In a sentence, what does your business do?

Threedium specialises in immersive 3D formats that create far more engaging and interactive brand experiences.

Why did you launch the business?

Online commerce has been very homogeneous with businesses relying on static images to present their products and convey their brand purpose. All the while, in-store experiences are very personalised and customers and get up close to the products and understand their features. We wanted to change the way people interact with brands online and found that there’s no better or more engaging way than with immersive 3D technology.

Why is your tech different?

Our technology enables businesses of all sizes to use assets they already own to provide their customers with interactive and photo-realistic product experiences without the limitations of photos.

 Their customers can now explore their products as they would in-store, leaving no detail unseen. All variations and available options of products can now be shown in real-time, without ever losing sight of the product. 

Our technology is also versatile, enabling businesses to provide a seamless 3D experience across various digital channels, be it e-commerce, online retailers, programmatic advertising or social media. 

As our technology works through a cloud-based platform, businesses can create immersive 3D experiences at scale and on-the-go. Rather than having to set up expensive photography equipment, and shooting each individual product, for each variation, for every different angle and or background, business can now create 100s of variations with the same 3D model. 

With just a few clicks, labels can be switched out to meet the requirements of every local market in which it is launched. The 3D model can be placed into any environment or background with the option of creating static images, or a full-on interactive 3D experience. 

On average, we’ve seen our 3D solutions achieve 300% higher user engagement, 2X longer dwell times, and 3X higher conversions. The beauty of these figures is that we’ve achieved these averages in various industries: Fashion, FMCG, Automotive, and more.

What have been your key successes so far?

We initially had an agency approach whereby each solution had to be manually created from scratch. This had to be done over and over for each new project. Now that we have created a platform, we have automated the majority of our processes. 

This enables us to provide businesses with an in-house capability to create and publish immersive 3D & AR experiences. So, what used to take us months, with only being able to complete a limited number of projects, can now be done within days/weeks with the ability to tend to 100s and 1000s of users simultaneously. 

The other major successes have been the overall performance we have seen across industries who have implemented immersive 3D formats. The businesses that have implemented 3D formats have seen a significant performance enhancement across various metrics. 300% increase in user engagement, 30% increase in online sales, an average 10% decrease in product returns, and doubling the amount of time users spend on-site. 

We’ve seen significant metric increases not just in e-commerce but for advertising too. 

Our 3D formats for programmatic banners have seen similar uplifts as above, outperforming other rich media formats by far in every metric. 

For instance, we’ve launched a 3D banner with BMW while simultaneously running a 2D banner for the release of the new X2 model. With the equivalent number of impressions, our 3D format has achieved almost 100,000 more clicks compared to the 2D banner, whilst achieving 52 qualified test drive sign ups vs 0 for the 2D banner!

When did you last screw up + what did you learn?

We took on a lot of projects with short timelines without the platform being fully in-tact. 

We underestimated the complexities involved without automating our processes which in turn created bottlenecks. This resulted in a lot of sleepless nights in order to fulfil the promises we made.

 It was a tough pill to swallow but has laid out a clear path for us. This ultimately led us to create our 3D platform in a way that meets market demand. It’s not always about being the first, but about having something that truly solves a problem!

Why is now the right time for your business?

3D technology has been around since the 1990’s but has always been seen as very complex and inefficient.

 It’s taken quite a while to educate the market on the key benefits that 3D can provide in commerce, especially nowadays, that we have created lightweight formats that can be easily integrated. The world is becoming ever more digital and people are getting hungrier for immersive experiences – which 3D is all about. From being able to see a product form any angle, to augmented reality enabling users to experience products in the comfort of their own homes, to animating product features. The usability of 3D is constantly growing, and as it is so visual it can be entertaining, educational, fun – and ultimately building buyer confidence!

What trends do you expect to define the marketing landscape in 2020?

Immersive technologies are heavily on the rise. AR & VR has an immense opportunity, of which 3D is the backbone. 

It’s not just for product experiences but also to help improve efficiency and productivity of employees and processes. For example, the prospect of engineers being able to be fed with repair diagrams through an AR-interface to identify problems and fix them more quickly is really exciting. The use-cases are close to endless and I cannot wait to watch it all unravel.

In a sentence, what are your business priorities for 2020?

Major activations within the automotive, fashion, furniture and FMCG industries!

What are your key challenges to winning new business? 

The biggest challenge we have so far is educating enterprise level companies on the benefits of the Unlimited 3D platform. The reason for this, is that in a lot of organisations, departments are very siloed, meaning we have to pitch our solution to a number of different people, have multiple demonstrations until the full picture is clear. 

Although it is always fun understanding the different challenges that a certain company faces, it’s very time consuming until we reach a point where we can help alleviate their pains. 

What do you want for Christmas?

A pinch of luck for the new year and seeing the internet turn 3D!

Lode is Co-founder + Chief Commercial Officer of Threedium, winners of the Diageo PITCH//IT competition at MAD//Fest last month.