Outsourcing visual content: what to hand over, what to keep

Production is the easy part to outsource. It is visible, it is countable, and if it goes wrong you can see it. What quietly goes along with it, and should not, is judgement: the decisions about what your products are allowed to look like and whether a given image is factually correct.

The split that works

Hand over, comfortably:

• •volume production, the long tail of the catalogue, the variants
• •format and crop versions for channels
• •retouch and cleanup
• •market versions where packaging or labelling differs
• •the production planning around a launch

These are capacity problems. A supplier who does them all day will do them faster and more consistently than a team doing them between other work.

Keep, even when it is offered:

• •the specification: what your products look like and what counts as an exception
• •the factual approval: somebody who knows the product confirming the image shows the product you actually sell
• •the library: your assets, in your account, reachable without asking anyone

Those three are not capacity problems. They are the things that make the output yours.

Three things we would not take off your hands

1. Your visual specification. We can write a first version with you, and we often do. But the document has to live with you and be owned by someone in your organisation, because it is the thing you use to judge our work. A supplier who owns the standard is a supplier who cannot be held to it. What belongs in it is a short, usable set of decisions rather than a brand deck, which we set out in rules a model can follow.

2. The approval that an image is factually right. Our creators check quality, consistency and whether the image does what the brief asked. What we cannot check as well as you is whether that is the current handle, whether that variant is really that shade, whether that accessory is sold separately. Those are the errors that travel furthest, because they end up in dealer portals and marketplace listings. The list of things a reviewer catches is in what a person in the loop actually catches; the last mile of it is yours.

3. Ownership of your library. Your approved set should be in your account, exportable, with a commercial licence that does not depend on a contract staying alive. If a supplier's main hold on you is that they have your files, that is not a partnership. One library, owned by you, is the rule we gave in one library is the source of truth.

Where outsourcing actually fails: the interfaces

Not in production. In the two edges.

The briefing edge. What goes in. If the brief is a mood board and a sentence about being premium, you will receive a competent interpretation of somebody else's taste, and you will spend the saved time on revisions. Half an hour of specification saves a week of rounds. The practical version of that half hour is the reuse grid in planning the reuse up front.

The approval edge. What comes out. Teams that outsource successfully have a named person who reviews, a fixed turnaround, and a short list of what counts as a rejection. Teams that struggle route approval through whoever is available, which produces contradictory feedback and a supplier who learns that nothing is final.

Both edges are yours. Neither can be bought.

Five questions worth asking a supplier, including us

• •Can you work from our real product images rather than generating from nothing?
• •Can you reproduce the same look in six months, and what exactly is stored to make that possible?
• •Who looks at every image before it reaches us, and what are they checking?
• •Where do the approved assets live, can we export them, and can our dealers reach them?
• •What do you charge for the options we do not use?

The fifth one is more revealing than it sounds. If unused options cost you money, you will be shown fewer of them.

The switching test

Here is the test we would apply to any supplier, and it is fine to apply it to us.

Could you move to a different supplier within a month without losing your standard, your approved reference set or your files?

If yes, you outsourced production, which is what you meant to do. If no, you outsourced the things in the second list above, and the next price negotiation will reflect that.

A good supplier should be comfortable with this question. We would rather be chosen every year than be hard to leave.

What this means for us

It means we try to make the specification explicit early, we expect a named approver on your side, and your assets sit in your account rather than ours. It also means we say no to things: we will tell you when a product is better photographed than generated, and we will tell you when a brand decision is yours rather than ours. That is less convenient than a supplier who agrees with everything, and it is the only version of this that holds up after the first year.

You can see how it works if you want the practical sequence.

In closing

Outsource capacity. Keep judgement, the standard and your files. Spend your own time on the two edges, the brief and the approval, because those are the parts nobody can do for you and the parts that decide what you get back.

Want to see what the production side looks like for your range? Try LensLab free with five credits.