3 Unexpected Ways Virtual Photography Helps With Inventory Management

Shopper browsing through product options in a virtual photography catalog

One of the biggest challenges that many retailers face is inventory management. In fact, it's so difficult that the average American retail operation has an inventory accuracy of an alarming 63%. This is far lower than it should be. If you want to ensure that your business maintains accurate inventory and efficient inventory tracking, one of the most surprising solutions may be virtual photography.

Virtual photography comes with many benefits. It can produce high-quality product images that outshine traditional photos. You can even use it to create 3D models of your products for use in 3D product configurators. However, another key advantage that businesses should consider is the fact that it can help automate inventory management.

Here we'll review some of the ways you can use virtual photography to improve inventory management.

3 Unexpected Ways Virtual Photography Helps With Inventory Management

Design your own Mestessa Bag_ Purse or Handbag

1. Create Clearer Catalogs of Product Categories, Models, and Options

When using traditional photography for products, you're stuck with manual operations that can lead to inefficient cataloging. With every product or feature you capture, you have to manually enter it into your system and manage it. As your business grows and you develop and offer more products, this process can quickly become overwhelming. The sheer number of products makes it difficult to effectively catalog all products and their many options.

Using virtual photography, you can create clearer product catalogs and keep track of inventory more easily. For instance, you could catalog a particular category of products, followed by cataloging individual product models.

If your products feature a wide range of customizable features, virtual photography can also catalog each option. It can automatically organize the hundreds or even thousands of potential combinations available to first-time and return customers. This way, you'll never need to worry about losing track of your existing inventory.

Get Started

2. Manage Instant Product Image Updates Based on Inventory Changes

Inventory is often prone to change, which can make updating corresponding product images a hassle. Every time there's a material or color change, you would need to reshoot the product and update the catalog accordingly. This can take a lot of time and effort, particularly if changes are frequent.

But with the help of virtual photography and virtual product catalogs, you can instantly update product images to reflect any changes in your inventory. Virtual photography software will enable you to quickly and easily customize and reconfigure your images at any time — without the need to ship inventory to a photoshoot or manually update the catalog.

3. Eliminate the Need to Ship Your Entire Inventory for Photoshoots

One of the biggest benefits of virtual photography is the ability to conduct virtual photoshoots. A traditional photo shoot would require a professional photographer, along with a shooting location and equipment such as lighting and DSLR cameras

Additionally, businesses would need to ship their entire inventory to the shooting location to capture professional photos of each product. The process requires a lot of planning, and it can be difficult to coordinate the shipment of inventory with hundreds or thousands of products. (If you have an online-only business, you may not even have physical products on hand.)

Thanks to innovations in virtual photography, it's easy to capture high-resolution images of all of your products without the need for a physical photoshoot. All that's needed are product design files that users can plug into virtual photography software. 

From those design files, including existing product photos, sketches, CAD files, or samples, the software can create photorealistic product images — without the need for Photoshop or other editing software. The end result is a catalog of high-quality image photos that are used for high-quality visualizations on eCommerce platforms like BigCommerce.

You'll never need to worry about gathering and shipping your inventory from a warehouse to a shooting location for a lengthy shoot. Even as your inventory expands and you require more product images, you can instantly capture and add them to your digital catalog.

You can learn more about how Threekit's Virtual Photographer software can get you started by clicking here.

Improve Inventory Management and Other Operations with Virtual Photography

Inventory management can benefit hugely from virtual photography solutions. You can easily catalog all of your inventory and track it using your eCommerce platform. At the same time, you can showcase your products in a way that truly impresses customers.

couch 360 degree view

In addition to inventory management, you can use virtual photography to produce 3D images of products that customers can interact with online. Photorealistic images can also be used in 3D models that project into the real world via augmented reality (AR). With a collection of models in a virtual reality environment, you can even give customers a virtual tour of a showroom or other digital location. 

Virtual photography used in conjunction with product customizers can also help automate the sales process. Bring your products to life through high-resolution 2D or 3D images. Customers will be more confident in their purchases if they know exactly what they're getting. When customers make an order, this order can instantly connect to your inventory to make it easy to track and fulfill each order.

Ultimately, you can use virtual photography to improve much more than inventory management. With this asset behind you, you'll be able to save more time, money, and energy that you can redirect toward running your business.

Learn more about how visuals drive conversion

Use Virtual Photography to Enhance Your Business Today

Man shopping online on his laptop at home

If you want to experience the benefits of virtual photography over traditional photography, it's in your business's best interest to invest in it as soon as possible. In addition to improving the efficacy of inventory management, you can use virtual photography to:

  • Provide customers with a new and exciting online shopping experience.
  • Increase conversion rates.
  • Showcase products on social media.
  • Eliminate the need for time- and resource-consuming photoshoots

If you want to get started optimizing your inventory processes, try Threekit's Virtual Photographer. Using our cutting-edge software, you can digitize your entire inventory and be on your way to improving inventory management and many other aspects of your business. To get started developing an immersive product experience, reach out to Threekit today, and we'll discuss the right solution for your business.