The German company, Photobooth Deluxe (PD), is a manufacturer, distributor, and supplier of photo booth systems. Led by its owner Jürgen Mayr, PD is one of the biggest players in the European photo booth market.

Its four main services are the construction and distribution of photo booths; support and training for photobooth providers; software development to improve the functionality of photo booths; and a rental service for photo boxes and video platforms.

Photobooth Deluxe (PD’s) service is mostly used for weddings and corporate events. As a result, speed, compactness, and accessibility are the most important factors in customer happiness and business success.

The company was looking for a replacement for the costly, bulky, and heavy green screens they used. These take a lot of human resources to transport and time to set up. Furthermore, green screens cost around €250 - €350 and they don’t always fit with companies’ corporate colors. For example, Deutsche Telekom uses magenta while Media Markt uses red. The company wanted to add something special and decommoditize photo booths at events as well as expand its service offering.

“The goal was not to get ‘more’ contracts,” explains founder, Jürgen, “but rather to find a perfect solution for every customer.”

Hoping to improve this aspect of the service, Jürgen found remove.bg and contacted us. Removing backgrounds from photos using AI was the perfect solution, but it came with a potential hitch: events - especially weddings - often take place outside or in facilities without a reliable internet connection.

On top of that, PD had GDPR concerns since pictures to be processed are sent to a third-party provider not edited on-site. But an always-on internet connection is one of the most important requirements for remove.bg’s AI.

PD chose the remove.bg API to integrate automated background removal into their software. We quickly managed to find the right solution for the company’s unique challenges.

We solved the internet connection issue by encouraging the client to communicate with event hosts and making the need for always-on internet known from the beginning of the planning process.

remove.bg takes GDPR and data protection very seriously possessing great pride in our 100% GDPR compliance. Thanks to that, PD was quick to trust us and we could solve the security issues right away. Jürgen’s company is also all about technology, so he and his team have been hard at work building novel solutions for partners using our software.

Thanks to the great integration, PD doesn’t rely solely on greenscreens anymore and doesn’t need 2.5 x 3.5 meter booth space. The space needed at events has decreased by 98%, and the extra, green-screen-free space is a huge improvement for their service, allowing corporate color tie-ins, and making event planning much easier and flexible - especially for smaller events and weddings.

In addition, since implementing remove.bg, PD has saved a lot of time for each event, around 30 to 45 minutes. Since 2019 they have participated in about 6,880 events, saving approximately 3,440 hours and €172K in costs.

The automated background removal service gets great feedback from customers and guests. Jürgen himself has noticed an improvement in the quality of the images, compared to when he had started using remove.bg.

“Nothing is comparable with the quality you deliver” he says.

remove.bg has let PD expand its offering beyond events.

Photobooth Deluxe helps a large company with a lot of employee churn take photos of new workers. With one of PD’s photobooths in every HR department, the corporate takes a photo, sends it to have the background removed, and replaced with a uniform background featuring the company’s colors and logo.

“The automated background removal is the USP and the main criteria for the purchase here, a big competitive advantage,” says Jürgen.

During the Covid pandemic, many events and corporate events started happening online, so PD created an "online photo booth". The client or guest only needs to email a selfie to PD. This gets sent back with a new background and overlay matching the event and its specific colors etc. Pictures can be combined with multiple backgrounds after the event.

remove.bg helps PD reach its goal of finding “a perfect solution for every customer.” Moving forward, he is planning on expanding his operations to the USA, with the support of remove.bg.