RW Supply & Design – METIS
METIS DRS 1220 with Scan Director & Light Inspector
RW Supply and Design has embraced the power behind METIS technology to significantly decrease their time bringing new product to market.
RW Supply and Design is a flooring manufacturer, distributor, and retailer involving all things related to hardwood and other types of floors. Now in their 30th year of business, RW does it all from supplying floors to thousands of retailers across the United States, sourcing tradespeople to install product, provide design consultation, and much more for both residential and commercial customers.
RW Supply and Design focuses on being customer focused instead of production driven. “We try to make things that our customers are asking for, and a big part of that comes to the marketing side” says Caleb Unruh, Director of Marketing. “We need to give support to the sales team by branding products in basically three different sales channels.”
With their plate full of many different sales channels and customer types, it became increasingly clear that RW Supply and Design needed to improve the way they brought their product to market. Each market segment requires marketing materials presented to them in an optimized format. RW sources their authentic wood flooring from manufacturers across the globe so, once their material is manufactured, it’s up to the marketing team to produce high-quality images for distribution to various sales channels.
Traditionally, this involved physically installing flooring in a real-world environment, then orchestrating a full production photoshoot with the goal of capturing multiple images with a variety of styling and flooring types. It was not uncommon for this type of production to cost upwards of $50,000. In addition to the cost, their team was also left with roughly a 6-month lead time to go from procurement to optimized marketing materials ready to present to the market.
Unruh knew there had to be a better way to procure the marketing materials his team needed to not only support their internal teams, but also their loyal customers. An important aspect of high-quality images is color accuracy, especially when customers nowadays often start their buying process online. The search for top quality scanners including the highest color fidelity led them straight to METIS and CGS ORIS.
Unruh and his team visited the CGS ORIS Americas headquarters in Minneapolis, MN to meet the team and see the METIS scanner in action. Unruh and his team arrived with the goal of understanding how this technology could help them bring new products to market much quicker with significant time savings. After learning about the scanner technology with a hands-on demonstration, they began to realize how this technology ties into the color management expertise that CGS ORIS is known for.
“The time we spent with CGS to understand the idea of color management as a process was really eye opening. This really is a big issue, but there are ways you can address it. There is technology, guidelines, and standards that allow you to have a conversation around color. This visit really helped us realize this could be a solution to help us in the long run.”
– Caleb Unruh, Director of Marketing
After their in-person demonstration in Minneapolis, the team at RW Supply & Design excitedly invested in a DRS 1220 for their headquarters in West Plains, MO. The scanner has now been in production since installation in 2021. “Consistency is really important, and we trust that when we set a board on the scanner and image it, it’s going be consistent whether we do it today or a month from now or next year. We can trust that we’re getting accurate information,” says Unruh.
The marketing team at RW floors really took in all that METIS has to offer and made the most of it. One of the most beneficial aspects of METIS technology is the ability to scan an object or material one time and have all the necessary texture and color information. Corey Jester, another member of the marketing team said it best, “once you image on a METIS, you have the data forever, to use however you want without needing to re-image.” This allows the team to save time by having endless possibilities for image output after just one simple scanning session.
In the last three years, RW has scanned thousands of objects on their METIS DRS 1220, allowing them to go to market with new product up to 6 months sooner than their prior workflow could allow. Quickly obtaining pleasing images for marketing was certainly the genesis of this investment, but Unruh’s team swiftly discovered a multitude of other benefits implementing a METIS scanner and working with CGS ORIS.
“Knowing that we could have an ongoing relationship and have someone to talk to rather than just a buy button was probably the most important. Rob really took his time and helped walk us through not just the product, but the whole idea of color management and understanding the language of color” Unruh remarks about working directly with Rob Lawrence, Business Development Manager for CGS ORIS. “I am able to consider Rob a trusted resource now, not just for the product we purchased but for this segment of our marketing team and business. He’s given me some great ideas to think about and opportunities to consider when using METIS.”
“The ability to capture all the PBR maps got us into to start thinking of doing our own room scene renders. This has really have given us an incredible new capability to show our product consistently and dream up unique room scenes and different conditions that the floor could be in.”
– Caleb Unruh, Director of Marketing
The team at RW Supply and Design is excited to continue building their portfolio of products to supply their customers with a remarkable buying experience. Looking to the future, they are excited to enhance customer understanding of how lighting affects object appearance and continue developing room scene renders. METIS Light Inspector software makes it easy for their operators to instantly export files for PBR such as Roughness, Displacement, and Normal MAPS.
CGS ORIS Americas is a leading supplier for the industrial print industry. With a top-notch US-based support staff, CGS ORIS prides themselves on their ability to educate and support their customers quickly and efficiently.
