch, and we’ve got everybody inspired, we’ve got to keep them that way. Right. They may have replaced room have furniture, but you know what, they probably have some other rooms that they could be equally inspired to save. So keep them keep them going. And now that we’re already on that track, let’s keep them excited about what their home can look like and how that can make them feel.
Mark Kinsley
And if if you’re a really sophisticated marketer, and you you have good CRM in place for customers who come in and made a purchase, now you can do just what you describe, you can come in and say you bought a dining room set. And then you could create some marketing automation that would start presenting imagery for other rooms, Hey, is it time to refresh your living room as well as it’s time to refresh your bedroom, and you can make sure that it doesn’t duplicate on the purchase they previously made. But you got to have those assets, and you got to be able to tell that compelling visual story in order to deploy that type of effective marketing.
Leah Kirkland
That’s right. And you know, to piggyback on that, I think one thing that we haven’t talked about is, or haven’t emphasised enough is that once you capture something once, you don’t have to reshoot to get a completely different look. So if you want to continue to inspire that customer, you might have captured that item one time, that asset one time, if all of a sudden, Joanna Gaines, I’m sure she’s a listener of the pod fan of the mod. If Joanna Gaines changes from shiplap, to like an Adobe mud hut aesthetic, right, you can automatically update all of your photography and your library to have an Adobe mud hut background, right? If you’re going into a new season, right? So we’re getting ready to get into fall, maybe you sell some outdoor furniture, why don’t you update the backgrounds of that? Why don’t you update your photography, to what the consumer is thinking about right now and make it especially relevant for them. This is something that you cannot do in photography, right? You’ve got to schedule another shoot, you’ve got to get a photographer, you’ve got to nothing against the white paint industry. But you got to repaint that white floor, you got to find a location. You don’t have to do that anymore. So is the point that trends change at the point that your brand changes. Your imagery can change with that after you capture it. Just one Yeah.
Mark Quinn
Are you sure like Adobe mud hut? Is that even a thing? Come on? Are you making crap up on the show in real time, I just want to know come clean. Right now I have never heard that what is Adobe mud?
Leah Kirkland
Well, I suspect that nobody is going to hire me for my interior design skills. So I’ll try to I’ll try to stick to furniture tech, for now for a little while.
Mark Kinsley
Just a little, he’s a little upset, by the way when you owe me 20 bucks because before the show, I said, I’m gonna bet you 20 bucks that somebody says Adobe mud hut on this episode.
Gaurav Sethi
She meant light and airy.
Mark Kinsley
Well, hey, it’s Gaurav, and Leah, thank you so much for helping us understand the possibilities. And I think that so much of what we focus the show on is what’s happening right now where people are spending money because those are trends and what’s happening right now with the pace of change and the rate of play that people need to be up to speed on and I think the aperture is such a great vehicle for telling that broader story. How can people get in touch with you if they want to learn more if they want to see what see what these these images look like see what the the setup looks like? Where can they go?
Leah Kirkland
First so like you guys, we will be at Vegas market we are located in Building B space 1050 which is the HFA Resource Centre. We’re going to be in booth 17 there so right As you walk in, you’ll see us to the right. You can also go to our website outward Inc, calm, we’re on Instagram and outward Inc. So get in touch with us if you’re going to be in Vegas, please stop by, we’d love to see you. And otherwise you can track us down on social or by our website. Okay,
Mark Kinsley
so you’re gonna be in the B Building 1050, the HFA Resource Centre, you can say hi to Shannon, and Mark and Garv. What did we miss? What do we leave out here?
Gaurav Sethi
I think that, you know, it, you know, one point that I’d like to make is that this, this is super inexpensive, it is very easy to afford. You know, it’s not just lip service that we are wanting to address a very wide range of customer profiles. So if it’s a single store operation, or if it’s a national global company, we think there’s a compelling value proposition for them all.
Mark Kinsley
Talk about that cost piece. And so that’s, that’s refreshing to hear. And I tell you, anytime you do a full studio setup, and you’re doing set builds and set design, and you’ve got all the different people involved, it’s real money is real money. And I think that’s a barrier money.
Gaurav Sethi
Absolutely. And, you know, our business model is that of a pure monthly subscription, or annual subscription, we don’t charge you for the hardware, we don’t want to turn our customers into technician. So all of that is provided literally at no charge. And we simply activate the monthly fee.
Mark Quinn
I want to add one other thing to that Lea, I know the one of the cool things about your your system is you put something in the on the X marks the spot in the system. And how many cameras are there because the cool thing is you shoot it and then it gives you how many angles like in just one press of a button, you have all these different angles. So the flexibility in that to have multiple angles. I don’t know if we really covered that appropriately, I just want to make sure everyone knows that. So that’s number one. And then number two, and then I’ll let you answer that when Kinsley can get us out of here. But I want everyone to know I’ve known Leah for I don’t know, Leah, what a couple of years now. And so we’ve actually become friends. And I just want you to know, like, for me that matters. Like the people that you potentially could connect to and do business with. These guys are awesome and delightful and the kind of people you want to work with. So I just want to say that because it matters, right? Anyway. So answer the question about the the number of angles.
Leah Kirkland
Thank you, we think you’re really great. Thank you. But generally, you know, generally speaking, we’re trying to solve big problems, right? This is only the beginning. We’ve got so much excitement to come. We’re rolling out the product now. But we’ve got much more to come as we continue and you’re right. You can get no matter what’s what type of angles you want. If you’re a manufacturer and you’re trying to cater to a lot of retailers a lot of digital requirements, you can set up templates that keep things consistent, maintain that consistency satisfy all of your channels. And you can do that now affordably and without spending all of your time on it.
Mark Kinsley
Okay, so I have one last question. I’ll ask it so he doesn’t have to mark when would like to have the aperture set up in his home and he would like to do daily updated headshots for his LinkedIn profile possible.
Leah Kirkland
I can’t can’t wait. Can’t wait. It’s not you know, this was AI and ML base so we really know how to recognise furniture items. I can’t tell you I can tell you that at High Point market after a decent amount of cocktails. Our sales team has photographed themselves so we can we can we can surely get Quinn set up for for a constant headshot of
Mark Quinn
Girl No offence, I don’t mean to be critical or criticise you on a show but I think you’ve missed it here. I think this is the ultimate selfie machine. You can just go in and just one button just you know pose. That’s right.
Gaurav Sethi
Furniture today. Tick tock tomorrow.
Mark Quinn
By the way you guys are experiencing your 10 year anniversary. Hi port Margo. So we’re excited about that. Guys. We are so thrilled that you are on the show. Kinsley anything else take us out here.
Mark Kinsley
Hey, Gaurav Satie. Lia Kirkland. You’re both awesome. Thank you for being on the show. Thank you for telling your story. We’ll look forward to seeing you at Vegas market and then coming out and celebrating the 10 year anniversary of outward ink coming up at High Point market later this year. Thanks so much. We gave you the website. As always, you can go to PFAM dot news. And you can search for outward and you can find out more about the company on the page where this is published and of course text us on our podium number anytime and we can stick handle it for you and get get you connected to anybody from the outward team and thank you both so much for being here
Leah Kirkland
thank you guys we really appreciate it thank you thanks guys
