How remove.bg’s API Helps Big Brands Increase their Bottom Line

Whether cutting unnecessary costs or keeping your customers happy, in economic times like these, you, too, are probably on the lookout for making processes more efficient.

In this article, we’re going to dive into how big brands like Bosch, Nordstrom, and Deutsche Bahn are using the remove.bg API to do the following:

• Cut image production costs and raise their margins

• Hugely improve workflow efficiency in photo production

• Create a unique and improved customer experience

• As a tool for employer branding and creating employee-driven content

• A baseline for entirely new products or features

• Or to increase the companies’ conversion rates

No matter what industry you’re in — there’s bound to be some inspiration here on how you can use remove.bg to do that for your business too.

Cutting product photo production costs and raising your margins

Who doesn’t want to cut costs in their business? And for companies editing a ton of photos daily — like fashion retailers — photo production can take up a significant amount of your budget.

Nordstrom and Vestiaire have integrated remove.bg into their workflow to increase their margins big time. Here’s how.

Nordstrom & Vestiaire: cutting costs in half or more

Nordstrom is an American luxury department store chain and has become one of the world’s leading fashion retailers. They regularly produce a ton of photos for their online store.

Doing this is the most important thing for getting their online stock sold. Nordstrom makes many of their product images, but for about 10%, they simply remove and replace the manufacturer's image background. Like this:

How Nordstrom is cutting image costs (and you can too)

How can outsourcing image editing go from taking two days to only two minutes? Simply by the Nordstrom team using the remove.bg enterprise plan to bulk remove the background of manufacturers' images and replace it with a white one. Cutting down image production costs and raising their margins per product.

Vestiaire, on the other hand, is a second-hand online retailer that lets its users buy and sell vintage and pre-loved luxury items like clothes, jewelry, and handbags. While the items are pre-owned, they still want the website's clean look and feel. So, the background of items needs to be removed and replaced with a white one. This was done manually on Photoshop, and then the team tried to build a background removal tool in-house, but they ended up with remove.bg as their best bet.

How Vestiaire is cutting image costs (and you can too)

Vestiaire hasn’t integrated remove.bg into their platform using the API. The seller uploads a photo sent to remove.bg via the API, and the new image returns in about a minute. The Vestiaire team then curates whether the photo is good enough before it goes live. It’s cut the workflow, efficiency, and cost per image in half.

Photo production costs for online shops are huge — and time-consuming. remove.bg can help you automate the process and cut your costs in half.

Hugely improving workflow efficiency in photo production

Efficiency is often a key metric in business; not only does it make the team happier when things get done most effectively, but it will also save you money and resources at the end of the day.

Here’s how Fox-Mar and Hitech Digital have done it.

Fox-Mar: automating yearbook photo background photos

Fox-Mar is a photo studio specializing in yearbook and school photos. Their customers kept wanting an option to swap out the backgrounds of students, but gels and green screens couldn’t keep up or deliver the results the studio was looking for.

Forx-Mar processes and removes the background of around 21,000 images and upward per month. By integrating remove.bg into their workflow, Fox-Mar has managed to cut their time of removing and changing backgrounds by 50-75%, hugely cutting down on time spent on post-production editing and labor costs. They could also expand their offering when it comes to what backgrounds to offer, like American flags or the school emblem.

Hitech Digital: reducing background removal time by 50-60%

Hitech Digital, an outsourcing partner based in Gujarat, India, handles everything from back-office support to industrial design and online listings.

The company faced the challenge of labor-intensive image background removal, which could take up to 24 hours for ad hoc requirements, depending on image complexity. 

Hitech introduced remove.bg to streamline this process, and the results have achieved a 50-60% reduction in removal time. This efficiency boost allows them to deliver high-quality images to clients in no time.

Phoenix Trading Company cutting photo processing time by 20%

Phoenix Trading Company (PTC) specializes in selling plus-size women's apparel and health & beauty products through online marketplaces and their website. They needed to automate the photo preparation process to ensure accurate product images. PTC initially used a supplier, but due to COVID-19, they switched to remove.bg.

This integration simplified their workflow, reduced manual interventions by 80%, and resolved issues with mannequin parts in photos. The result was a more efficient, cost-effective process with higher photo quality. PTC and remove.bg continue to collaborate to enhance their operations.

Whether you’re a photo studio or an e-commerce manager, remove.bg can help you bulk remove and replace the backgrounds of images — creating an incredibly efficient workflow. Who doesn’t love getting rid of repetitive tasks?

Create a unique and improved customer experience

User and customer experience are extremely vital to keeping your customers happy long term. It’s what can set you apart from a competitor and add value to your brand. This is how companies like BOSCH and Spoak have integrated remove.bg into their technologies to improve their customer experience.

How BOSCH is revolutionizing the way customers find spare parts

Bosch is a renowned German multinational engineering and technology company. You may know them for household appliances like drills and washing machines. The company is also a huge innovator in automotive technology and manufacturing, automotive components, industrial technology, consumer goods, energy solutions, and more.

In the world of heavy machinery and industrial equipment, downtime is costly. 

The problem is accurately identifying these spare parts from images. It used to be a process of sifting through databases or resorting to web searches. So Bosch introduced a tool that could remove the background of an image and match it with a spare part. An app that uses 3D scanning to match and replace broken parts.

The integrated remove.bg API automatically removes the background of the image. A crucial step to ensuring that the technology matches the spare parts correctly.

The result? Less machine downtime, fewer financial losses, and smooth sailing for Bosch's customers. Read the full story on how Bosch is using the remove.bg API to improve their customer experience.

Spoak: helping customers visualize what furniture will look like in their home

Meet Spoak, an online design platform making interior design accessible to all. Over the past four years, Spoak has empowered DIY enthusiasts, interior design professionals, and everyone in between with their user-friendly tools, allowing users to create floor plans and room mockups with real product images.

remove.bg was quickly integrated as a staple feature, allowing users to visualize their spaces and start designing quickly.

Today, remove.bg processes 70,000 images monthly for Spoak.

Village Threads: making foster families feel more valued

Village Threads provides foster families with free clothes in the broader Dallas metro area. The clothes are second-hand, but the team wanted families using the platform to feel like they were still getting a valuable experience. Removing the background and replacing it with a white one gives foster families a nicer online user experience. One that feels more valuable and inclusive, brightening up rather than making them feel shameful about their situation.

The Village Threads' team easily integrated remove.bg because the organization uses PHP to manage products via Shopify. They could just add remove.bg utilizing the API at the beginning of the process. So, the team members are glad they don’t have to do extra work when uploading clothes.

Whether you need to help your software recognize and search images or help customers visualize something virtually — remove.bg can add a feature to your application. You’ll never have to build it from scratch. At the same time, you’ll be improving your customer's user experience big time.

remove.bg as the baseline of a product or to expand product features

Time and time again, it’s impressive to see how an API like remove.bg can be the baseline for an entirely new line of business. 

Snapbar was one of America's leading photo booth providers until COVID-19 hit. They didn't have a business model and needed to pivot from one day to the next. So they created Snapbar’s virtual photo booths, where remove.bg could replace the green screen the company was previously using.

So brands could create content at events like this:

Not only has remove.bg been the baseline for making the product — it’s also allowed the company to grow exponentially and double its profit margins. 

The same applies to the German company Photobooth Deluxe, which offers event photo booths. With remove.bg they’ve expanded their service portfolio to creating online photo booths.

Wondering whether you can take your photo studio online or expand your services? Or maybe you’re an event manager wanting to find new innovative solutions. remove.bg can even become the baseline of a completely new product.

Increasing conversion rate with the remove.bg API

Another way to hit those business goals and ensure growth is to improve your conversion rate. Companies like Showtime Pictures have used the remove.bg API to do just that. Here’s how:

Showtime Pictures is a leading concession photographer for attractions and theme parks. Their innovative approach began with introducing green screen technology, allowing visitors to be featured in front of the attractions they came to see.

Seeking to stay ahead in a changing landscape, Showtime Pictures partnered with remove.bg, achieving a 96% accuracy rate and increasing sales by 20%. They transformed the customer experience by offering various backgrounds and integrating 30-foot LED screens to create a memorable and immersive atmosphere. This successful collaboration has led to an expansion into video offerings and more.

BAXS, a Tokyo-based company, offers the PANAMA system, simplifying the process of listing products online for Japanese e-commerce customers by automating tasks like image editing and background removal. They partnered with remove.bg, which boasts a 95% success rate in background removal, leading to a tenfold increase in PANAMA's usage by their customers. This innovative system allows customers to attach their cameras to a PC or Mac, where merchandise photos are processed and edited, backgrounds removed, and other enhancements made. This streamlined process benefits small and large brands, saving time and costs. remove.bg's service significantly contributes to efficient background removal, crucial for many marketplaces, such as Amazon, while allowing for additional image enhancements like shadows. As a result, BAXS customers have experienced a substantial increase in image processing and reduced editing time. The seamless integration of remove.bg has dramatically improved the service's performance and customer satisfaction.

TheNextCloset (TNC), an online marketplace specializing in second-hand designer fashion, sought an automated solution for background removal from product images. Before using remove.bg, their production team manually edited images. remove.bg outperformed competitors in terms of quality and scalability during the evaluation phase. However, the challenge arose from user-generated photos that often included elements like hangers, mannequins, or decorations, making it difficult to achieve perfect background removal. 

TNC and remove.bg collaborated to train the AI system with data, resulting in better image processing and conversion rates. Currently, remove.bg is used on approximately 85% of items for sale, significantly reducing image processing time and related personnel costs. The partnership aims to improve AI training to achieve 95% perfection in background removal results.

Company growth through innovation with remove.bg

Thriftify, an online marketplace for second-hand fashion sourced from charity shops, partnered with remove.bg to automate the background removal process in their product images, which previously required substantial manual work. After a successful trial and stress test evaluating output quality, API integration, and customer service, the partnership resulted in a practical solution that fully automated background removal with 100% uptime.

Thriftify, a social enterprise focusing on sustainability and charity, experienced significant growth, expanding fivefold within a year, with remove.bg playing a crucial role in their success. This partnership has enabled Thriftify to save over 113 tonnes of CO2 emissions and 43,485,600 liters of water in new clothes production while generating funds for charitable causes in Britain and Ireland. Additionally, they achieved a 141% increase in the average order value despite a slight decrease in the e-commerce conversion rate.

Employer branding made simple with remove.bg

The recruitment market is becoming more and more competitive, which is all the more reason why employer branding is taking center stage — because your team is the baseline of company growth and success. Here’s how Deutsche Bahn has successfully used remove.bg for employer branding purposes.

Deutsche Bahn, one of the world's leading mobility and logistics companies, faced the challenge of engaging its 320,000 employees with its global strategy, Starke Schiene, through its internal communication platform, DB Planet. They sought an easy-to-use solution to encourage employees to participate and showcase their contribution to the strategy. The company integrated remove.bg into DB Planet, enabling employees to create and share pictures highlighting their role in the strategy. 

This simplified the process of creating content and actively involved employees in the strategy, sparking creativity and fostering interaction. Over 4,000 employee-created images were edited, inspiring sub-campaigns and challenges. remove.bg played a crucial role in Deutsche Bahn's employee engagement efforts, turning it into an effective tool for employer branding and fostering a sense of community among employees from various departments, contributing to the company's corporate culture and Starke Schiene strategy.

Unlock your company’s potential by leveraging remove.bg

In this article, we've taken a closer look at how a bunch of big-name brands — including Bosch, Nordstrom, Vestiaire, Fox-Mar, Hitech Digital, Phoenix Trading Company, Spoak, Snapbar, Showtime Pictures, Adoptimize, BAXS, TheNextCloset, Thriftify, and Deutsche Bahn — are making use of the remove.bg API to make their lives easier. 

They're using it to remove backgrounds from images and achieve all sorts of cool things. From saving money to getting creative and improving their customer experiences, it's a versatile tool. Whether in the fashion business, photography, e-commerce, or even railways, there's something to learn from these companies about how remove.bg can help you reach your goals.

Want to explore what using the remove.bg enterprise plan and/or integrating the API into your workflow or product could look like? 

Request a no-strings demo with the remove.bg team.