Outward Opens Office in High Point as Hub for Live Demos of Its Aperture Platform

Furniture World News Desk on 10/7/2021

Outward, Inc. – an independent Williams-Sonoma Inc. company and pioneer provider of cutting-edge photography solutions for the home furnishings industry – announced that it has opened an office here. The location will be used as a central point to connect with companies on a year-round basis as well as those attending the bi-annual High Point Market to conduct live demonstrations of its Aperture Platform, a new technology that makes it easy to produce and publish high-impact product photography for a variety of visual merchandising uses. The new location will also be used as a home base for Outward’s east coast sales and marketing team.

“Establishing a presence in High Point is a strategic move and a logical next step for us,” said Gaurav Sethi, vice president of business development and co-founder of Outward Inc. “Our customer base is dominated by home furnishings manufacturers and retailers, so having an office in the furniture capital of the world makes sense. It allows us to easily connect with them when they are in town for Markets and provides us with an opportunity to host experiential events and conduct live demos of our Aperture Platform throughout the year to show the full breadth of what our technology has to offer and how it can drive business growth by elevating their brands.”

The office is located at 134 South Main St. in High Point, conveniently located near many of the downtown Market buildings. The 2,800-square-foot space includes a dedicated area for the Aperture photo rig and software platform, where visitors can experience first-hand how the technology works. It also includes meeting space, a bar area with unique architectural features and an outdoor deck for socializing.

The east coast sales and marketing team will host events and schedule appointments at the office throughout the year, as well as during all High Point Markets. It will be open for the upcoming Fall Market, scheduled for Oct. 16-20.

Outward’s Aperture Platform automates the product photography process. The platform allows companies to photograph an entire product line and produce silhouettes on a white and contextual background at a fraction of the time and cost of a traditional photographer and studio setup. Users can immediately upload professional-quality product photos to social channels, e-commerce websites, traditional print publications and more.

The product is intuitive and easy to use so that any team member moving furniture can operate the tool. A photo rig is delivered and assembled on the customers premises– warehouse or distribution center included– to be used as the photography studio. With a power outlet and Wi-Fi, the rest of the process is automated with perfect lighting, which is built into the platform. After products are photographed, they are perfected with the automated use of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML), saved and organized in the Outward Cloud for easy, secure access by anyone anywhere.

Built into Aperture are a variety of custom backgrounds, along with intuitive shadow and masking tools. The Aperture software is highly automated, eliminating the time it normally takes to edit and post-process within Photoshop. When a product image is required, it can be generated with the simple push of a button in a variety of formats – such as any resolution size or format including JPGs and PNGs.  

About Outward Inc.

Outward Inc. is a visual transformation and technology company. Since 2012, the company has been reinventing the way product photography is created, presented and consumed. Inspired by its deep experience working with Williams-Sonoma, Pottery Barn and West Elm, Outward brings the advantages of automated, AI-perfected product photography to manufacturers and retailers of all sizes by producing a large volume of product images at the push of a button and publishing them in any format — from e-commerce to traditional media. Outward is an independent Williams-Sonoma company. For more information, visit www.outwardinc.com.