About Furbish Studio 

Furbish Studios are a home decor brand, primarily specialising in needlepoint pillows. You might have seen some of their ads on your social accounts: products with fun quotes like “Not my circus, not my monkeys”, which is one of their bestsellers. They also sell charms, art prints and postcards; all with their unique and quirky designs.

Visual content is essential to their business. As Whitney, their Graphic Designer, told us:

”Since we’re an online retailer, we rely a lot on organic social media as well as digital ads, email marketing and SMS marketing. So creating assets is definitely vital for our business.” 

But keeping all that vital content in Dropbox meant they couldn’t make the most of their content. They weren’t getting the ROI from their photoshoots, simply because they couldn’t find the final images afterwards.Here are the challenges they faced with Dropbox: 

The challenge 

Dropbox was where photoshoots went to die 

The majority of Furbish Studio’s campaigns and marketing activities are photography based. They have regular photoshoots throughout the year, particularly when holiday seasons are ramping up. Whitney told us that they’ll acquire anywhere between 100 and 300 photos per shoot. When those shots were living in Dropbox, it became almost impossible to find anything. 

“They would all go into Dropbox, unlabeled, untagged; just a bunch of image file names. I remember there was one photo that I just couldn't find for the life of me. I would spend maybe 30 minutes looking for that one picture because we had so many folders nobody knew where it was. It could be the most frustrating thing in the world.”

Not getting the most out of their photoshoots 

Real business money (and time) goes into product photography. It’s not just the shots themselves, but the time spent creating shot lists and coming up with new, creative ideas before getting into the studio. So when that final creative is hard to find, it’s not only frustrating, but you’re not getting the best return on all that time and investment you originally put in. Whitney says: 

“We would put so much work into photoshoots and get a lot of different shots of something. But then I would only end up using the same two or three photos across different ad campaigns and email campaigns because I just couldn't find the other ones.”

Only two people knew where any content was 

Whitney is the brand's sole graphic designer. She works with a small team and, before Dash, her and the Founder were the only ones who really knew where anything was in their Dropbox. Even then, Whitney often found herself asking the Founder to find images for her.

This was made worse by the wider team changing over time. As Whitney explained, the people working closely with her had shifted over the years — meaning any organisational knowledge built up around the Dropbox folders didn't always carry over. New team members had no way of knowing where anything was, and would instead come to  Whitney: who herself had to rely on memory, rather than having a system where searching worked reliably.

This wasn’t just time consuming, but it took Whitney away from the creative job she was hired to do. 

The solution 

Whitney and her team decided enough was enough. They needed a way to easily search and share product photography so they could make the most of their time and money. 

This is where Dash came along. 

Here are some ways their new digital asset management tool is helping them get the most from their content. 

Making photoshoot investments go further

The biggest change for Whitney since switching to Dash? Being able to search for a product and instantly see every photo ever taken of it. It may sound like a simple solution, but it means Whitney has loads of options when designing ad campaigns. 

"Being able to search for the name of a pillow and get every photo we've shot of that pillow was exactly what I needed to speed up my workflow."

For example, she’s currently working on a carousel ad built around a pile of their 20 best-selling pillows. In the past, tracking down individual shots of each pillow in that image would have eaten up a big chunk of her day. Now she searches for the product in Dash, grabs what she needs and gets on with the design work. 

It's also changed how the marketing team write design briefs. When her colleague sends over a creative brief, they’ll link directly to the asset in Dash — so Whitney can download it straight away and get started. 

The result is that more of Furbish Studio's photography is actually making it into their marketing. Shots that would previously have sat unseen in a folder are now finding their way into email campaigns, ad sets and social content—which is the whole point of shooting them in the first place.

Tagging creative in a way that makes sense to brand 

The benefit of Dash is that you can organise your content in a way that works for your team. To do this, you add tags to your assets. 

Whitney's assistant handles the bulk of the tagging, and over time they've landed on a system that works for the way the team searches.

Here's what those tags look like in practice: 

• Product type: needlepoint pillow, ornament, bag charm, etc.
• Product name: where the same phrase appears across different product types, the name and product type are combined (e.g. ‘Not My Circus needlepoint pillow’ vs ‘Not My Circus ornament’) to avoid any confusion
• Shot type: product shot, lifestyle shot, model shot
• Year: the year the photo was taken, useful for tracking down images from a specific shoot

• Stop motion: anything shot with animation in mind gets flagged separately, so those assets are easy to find when Whitney needs something a little different

There’s nothing overcomplicated here. Instead they’ve built a consistent system that means the team can find the exact photo they need, fast. They’ve built a custom search engine for all of their brand visuals, which makes it easy for the team to find what they need.

AI search cuts down time spent tagging 

Sure, you can add tags to each of your assets. But what happens when someone forgets to tag or uses the wrong one? Or what if Whitney is after a particular ‘vibe’ of photo like, ‘festive’ or ‘cosy’? 

This is where Dash’s AI search comes into its own. Simply type in a vibe or a long phrase and Dash will scan the content and match it to your intent. 

For a brand whose entire product range is built around text—pillows, ornaments and prints with phrases on them—being able to search for the words on the actual product itself is particularly useful.

Getting set up with Dash’s Shopify integration 

Furbish Studio is in the process of adding SKU tags to their assets in Dash, which will allow them to take advantage of the Shopify integration.

They’ll be able to quickly update product assets from within their listings, without the back and forth of downloading and uploading. Plus, they can bulk update product shots by matching SKU codes from Dash in their live Shopify stores. It’s a serious time saver for Shopify brands. 

It's also a sign of how their use of Dash is evolving. What started as a solution to a chaotic Dropbox is becoming a more central part of how the business manages and deploys its visual content.

Whitney's recommendation to other brands

We asked Whitney whether she'd recommend Dash to other brands. She didn't hesitate.

"Absolutely. If they have a library of photos anywhere near what we have, I would say jump on it. I haven't really found any tools that compare personally."

For Whitney, it comes down to efficiency. The time she used to spend hunting for assets is time she can now spend on the work itself. And the company is finally able to use all their assets to their full potential. 

If you’re ready to speed up your workflows and finally get back some of that ROI lost to content chaos, Dash is the tool for you. 

You can start a free trial or book a demo with a member of our team.