Probably everyone in the world who has traveled anywhere knows the Samsonite brand, and luxury travelers are familiar with Samsonite’s Tumi bags. So, it comes as no surprise that one of the world’s leading travel consumer brands is teaming up with a leader in 3-D AR product tools for websites, Fibbl. Samsonite is partnering with Fibbl to use the company’s plug-and-play platform for creating and integrating 3-D models via AR into its e-commerce sites for its most prominent brands, including Samsonite, Tumi and American Tourister.

What Does Fibbl Do?

Fibbl is an end-to-end platform that enables brands to create and integrate high-quality 3-D models based on high-resolution scans into e-commerce sites. The company got its start by creating 3-D scans and models for shoe brands to host on their websites. These scans are extremely high-quality, highly automated and cheap to produce, and over time the company has built quite a library of scans of different shoes for retailers to use in e-commerce.

The company’s technology can easily be applied to any kind of product that people want to view beyond 2-D photos to get a better idea of its appearance and dimensions. That’s where Samsonite and its other brands fit in so well.

Why Is Samsonite Working With Fibbl?

As a consumer brand, Samsonite is always looking for ways to improve traffic and conversions on its website. Meanwhile, customers want to know whether a bag is going to look the same in person as it does online. With its hyper-photorealistic 3-D scans and models, Fibbl is enabling both the brand and consumers to get what they want. For some of its other customers, Fibbl has reported double the engagement with e-commerce content, which then drives double the time the average shopper spends on the site. Fibbl also reports “significantly improved” conversion rates, as well as reductions in product returns of as much as 28%.

The Samsonite partnership is adding to Fibbl’s already impressive momentum, as Fibbl is reporting 10x growth in end-user interactions and 10x growth in revenue over the last year, across 60 different customers. Working with these customers, Fibbl has already added more than 10,000 products to its library of 3-D scans, with more added all the time.

Fibbl has enabled its growth with an extremely low barrier to entry for new customers: a three-month trial offer of $1,000 per month for 60 products, including scans and website integration. These assets can be reused across many platforms, allowing design and marketing teams at the customer companies to share 3-D assets more efficiently.

3-D Assets Are The Future

I believe that Samsonite may also turn around and ask its retailers to use Fibbl to integrate 3-D versions of its products into their e-commerce platforms. After all, these assets need not be unique to Samsonite’s website and could be used by retailers like eBags or even Amazon. In the bigger picture, I believe that most brands want to increase user engagement and the perception of their brands with improved product representations. Suitcases might not be the sexiest thing, but many people, including myself, are very particular about them. Some of Tumi’s products now sell for thousands of dollars, and people want to be sure of their purchases before they make a significant outlay.

The idea that I can see a 3-D model of a piece of luggage in AR to get an idea of how big it is and how it looks — without having to go to a store — is my idea of an online shopper’s dream. I did this myself on Fibbl’s and Samsonite’s websites on my smartphone and was able to play around with a suitcase and a backpack, spinning them around as if the actual items were in front of me in real life.

There are also so many opportunities for reuse that I believe these assets will have a life across many different platforms and potentially even prepare companies for the future of AR shopping when everything needs to be in 3-D. I even noticed recently that Google has taken it upon itself to offer lower-quality 3-D models of certain shoes on Google Shopping. In short, I think 3-D models will be a big part of the future of e-commerce — and Fibbl is quickly making a name for itself in this niche.