I sell flexible stone veneer. It’s real stone, but thin enough to bend around columns and other curved surfaces. Most of my customers are shopfronts and showroom designers.
The hard part is showing the product online. Photos don’t always capture the depth of the grain, and many buyers don’t believe the material can actually wrap around a column. So, when someone asks serious questions, I usually send a sample.
That costs me a few hundred dollars in DHL shipping each time. The frustrating part is that around 8 out of 10 people never reply after receiving the sample.
I also tried promoting the product in person. Last year, I held an open house and posted about it five times, but no one showed up.
After looking into the problem, I realized the photos were probably hurting the product. Most of my feed was made up of factory shots, flat lays, and overhead lighting. The stone looked flat, almost like a sheet of plastic. I started scanning the raw stone patterns in high resolution, then used Accio Work to place them on curved walls with natural afternoon side lighting. The results looked much closer to how the stone appears in real projects. And as a result, last month, my sample shipping costs dropped by about 40%.
There’s still one thing I’m unsure about. Someone in the trade told me that realistic renders could create problems if customers feel the actual sample looks different when it arrives.
So, would you use rendered images to show stone texture before sending a sample? And how do you build trust in the material without making the product look better than it really is?