A. K. Rikk's is a luxury retailer that specializes in men's and women's clothing, shoes, accessories as well as home decor.
Located in Michigan's Grand Rapids, their customers vary from a younger audience interested in casual trends to an older crowd that wants to project a more professional, sophisticated appearance. The store is home to over 16,000 different products.
This diverse selection prompted A.K. Rikk's to take the plunge in 2015 and start investing in e-commerce. In the beginning, the team did very small-scale product photography, but soon enough realized that wasn’t going to be scalable in a market with an ever-growing demand for quality content.
Betting on automation with Profoto equipment
Becoming and staying competitive online meant creating a studio that fosters a smooth content production workflow that enables the team to optimize this process. Soon enough, Adam McKeague, Manager of Technology and Design, stumbled upon Profoto and made the decision to go all in on our automation tools to enhance what was already there - a vision to grow online and a strategy in place.
Currently, A.K. Rikk's is in the possession of all automated solutions - one Horizontal, one Vertical, two Live, and one Eclipse. This setup allows A.K. Rikk's to narrow down its team and focus on the styling of the products. By eliminating redundant tasks and optimizing its workflow, the studio team has managed to build up and successfully run the entire e-commerce and social media side of the business by using Profoto's automated solutions.
'We saw Eclipse and for us it was a no-brainer.'
Shoes, eyeglasses, bags… All these items are challenging to shoot. There are plenty of reasons for that. The variation of styles, sizes, and materials make it difficult to shoot bags, shoes, and accessories in the proper way.
Typically, for a successful footwear photoshoot, you would need some sort of a light-reflective surface, camera, studio lighting, diffuser, reflector, tripods, software for editing, etc.
Combining all of these elements into one product gave birth to Eclipse in 2018 - a powerful plug-and-play machine that enables you to capture, edit and export stills and videos of shoes and accessories within minutes.
For A.K. Rikk's, implementing our all-in-one automated tool has become a 'game-changer'. Using the turntable and the 4 axes of robotic camera movement lets the team get the ideal crisp wrap-around shot. By using the Sequence feature, users are able to capture stunning product videos of items with a single click of a button. A.K. Rikk's later uses this content for their website and social.
'You can get the same angles, same lighting, at the click of a button. 45 seconds and Eclipse will go through 6 different shots and automatically edits the videos together and saves a ton of time in post.'
Adam goes on to explain that by making sure that everything from their packaging, through website and social media content is what will set A.K. Rikk's apart from competitors. If the team doesn’t make sure that the products look well and that there is consistency in the content, they're not going to sell online and will eventually lose customers. That is a costly price to pay for overlooking quality.
With Profoto equipment, the team succeeds at getting the most detailed images and videos of their products. Saving a ton of time in prep and post is one of the major perks of having the studio solely equipped with automated Profoto solutions.
