Photographing a fashion collection involves much more than simply putting a garment in front of a camera. Models, photographers, studios, styling, makeup, editing, production, and video are part of a process that brands must repeat several times a year and scale across hundreds or even thousands of SKUs.
The growth of ecommerce and digital channels has also increased the volume of content required for each product. But how much does it really cost to produce all that content, and what portion of the budget could be optimized? Artificial intelligence enables generating part of the imagery and video without replicating the entire traditional photoshoot, introducing a new variable in managing visual production costs.
The five variables that determine how much it costs to produce a collection
To determine the true cost of visual production, the price of a photoshoot is only part of the equation. Modelia, a platform specializing in generative artificial intelligence for the fashion sector, identifies five variables to calculate annual investment:
- The number of collections
- The SKUs per collection
- The percentage of new garments
- The amount of images and videos needed per product
- The cost to produce each piece
Based on these inputs, Modelia has developed an ROI Calculator that allows each company to input its own figures and estimate how much it spends annually to produce content. The tool compares that spend with an AI-supported workflow to calculate potential cost and time savings.
According to Modelia’s estimates, incorporating AI into these processes can reduce the budget by an average of 70% versus traditional photography and accelerate content production by up to 10x. The impact scales with a company’s volume, since a per-image cost reduction compounds when you’re dealing with hundreds or thousands of SKUs and multiple collections per year.
Not all content has to be produced in the same way
Introducing AI doesn’t necessarily mean replacing all traditional photoshoots. A brand can keep them for campaigns, editorials, or major launches and turn to AI to generate part of ecommerce content, produce videos, create new imagery of the same garment, or tailor creative to different models, settings, and markets.
The key is to analyze the needs of each collection before producing. Knowing how many pieces are needed, for which channels and how much it costs to generate each one allows you to decide where to focus resources and which processes can be done more efficiently.
“Brands need to produce more content all the time, but that doesn’t mean all images have to be generated in the same way. Analyzing how much each type of content costs and what it’s going to be used for enables better decisions about where to invest resources and where technology can help streamline the process,” explains Iván Rodríguez, CEO and cofounder of Modelia.
