With AI technology being more openly explored in the furnishings industry, we caught up with the founders of a new platform that is looking to transform the furniture space.
Based in what is known as the largest ‘tech incubator’ hub in Europe, ‘Station F’ in Paris – understood to be Europe’s equivalent to Silicon Valley, is AI specialist Presti. Founded by Hamza Bennis, Nabil Toumi, Abdellah Lamrani Alaoui and Saad Bencherif, the quartet have spent the last 18 months researching and developing their technology, geared towards the furniture industry.
Despite being a new face in the AI game, their core background is data science and they’ve worked in large corporations such as Uber, Kearney and BCG. Presti has been created to solve an issue they became aware of in the furniture industry and that was the challenges surrounding product imagery. “After realising, that due its awkward, sometimes bulky nature, furniture is, at times, a painful, costly and timely process to create good product imagery,” says Hamza. “18 months on, Presti, whilst still in Beta is creating waves across Europe.”
Presti is already working with over 100 furniture companies worldwide including many renowned retailers which are now harnessing the power of this technology.
“With furniture, both home and garden, customers expect to see ‘lifestyle’ imagery that really helps sell the product with it being such an ‘emotional’ purchase,” Hamza continued. “The bulky nature makes this more of a difficult process and costly, with many things to take into account such as studio hire, logistics, building the products, creating the set, prop costs, photographer costs, photo editing costs, high costs for different room settings, etc.
“Alternatively, there is also CGI. However, this is also a costly process, with a lot of time and effort involved, costs in modelling products, ensuring accuracy, lots of ‘backwards and forwards’, not looking ‘realistic’, room set designs have to be built for lifestyle images. You get the gist. For many businesses, product imagery and the options above become not cost effective and there is a lot of time in managing these processes too.
“What then tends to happen for many companies unable to afford such costs and time, is that they end up using ‘poor’ images generated from manufacturers, poor CGI images done ‘cheaply’, images taken in a factory or showroom setting with low quality, as well as using manually cut out and ‘bodged’ into a room set that ultimately doesn’t help sell the product. Furthermore, simply just using white background only images does not always help with visuals for the customer either. Ultimately all these issues don’t portray the products well and will impact sales. It’s a double-edged sword.”
There is also an issue with repetitive imagery and multiple size factors to consider for different platforms – just to add further confusion to the fray. “Wholesalers and e-tailers have a broad range of sales outlets for their products,” Hamza adds. “Whether that’s various customers selling via marketplaces or other online platforms, this can create issues as the same image/product ends up being pushed and used across the internet.
“Ultimately, there can end up being no differentiator across the platforms. These platforms also require varying specifications when it comes to image sizes too, which again can be time, cost and hassle having to amend images to suit the respective platform. When it comes to ‘refreshing’ images or wanting to have a product in a different setting or theme it also becomes a costly process. Presti AI was created to help solve all of these issues.”
So, what can Presti actually do?
Presti AI was created to offer an alternative to both of the aforementioned but at a fraction of the cost, with images generated automatically and within seconds. Furthermore, as Hamza explains, it is specifically created for the furniture industry and understood to be the only technology of this type. “In a nutshell, Presti allows you to upload an image into the tool, strip out the background (if needed), choose the image size you want, place the product where you want it to sit within the image, and then prompt the AI on the setting you want the product in.
“For example, a sofa in a modern room, white walls, wooden floor, window with curtains and a standing lamp. Within seconds, Presti will create an image based on the prompt and build a background around the product. If you’re not happy with certain elements there are other features such as a magic eraser or shadow generator. If you’re not happy with the room setting you can simply run the process again with a different or tweaked prompt or reposition where you want the product to sit within the image. There is also the ability to ‘crisp’ up the image from the standard 1k to 2 or 4k resolution – perfect for print.”
Presti also allows users to work with current product images and completely change them or create numerous versions of them in different settings, or within different themes of the user’s choice. Hamza shared another example: “It can help with seasonal events or themes too, by creating a Christmas theme for your products. You can also take a photo within a factory or showroom setting and, within seconds, place this into a lifestyle set of your choice by simply uploading and prompting. It eliminates the need for expensive photoshoots, modelling and CGI.”
While Presti is still in Beta stage, it already provides “amazing results” with many more features to be added to the platform, which is expected to evolve over the coming months. “Customers who have signed up and bought into the technology have said that in terms of payback and return on investment, it is almost instant,” Hamza said.
“We’re are inviting interested companies to find out more and take advantage of our free trial, as well as live demos to the Presti platform. Simply email uksales@presti.ai for more information and to register your interest.”
