James Martin Vanities scaled premium product and lifestyle visuals for fast launches
James Martin Vanities needed more product images and lifestyle visuals of their premium vanities for both print and web. They already had access to internal CGI resources, but the internal team supports multiple brands, and the incremental task could not be met within the limited timeframe leading up to the launches of these products.
We created top-tier product visuals and lifestyle images for James Martin Vanities’ wide range of vanity collections, sizes, and configurations. To maximize the inspirational value of each vanity collection, a new scene was tailored and styled for each vanity size. Here, Location Library was a big time-saver and source of inspiration.
Company: James Martin Vanities
Segment: Kitchen & Bath
Country: United States
Website: Visit their website
James Martin Vanities is a leading manufacturer of premium bathroom cabinets and mirrors. Their focus is on quality and helping their customers bring their bathroom vision to life.
The American company operates as an Own Brand within Ferguson, maintaining a distinct and independent brand identity while contributing to and benefiting from the broader Ferguson ecosystem of brands and teams.
"They are the highlight images we use as we go to market with new product launches.”
“At the end of the day, the premium-ness of the brand needs to be reflected in the images we receive—even at such a high volume. The images that Cadesign form produce are featured on the cover of our catalogs and on our KBIS booth walls. They are the highlight images we use as we go to market with new product launches.”
James Martin Vanities needed hundreds of visuals without having to compromise on quality
James Martin Vanities designs beautiful, practical, high-end bathroom furniture. Part of their vision is to help their customers get a vanity that clearly communicates their individual style. Therefore, they offer numerous “semi-customizable” options. Over thirty collections and thousands of combinations of cabinets, finishes, sizes, and tops mean complete versatility. However, it also poses a challenge: showcasing the many options requires thousands of visuals for both print and web. And because the products are so diverse – even within the same collection – it requires a lot of work.
“James Martin Vanities has access to a very talented internal CGI team that supports multiple brands. However, the shared support model affects bandwidth, and we simply needed too many unique product visuals and lifestyle images in a short amount of time for them to deliver. Therefore, we needed external assistance,” says Laura Pall, who is the Marketing Manager for James Martin Vanities.
But the challenge went beyond sheer volume. James Martin Vanities was looking for a CGI partner that could truly support a premium brand; one that could combine scalability with consistent, high-end visual quality. With so many product details varying from collection to collection, and even between sizes within the same line, the process demanded both technical expertise and a meticulous eye for detail.
“We needed a partner whose visuals met the same standards as our products and would be able to deliver accurate production-ready images. One that could help streamline our workflow, reduce the number of manual adjustments needed, and allow us to focus on getting our catalog to print with confidence and efficiency,” explains Lyn Kelsey, Graphic Designer at James Martin Vanities.
A scalable setup with an experienced partner
James Martin Vanities had three agencies in their sights, and in the end, they chose to collaborate with us.
“Cadesign form really blew us away, not only with the quality of their work, but also with all the capabilities available. We knew we were only going to get very specific needs covered at the beginning, such as product and lifestyle images, but working with Cadesign gave us a lot of additional options we could see ourselves using in the future, such as their Location Library and animation services. Together with their experience in the field and process maturity, they were an obvious choice,” says Laura Pall.
Quality, aesthetics, and styling
“We want our images to convey a premium feel, and the quality, aesthetics, and styling that Cadesign contributes match our ambitions and help us bring our products to market at the level we want them to be seen.”
“Good communication is all it takes to get a relationship to work”
Before starting a full-blown partnership, James Martin Vanities had to ensure we could deliver the quality they needed.
“We started out with a trial image of one of the products that we know is extremely complicated due to the details and intricate fluting. And if Cadesign could do that, then we’d know they could manage all our other products. The result was impressive, so we decided to move on to the real project,” says Lyn Kelsey.
The first project was to deliver images for an annual launch, including six collections of multiple sizes, finishes, views, and variations, and it became the true test of the collaboration: tight timelines, numerous deliverables, and two teams learning each other’s working rhythms.
“That first year was a learning process. We ran into some hiccups, mostly because our teams were learning to work closely together and getting to know each other’s processes. And despite those challenges, the Cadesign team overdelivered on the quality, and we received all the images on time. We started the process in August, and by October, we had many
hundreds of product visuals and lifestyle images, with the level of quality we sought,” says Laura Pall, and continues:
“Thinking about the process now, I'm blown away that we were able to complete the project in less than three months last year without being more frustrated with each other. We enjoyed working together so much that going through those pain points and challenges in the first year made it worth it to continue the relationship and to continue to build on what we started together.”
Lyn Kelsey agrees:
“Considering the volume and detail, it's no surprise there were some bumps on the road that first year, but we smoothed them all out with good communication, and that's really all it takes for any relationship to work. When you're collaborating, you just need to communicate well.”
And that wasn’t just a nice sentiment. For James Martin Vanities, communication meant clarity in proofing, structure in feedback, and a feeling of control.
“The process in year two was 100% more streamlined”
After the first project, we did what strong partnerships do: we reviewed what worked, what didn’t, and what would make the next round more effective for both teams.
“We were able to pinpoint what worked and what didn't; the biggest challenge being lead time on our end. And so, we worked with our internal product development team to ensure we had the CAD models and finished product samples by the beginning of the project, rather than the end, which
decreased the timeline by two months. Going forward, the process has been 100% more streamlined, so taking those learnings and actually applying them made the difference,” says Laura Pall.
These learnings enabled us not only to create visuals for new product collections but also to refresh prior collections, ensuring all product visuals across channels maintain the same exclusive brand feel and styling going forward.
“Location Library has been a time-saver”
One of the reasons James Martin Vanities chose us as their CGI partner was our Location Library, which gives subscribers access to a growing collection of digital locations that can be customized and adapted.
“Our vanities are designed as furniture pieces that anchor the entire bathroom, so the architecture has to allow them to be the main focus,” says Lyn Kelsey, and continues:
“We sell into high-end homes where there is ample space or bespoke architecture to properly accommodate these pieces, and that’s the feeling we want to communicate in our lifestyle imagery. Finding locations that support this has been a challenge, especially when we need unique settings for multiple collections and sizes. In the past, I’ve had to piece together inspiration and previous projects and
then custom-build locations to achieve the right look, which can quickly feel repetitive. With Location Library, it’s much easier to find spaces that naturally set the stage for the vanity.”
Here, a key point for Lyn Kelsey is that the locations in the Location Library aren’t a fixed “take it or leave it” set of rooms. It’s a starting point.
“A lot of the locations in there are already high-end, so it’s easy to adapt them to fit what I look for. I don’t necessarily have to use the bathroom scenes – I can just move some walls, resize a window, change the flooring, and suddenly a living room perfectly fit the aesthetics of a spacious luxury en-suite bathroom in a villa. I’ve already used most of the locations in the library, and it’s definitely been a time-saver.”
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