We are excited to welcome yet another world-famous brand to our portfolio: Jacuzzi Spas. Using our award-winning 3D production toolkit, Jacuzzi is working to create a unique next-generation shopping experience for any customer on any device from PC to mobile phones.

Here is a look into the features that allows our customers to create amazing 3D experiences without the need for coding or 3D skills:

Thank you,

The Brand3D team

Did you know that creating 3D content has become even easier with some of the latest iPhone and iPad models? 

Watch this short video showing just how easy it is to create and upload content for the Metaverse!

We believe that technology like this will drive an explosion in content generation and make Brand3D an even more attractive investment.

Please let us know if you have any questions or comments!

In other news, we are helping one of the frontrunners in the automobile industry, Valeo, redefine 3D video in their mini-metaverse:

Thanks for all your support and feedback!

The Brand3D Team

Greetings Startengine Supporters! 

Thanks again for your tremendous support and feedback over the last few weeks!

I would like to use this opportunity to both give you an idea of just how powerful and disruptive our 3D technology can be.

3D technology combined with digital artwork is disrupting the $1.6B commercial photography industry (source: Market Research, 2019) by replacing costly and inefficient product photography with 3D rendering processes. For example, for Bacardi we helped create virtual alternatives to existing product photography processes. For example, for the Bombay Sapphire product, we created a virtual representation of a gin cocktail that was not only as attractive as the real thing, but also allowed small adjustments to be made any time without having to re-establish the props in a photo studio, etc.  See the photo below for an example of such an entirely artificial 3D rendering

We even did “blind testing” with real-world photos and users actually thought these artificially generated cocktails looked more like a cocktail should look and more real too.

You can read more about this and other examples of our past successes here in this Authority Magazine interview: 

https://medium.com/authority-magazine/hans-hansen-of-brand3d-on-the-supply-chain-and-the-future-of-retail-625b4966e461

We really thrilled to share another strong boost in our active user base! Several of our new StartEngine investors have already been actively sharing our great technology in their network. Thanks for your invaluable support!

We are also really excited to share this detailed interview by Michael Vizard of CxO Magazine featuring our CEO Hans Hansen.

Click here to watch the interview of our CEO Hans Hansen featured in the renowned Digital CxO Magazine

See the full transcript of the Digital CxO interview below. Note: No agents, representatives, employees, consultants, contractors, subcontractors, investigators, attorneys, and/or any other persons or entities acting or purporting to act on behalf of Digital CxO are affiliated with Brand3D or this StartEngine campaign 

We hope you can get some of your questions answered from this interview, but if you would like to ask the questions directly to our CEO, here is your chance. Simply dial into the following Zoom meeting on Wednesday to get direct access:

Wednesday 18am ET (8am PT, 5pm / 17.00 CET)

Join the Zoom Meeting with this link:

https://zoom.us/j/96269693629?pwd=NmZSd1pZTHhWYW9PNEZ5K2xVM2FyUT09

Meeting ID: 962 6969 3629
Passcode: Sj8tBj

Hope you can make it, but we will also record the session so drop us a note at contact@brand3d.com if you want the recording.

As a bonus, please see this live demo we created as fan art for another great company here on StartEngine: BOXABL. Try to assemble and disassemble a model of their modular mini-home or take a look at their Youtube video without leaving the mini-Metaverse (please use Chrome or Firefox for the best experience)

Thanks!

The Brand3D Team

Transcript of the Digital CxO Interview follows below:

Mike Vizard: Hello, and welcome to the latest edition of the digital CXO Video Cast. I’m your host, Mike Vizard. Today we’re with Hans Hansen who is CEO of Brand 3D. They help websites and retailers and a bunch of other organizations embed 3D type of images into their applications to improve the overall sales experience. Hans, welcome to the show.

Hans Hansen: Thanks for having me, Mike.

Mike Vizard: 3D has been around for a little while. It’s perhaps not as widely important as it might be, but we hear a lot now more about the metaverse. So how do you think 3D and the metaverse will all come together and kind of change the whole buying-shopping experience, both for consumers and for that matter for B2B?

Hans Hansen: Well, as you have said in the intro here, 3D investments for most businesses is a long-term investment. So you’re creating 3D now that’s a way to go later for the metaverse as that is getting built out. And what brand feeding and my company is all about is taking advantage of the 3D content today. So we basically allow any business to embed content into any web context without need for virtual reality glasses, and without waiting for the metaverse to really happen, but other 3D assets once developed can be inserted into the metaverse of the future.

Mike Vizard: Why don’t I see more of these 3D applications? What’s the challenge, and what does it take to get people down this path?

Hans Hansen: Well, there’s been a couple of hiccups. So not to take dimes like Amazon has made acquisitions into 3D. They’ve acquired Bodylabs out of New York. Target and other retailers have done the same. But I think it comes down to IT’s journey. So there just hasn’t been enough framework for embedding 3D. And you know, companies like ourselves have been around for a long time. We’ve been doing web embeds ad hoc you know, in websites all over the world. But getting to the retailers, getting through the IT scrutiny and IT audits required to embed 3D, that has taken a while, but I think we’re beginning to see it now. We’re seeing more and more visual product configurators on websites where you can configure a product, and then you know, make an order on the product. Not mainstream products yet, but it’s coming. I mean we see it now. I mean a lot of our customers are retailers so it’s just a matter of time.

Mike Vizard: In addition to the metaverse, people have been talking about augmented and virtual reality for a while. Are these all one and the same things, or are there slight differentiations between 3D, augmented reality, and the metaverse that we’ve got to figure out?

Hans Hansen: Well, if you talk about the metaverse and Facebook, or meta since, then it’s one thing. That’s an immersive environment where the entire web changes into a 3D world. But if you talk about embedding content into augmented reality, we’ve seen companies like Ikea have augmented reality in their mainstream offering for a long time. We offer that right out of the box with our service, so you don’t even need to download an app. You can just take any 3D model that’s _____ augmented reality. You can take your smartphone, you can place a car in your driveway. You can put that sofa in your living room. It’s all there. It’s all out there. So I think the difference between augmented reality and virtual reality is that augmented reality is already out there. Virtual reality is still waiting for the headsets.

Mike Vizard: What is the hard part about setting all this up right now? You alluded to some IT issues, but what level of expertise do I have to have in order to take advantage of these kinds of presentations?

Hans Hansen: Well, less and less. So it’s getting more and more common to get access to these 3D models. It’s almost like what _____ was in the ‘90s so there are more and more sites where you can download 3D models in standard format and then you can upload them to services like our P3D service. You can upload it to Sketchpad. You can upload it to a myriad of different 3D hosting sites. Once it’s uploaded then you can share it on the web with just a single line of code. You can view it in augmented reality. And you don’t have to be technical. It’s virtually downloading a file, uploading a file, pasting the URL and you’re good to go.

So we’re seeing an increasing number of Shopify outlets with a "longtail" of Shopify retailers using this. We have customers doing augmented reality for their art. So you can place their art on your wall and see how it looks before you purchase. That’s all available today. So I think that’s really the game changer once people realize that this technology is out there.

Mike Vizard: Are we approaching a point where the average buyer, whether they’re a consumer or corporate for that matter, may look at your product and kind of assume you’re outdated because you don’t have some sort of 3D presentation that they can play with and look at, and kind of examine something, because I think a lot of people don’t want to have that sales call until the last minute.

Hans Hansen: No. I totally agree. It needs to be as accessible as possible. And it can’t be a sales call. It can’t be where you have to handhold the retailer to get this technology out there. They need to be able to play with it. They need to be able to create a 3D environment, and get it on their website very, very easily. And then yes at some point you’re right, when virtual reality becomes pervasive so everybody has a headset, kids don’t go to school, but they just wear their headsets and _____ glasses. That future is coming, but it’s probably still ten years down the line. So I think there’s a lot going to happen in retail before that becomes reality.

And you know, all technology is following all the standards and technology trends so yeah. No, I don’t see that as a risk for my company at least.

Mike Vizard: Do you think people will be less inclined to actually want to go to a mall or actually have to physically touch something, or will they just use this as a tool to kind of decide when they want to go to the mall and for what exactly? There won’t be this kind of random shopping. You know, be like well I already checked this out. I know exactly what I’m looking for, and I’m going to go get that specific thing.

Hans Hansen: I think it’s going to be a combination. I don’t think that physical stores are going away. I mean, we don’t see that. They’re shifting in focus. People still want to be able to go in and touch an object. But exactly as you say, retailers, even brick-and-mortar retailers like Home Depot have seen a 30% decline when they started using 3D and 360 in returns. Because when their shoppers either bought online or in-store, they already knew the product. They’d already taken a look at – you know, for example I showed you this x-ray vision into a dishwasher where you could see all the different features. That kind of in-depth walkthrough of the product where you almost feel like you’ve had the product, where you put it in your kitchen, you put the dishwasher in your kitchen so you’ve seen how it looks before you go to the store, and maybe sign the contract, because for larger purchases people would still want to go into a physical store in many cases. But as you say, then they’ve already done the deep dive into the technology. The features.

I mean, I have another example. Motorola. We did a walkthrough of the Motorola product. It’s a _____ with fifty-seven features. The only digital presentation of this they had was a thirty-seven-minute long video on YouTube. We replaced that, creating a nursery where you could see all the three components. Both the alarm itself that had a camera, the screen where you could see, you know, what was going on, as well as the Smartphone app. We walked the customer through all of that. We created a heat map where you could see where people clicked. What they were most interested in. And suddenly those fifty-seven different features became fifty-seven different journeys into that product, and it was trackable. And you know, it just opened up a myriad of new possibilities that you would never be able to do with video. You’d never be able to do in-store in the same way.

Mike Vizard: Are there some best practices for implementing this and telling a narrative around it, because I’m sure a lot of people have, at this point, done a lot of trial and error, but what have you seen, or what do you think people should know going in?

Hans Hansen: Keep it simple. So focus on the product. Make sure you have a high quality representation of the product. There are many ways to do this. You can 3D scan, and we have support for the leading Smartphone 3D scanner apps. Once you’ve scanned something you get a very high quality representation. Then focus on camera and navigation rather than making a super complex 3D model for most products.

So for example, use our technology or similar web technology to create camera angles. Zoom in on what’s important. Put text labels that explain what is going on. Either if it’s a technical product; the feature breakdown. If it is a fashion or an apparel piece, focus in on what makes this different. Is it a high quality seam? Is it a better cloth than the competing products? Is it a better, more humane manufacturing process? All of those things can be explained on the model as if you were in-store, and present that.

Make it simple. So make it clickable and simple, and break it down so that it’s easy for the customer to get an overview and kind of keep the perspective.

Mike Vizard: When people look at 3D, of course, they already start thinking a lot about games. So do you think that with this kind of technology that we could gamify a lot of the shopping experience in ways that we haven’t thought through before?

Hans Hansen: Absolutely. And things like loyalty programs where you kind of start paying loyalty points for exploring products is an area that hasn’t been explored much. There’s a lot of talk about NFTs these days. An NFT is just like a digital representation of some physical good. So maybe use some of that thinking in retail. So think of your product as not only a physical product, but also a virtual digital representation of the product. Make sure that people, even if they don’t buy the product, make sure that they show their loyalty.

So for example, people pay a lot for sneakers. Right? And some of these sneakers are very pricy. But they only buy so many. I mean they have a certain budget. Why not let them earn loyalty points by sharing other models that they would never invest in to their communities. You know, exploring them in 3D. Sharing them with one click. It’s something that’s available today. You can do it. And why not, you know, take that, as you say, gamify the pre-buying experience as well as the post-buying experience.

Mike Vizard: Do you also think that the cost of testing products will drop because I will be able to have a richer experience and I’ll get some more insight from my customers about what they might like, from a design perspective at least, if not a functionality perspective?

Hans Hansen: Absolutely. And I think there’s two steps to this. First is, as you say, testing it before you actually decide to produce it. Once you make the decision to start production, use the Tesla model. I mean, presale using a very attractive 3D model of the product. Make sure that you have people buying into it.

I mean, for example, the sneakers. If this is a $500 or $1,000 sneaker, why not have people pay a down payment once they want that new model. They’ll get it before everybody else, just like you get the Tesla before everybody else, but you make a small down payment. I think we’re going to see a lot more of that, and that’s going to be enabled by attractive 3D models.

Mike Vizard: We hear a lot about artificial intelligence these days. How do you think that this technology and AI might come together to kind of transform the way we think about buying and selling?

Hans Hansen: Yeah. First of all, I think AI is very, very important in the digital processing of 3D. So I think we’re going to see more and more 3D content creation using AI. so that you can very quickly and cost effectively create variance on one product using AI. You’ve already seen some researchers from Stanford and elsewhere create 3D model variants using AI. So you take one sneaker and then you can basically calculate a myriad of other variants.

That’s also back to your question about testing. Using AI to generate new product variants that you can then test to make sure that you produced the one that people really want is a very interesting aspect.

And I was being interviewed about 3D printing where AI plays a very, very important role optimizing the 3D printing process so you can print better, faster, more reliably, and you can scale printing to sizes that wouldn’t be possible without AI. So I think the same thing applies here.

By using AI you can certainly present 3D in ways that we can’t even think about right now. You can embed 3D into real-world scenes way beyond just projecting a piece of art on the wall, or putting a car in the driveway. You can go one step further and you can actually let AI precision place 3D in real world scenes. Just like we’ve already seen AI now generate spokespersons. I mean, I was using an AI generated spokesperson to present new features of our platform. It’s very compelling. It’s almost like the real thing. Why not take that into the 3D space and use that to create 3D scenes that will drive sales and product tests?

Mike Vizard: We’ve been talking about the idea of mass customization forever. More than I care to admit. I think we’re a step closer now.

Hans Hansen: I think we are. So I was actually in that same interview. I was talking about Project R from Google back when they wanted to do smartphones that were completely hyper personalized and printers on demand. That didn’t happen because of technology limitations. But it also didn’t happen because you couldn’t handle all of the data processing of doing that. I think we’re one step further. And especially if you’re in the virtual domain.

So, people already now have NFTs that are generated in the tens of thousands completely customized to a particular character, a particular game, you know, etc. Once that hits retail so that you can adapt and personalize products that may not exist in the virtual domain until they’ve been sold.

Mike Vizard: All right. Well hopefully the next time we do this interview, it’ll be in a 3D world and we’ll see what happens from there, but Hans, thank you for spending some time with us. Your insights are awesome.

Hans Hansen: Well, thank you for inviting me.

Mike Vizard: All right, and thank you all for watching our latest episode. You can catch this episode and other ones on DigitalCxO.com. Until next time, thank you all and stay safe.

Link to the interview at Digital CxO Magazine: Leadership Insights: 3D Applications and the Metaverse - Digital CxO 

Thanks for your awesome support over the last week!

We are SOOO close to the magic $100k mark. If you know have anyone in your network who you think might be interested in Brand3D - please spread the word! 

In the meantime, please find another peak into the astounding growth that we are currently seeing on our SaaS platform - up more than 23% over the last 30 days compared to the previous period! 

Unlike some of the newcomers to this business, we have been operating our 3D visualization platform at scale for more than a decade and for that reason we are - unlike some of our startup competitors - ready to take on dramatic traffic increases as online businesses tap into the power of the Metaverse.

We look forward to driving this growth further with your support and to make Brand3D a leading player in 3D asset production for the Metaverse! 

Here is a quick example of how we are aiming to revolutionize luxury retail with our unique 3D animation capabilities - this case for the proud Jacuzzi family business:

Notice how the colors in the animated water as well as the front panels of the Jacuzzi can be configured in real time by the customer before purchase. Try a live demo here: Jacuzzi Demo

We believe that this is the future of retail and we are in a unique position to drive this growth.

Thank you,

Hans HH Hansen

CEO, Brand3D Inc

We are thrilled to see the strong participation by SE investors since we launched our Brand3D equity crowdfunding campaign on StartEngine on Friday, March 25th

Our Telly Award™ winning Software-as-a-Service platform provides user-friendly tools that allow any online business to quickly create an immersive 3D experience

Brand3D’s mission is to revolutionize retail, product visualization and education. Here are some of the key customer use cases for our technology:

3D Fashion Configurators

Realistic Visual Quote Configurators

Custom product manufacturers can let their customers personalize and view options in real time with seamless integration with Augmented Reality and place the virtual products in a real setting and walk around it virtually - all requiring no headsets, no downloads, no installation

Integrate X-Ray Vision with Video

Our Telly Awards winning animation allows stunning product walkthroughs using advanced 3D animations, X-Ray vision and clickable annotation labels driving animations

Fly-Overs and Architecture Walk-Throughs

Architects and builders can let prospective buyers move the camera around 3D scenes of buildings and link camera positions to custom labels - all with the point and click of the mouse

And to show you "live progress" on our business, here is a quick glance of the key metrics of our SaaS subscription platform over the last 30 days compared to the previous 30 day period - as you can see all stats are "in the green":

Thanks again for your support!

Hans HH Hansen

CEO and Co-Founder

Brand3D, Inc