Polishing Ippolita Jewelry's Online Presence to Make Their Brand Shine

The earliest jewelry ever discovered dates back to around 142,000 to 150,000 years ago, when some snail shell beads were found in a cave in Morocco. Today, of course, things have evolved. The global jewelry market, an industry full of opportunities for beautiful photography, is estimated to be over $340 billion, and over $66 billion of that is in online sales. One of the industry’s most admired participants is luxury jewelry retailer Ippolita, a long-time client of View Imaging.

“Jewelry is the most transformative thing you can wear.” ~ Iris Apfel

Shooting on White, Returns, and Challenges

Ippolita first debuted in 1999 at Bergdorf Goodman in Manhattan. Today, they can be found in jewelry stores across the nation, and have flagship studios in New York, Milan, and Chicago. Ippolita doesn’t keep its jewelry under glass in these flagship locations, opting instead to let customers interact with their products. “When you touch the jewelry, you have an enriched learning experience that’s not mediated by a salesperson, which is very important,” says founder Ippolita Rostagno. Customers also like that 99.9% of jewelry is made from recycled materials. But how do you make these types of personal connections online? That was one challenge.

View Imaging’s relationship with Ippolita began with SKU photography, shooting products on a white background. 76% of retailers capture E-commerce imagery this way. The good news is shooting on white cleanly showcases the product. The bad news is there’s no perspective when it comes to scale and size, which can be a problem with something as personal as jewelry.

“The good news is shooting on white cleanly showcases the product. The bad news is there’s no perspective when it comes to scale and size.”

According to Rostagno, “Most people think that jewelry is too big for them until they try it on or see it in perspective… I have a motto: Cool enough to covet but classic enough to keep. By that, I mean our jewelry causes an immediate emotional reaction, but you can see yourself still wearing it in 10 years.”

To fully convey this motto online, accurately representing the size and scale of Ippolita’s beautiful jewelry is critical—but easily misinterpreted against a white backdrop. As a result, Ippolita was dealing with a high number of returns. That was yet another challenge.

Repurposing a Fashion Shoot

Around the same time that View Imaging was shooting SKU photography, Ippolita produced a beautiful, bohemian-style fashion shoot with famed British photographer Ben Hassett. It featured close-ups of models placed against bright, single-color backgrounds with surreal facial lighting and skin tones to highlight the jewelry photography.

As attention-grabbing and moody as the campaign was—it posed a problem: It didn’t translate to Product Detail Pages (PDPs). To solve this issue, View Imaging suggested reshooting some of Ipollita’s products, then going back to Hassett’s campaign photography and making selects, cropping into models’ necks, hands, and wrists in order to repurpose the images to showcase products and realistically depict size and scale. Ippolita would then have two types of photography assets: products on a traditional white background and additional products shown to scale on models.

Carats of Cost Savings

This digital media solution provided huge cost savings for Ippolita. With View Imaging’s innovative solution, there would be no need to hire more models, bring Ben Hassett back in, or hire another crew for a shoot. Plus, no one had to worry about the hassle of rescheduling such a major production. Ippolita negotiated permission from Hassett and the models for the additional usage. Although this was a smart and cost-effective solution, it required highly skilled digital imaging artists. Products had to be skillfully removed from models, and new products had to be seamlessly placed with pixel perfection at scale. So, View Imaging reviewed hundreds of photos from the original campaign shoot, then advised Ippolita on the shots they thought would be the best contenders for a product switch out.

Once the photos and new jewelry products had been selected, View Imaging reshot the products at specific angles, employing various positioning methods to match the precise placement of the products on the model. This was a carefully executed process—but again, it saved budget compared to an on-model reshoot. It also did three other important things for the client.

More of their campaign imagery could now be used across other channels like PDP’s.
It helped to unify the overall look and image for a consistent brand.
It provided Ippolita with a base library of model images that they could reuse again and again.

And that’s exactly what happened. Several times over the course of the renegotiated photography and model usage period, Ippolita sent new products and a shot list to View Imaging, then simply directed: “Compose this piece on this on-model image.” This process was far more cost-effective than their original, on-model shoot. How much so? Lets do the math: An average model shoot ranges from $15,000 to $30,000 a day. View Imaging was working with packages of images at a cost of around $3,000.

Better than CGI and Faster Turnaround

Additionally, it’s important to note that CGI wasn’t used during the removal and replacement of products—View Imaging relied on their own expertise in product placement, their understanding of depth of field, knowledge of light, skin tones, and world-caliber retouching instead. CGI is indeed used in E-commerce imagery, but it’s often easily spotted by experts. As View Imaging went down this road with Ippolita, they double-checked their work with numerous independent experts, from ad agency Creative Directors to other photographers, and was never called out for doing a “placed product” shot. No one could tell the difference. View Imaging’s process was also faster than CGI’s longer rendering time. The turnaround time from receiving products to returning web-ready images to Ippolita was an impressive 4 to 5 days.

The Next Evolution

Eventually, the renegotiated usage of images from the campaign ran out, and Ippolita asked View Imaging to produce a new on-model shoot. This gave View Imaging the opportunity to put into place a tailored production pipeline that included a one-time model shoot, the building of a proprietary model library, and a process that took all channel uses and versioning into consideration from day one. Model rights were also bought out, so Ippolita could use its visual imagery for as long as desired.

Dazzling Results

View Imaging’s digital production strategy solved Ippolita’s sizing issues, significantly decreased online returns, and extended the channel use of existing photography assets. This reduced Ippolita’s budget, expanded a campaign to additional platforms, created a base library of images, and decreased turnaround time for getting images online. Next, View Imaging Created an extended on-model campaign that continued to save money by buying out model usage. But don’t just take our word for it:

“View’s post-production allowed us to showcase new products at scale at a fraction of the cost. Eliminating the need for an on-model shoot saved us time and money without sacrificing the information our customers need to purchase the perfect piece.”
~Kaitlyn Seigler, Ippolita Director of E-Commerce

That's a Wrap

Whether you need to repurpose existing photography, shoot fresh product photography, launch a new campaign, or rehaul your entire E-commerce process to handle all versioning, consider View Imaging your one-stop production resource for creative production, E-commerce retoughing, and lifestyle photography. Just as jewelry has gotten more beautiful and sophisticated since those snail shell beads found in Morocco, we make the world more beautiful with a talented global team, decades of expertise, and unparalleled technical know-how. Call us and let’s talk about your next project.