Case Study: Cash Converters Townsville

Background

Cash Converters Townsville is a licensed secondhand dealer and pawnbroker located in the Hyde Park Centre in Queensland, Australia. It has more than 150 stores scattered throughout Australia and over 750 stores in 18 countries worldwide. Its very first store was established in Perth, Western Australia in 1984. 

Proud of its humble beginnings, Cash Converters Townsville is a family business founded by Brian Cumins who first saw the opportunity to expand the pawnbroking industry into retail. The company has grown since and successfully reshaped the secondhand industry with services as a secondhand dealership, which includes items like jewelry, and cash loan services.

Challenge

With hundreds of stores worldwide, Cash Converters Townsville needs a solution to speed up its jewelry photography process.

Since its inception, Cash Converters Townsville has relied on the traditional photography process, but this has soon become one of its biggest challenges, especially with the development and evolution of the internet.

With the changing consumer behavior, the retail industry’s move from offline to online, and the introduction of the omnichannel concept in the marketing arena in 2010, Cash Converters saw that its dream of retail expansion would require more than a traditional business approach.

The pawnbroker rode with the tide. Customers can easily find them online may it be on the company website or its more active social media pages such as Facebook and Instagram.  However, what comes with channel expansion and digital shift is the visual shift.

Needless to say, pictures and videos generate more responses, particularly on visually-driven social media. With thousands of jewelry items to photograph for online retail and display, Cash Converters are faced with the following challenges.

• Traditional photography is time-consuming and expensive.
• With such a large collection of items, the usual photography process is no longer practical.
• There is difficulty in capturing quality photos and videos, especially with non-professional photographer-team members.
• The lack of consistency and quality affects online sales tremendously.

The Solution

Having access to a streamlined jewelry photography process that is fast, simple, convenient, and quality-guaranteed.

After numerous research and thorough solution analyses, Cash Converters learned about the GemLightbox and was on board right away. The GemLightbox turntable ticked all the boxes for them and has addressed their challenges in more ways than one.

The GemLightbox

The time-saving advantage of the GemLightbox is a crucial consideration that informed the design in its inception stage. The GemLightbox respects jewelers’ time by simplifying the entire photography process. All the features were built so that anyone can take photos even without photography knowledge.

The GemLightbox is a ready-made lightbox designed specifically for jewelry. It is compatible with all smartphones; thereby, eliminating all complex and grand studio setups without compromising quality. Combined with the power of the GemLightbox app, the device is a useful productivity tool that not only ensures jewelry photos and 360 videos of saleable quality but also guarantees convenient and easy file-sharing and storage. It’s like an inventory right at your fingertips!

Cash Converter has four (4) GemLightbox & Turntable Sets. As a big company with a huge jewelry collection, owning multiple devices is reasonably an excellent decision for them, especially if there are multiple people tasked to photograph jewelry. This allows them to complete the task in as little time as possible but still capture as many studio-quality photos and 360 videos as they need.

The GemLightbox has solved Cash Converters’ concerns in numerous ways.

• All Cash Converters’ team members can now take photos and videos whenever and wherever they need to.

The GemLightbox combined with the GemLightbox app works by using a smartphone. Cash Converters’ team members can simply put the jewelry inside the box, open the app, and click the camera to capture. Once saved in the GemLightbox gallery, they can easily and directly share it to their social media pages, upload it to their website’s product page, or send it directly to an interested client — no fuss.

• Everyone’s a photographer!

Jewelry is a complex and difficult subject to photograph commercially because they are reflective pieces. When jewelers talk about their challenges, it’s always centered on the lack of quality. Quality is driven not only by the device used but more particularly by the technical know-how.

The GemLightbox was created to solve that issue as it is not possible that all jewelers are professional photographers and that hiring professional photographers is expensive and time-consuming. With a design that understood the attribute of the subject being photographed, we were able to produce a point-and-shoot solution. Cash Converters has found this concept of point and shoot without technical photography knowledge extremely useful. This has made all Cash Converters’ team members a photographer!

• Take studio-quality photos and 360 videos in just a click.

Combined with the power of the GemLightbox app, Cash Converters’ team members are now able to capture studio-quality jewelry photos and 360 videos in just a click. 

Cash Converters gets to save more time and effort as there is no need anymore to learn to control and manipulate lighting just to capture color-accurate, studio-quality photos while also avoiding unnecessary reflections and shadows. Manipulating lighting is one of the most tedious tasks in jewelry photography and when they’re able to get out of it, it was such a relief.

The Results

A streamlined jewelry photography process — one that’s quick, convenient, simple, and functional.

By changing the process, Cash Converters was able to change the result and transform it in a way that meets the needs of its digital consumers. The evidence of change is too obvious to miss.

• Increased sales

With studio-quality jewelry photos displayed online, Cash Converters observed a significant increase in their sales performance.

• Enhanced productivity

The GemLightbox’s point-and-shoot concept has sped up Cash Converters’ photography process; thus, reducing its photoshoot time dramatically, while producing photos and videos thrice the quantity.

“The GemLightbox has streamlined our jewelry photography process. It has helped us remove unnecessary costs in photography as it is fast, simple, and reliable. It has absolutely exceeded our expectations!”

Do you need instant cash or borrow against your item of value? Contact Cash Converters Townsville today and apply for a loan now!