DIY European Retailer
How we contextualized thousands of products, making the impossible economically viable
The Challenge
This retailer faced a merchandising reality that couldn't scale: thousands of SKUs needing contextualized imagery for catalogs, eCommerce product pages, and seasonal in-store promotions. Their starting point was basic: simple product shots, many without high-resolution quality. Each product needed to appear in lifestyle contexts showing real-world application, from Christmas holiday displays to spring garden promotions. Traditional photography was economically impossible at this scale and speed.
Traditional Production Constraints
onventional retail photography demands professional shoots for every product context, studio setups with props and styling, separate sessions per seasonal theme, and post-production for thousands of images. For a retailer with constant promotional cycles (Christmas, spring planting, summer outdoor living, back-to-school projects), traditional production budgets and timelines make comprehensive contextualization financially prohibitive.
Business Context
French home improvement retail network requiring continuous merchandising assets across catalog, eCommerce, and in-store promotional displays.
Assets Created
Thousands of contextualized product images
from basic shots
Seasonal promotional visuals
for in-store merchandising displays
eCommerce product imagery
showing real-world application scenarios
Catalog-ready lifestyle photography
across product categories
Video content
demonstrating product usage and installation
Year-round promotional assets
matching retail calendar demands
Context generation from minimal starting materials
We transformed basic, often low-resolution product shots into rich lifestyle imagery showing tools in workshops, paint in renovated rooms, garden products in outdoor settings.
Scale matching retail reality
Generating contextualized imagery for thousands of SKUs became economically viable, giving every product the visual storytelling traditionally reserved for hero items only.
Seasonal agility without production bottlenecks
Christmas, spring gardening, summer outdoor themes deployed rapidly across all touchpoints, matching retail promotional calendars without scheduling shoots months in advance.
Omnichannel consistency from single production
Each contextualized asset worked seamlessly across print catalogs, eCommerce PDPs, and in-store promotional displays without separate production workflows.
Capability extension beyond traditional budgets
AIGC didn't replace their merchandising team; it amplified what they could deliver, elevating service quality to franchise partners and ultimately to customers discovering products in context.