Velve Materials

The demand

Whether you are a furniture brand, a manufacturer of custom-made architectural products (doors, windows, stairs, pergolas), a tile manufacturer (wood, ceramic, stone), or a textile or tanning company, you need to digitally represent your Material Samples in the best possible way.

For businesses in the tile/flooring or textile/tanning sectors, the materials and variations within their product range are at the core of their operations. Conversely, for companies in the furniture/architectural goods sector, particularly those operating in the 'medium' segment and above, their material sample collection serves as a fundamental element of their product system. With just-in-time production and emphasis on customization, the material samples play a crucial role as a significant commercial lever and competitive advantage.

When a company's website is built on a 'standard' Content Management System (CMS), showcasing its collection of samples often involves using a basic 'gallery' approach. This approach tends to be cumbersome to navigate and lacks interactivity, resulting in a less-than-optimal user experience. Additionally, managing and publishing content in this format can be labour-intensive for the website administrators.

Recognising this challenge, we have developed a solution specifically tailored to address this need, while also pushing the boundaries of conventional approaches.

The Solution

Velve Materials is a specialised Digital Asset Management (DAM) system designed specifically for the management of material samples. It streamlines the process of managing and publishing digital content associated with your collection, making it more efficient and enhancing the effectiveness of user interactions, whether they are B2C or B2B customers.

By deploying your own instance of Velve Materials, you gain the ability to make your digital samples accessible globally. The solution can be accessed through a dedicated URL, which can be linked to a customizable front-end provided by Velve Solutions. Alternatively, it can be seamlessly integrated into your existing corporate website by utilizing the relevant front-end and calling Velve Materials through its API. Essentially, Velve Materials also functions as a dedicated Content Distribution Network (CDN) to efficiently deliver digital content related to material samples.

The basic functionalities for Users include:

tiered navigation and selection of the assortment
interactive photo display of individual variants
in-depth content
downloading image files and texture maps

By utilising these functionalities, the Brand can benefit from:

efficient creation and updating of Digital Samples
an interactive and engaging experience for the users of the corporate portal (leading to increased commercial effectiveness for the Brand)
hassle-free management of web space and server bandwidth (Thanks to an enterprise-level cloud platform)

Functionality

Attributes. extensive flexibility in creating attributes, which can be in the form of 'text' or 'drop-down' menus; and contribution to layer navigation filters on the category page. Each attribute can be assigned to specific material types and customised to determine its display on the product sheet and whether it contributes to the layer navigation (i.e. the filters for browsing the range that can be used on the category page).
Colour. Colour is a special attribute that acts as a default filter in the layer navigation. It has the unique ability to determine the thumbnail image displayed on the category page during navigation. (For example, selecting 'Yellow' in the layer navigation will display all materials with a 'Yellow' variant, and the thumbnail image will represent the colour yellow.).
Types. Multiple material types can be created and assigned applicable attributes.
Materials. For each material, you can manage various details such as the manufacturer, collections it belongs to, type, physical sample location, creation and modification dates, "updated since" status, variant count, and notes. You can customize the URL, specify if it's out of production, set export limits, manage multiple images, activate and size graduated scales, add a video via URL, and manage attributes.
Variants. Each variant can be managed individually, including unique name, unique code, status, color attribute, out-of-production status, and additional notes. You can also upload multiple images for each variant.
Images. A dedicated section allows you to create and manage templates for automatic format scaling, compression, scale positioning, visible watermark positioning (for branding), and hidden watermark positioning (for intellectual property protection).
Languages. Complete and flexible multilingual management is available for all sections and fields affecting the front-end. This enables an improved user experience and simplifies the translation process.

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