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Feature Updates

Weekly Recap: Retail Refinements, Product Pricing, and BGR Upgrades

Weekly Recap: Retail Refinements, Product Pricing, and BGR Upgrades
Hey there, it’s Candy!

This week’s update brings smoother retail experiences, friendlier pricing on customer favorites like statuettes, and a full refresh of how background-removed images (BGR) work across the site.

Let’s dive into what’s new!

🖼️ BGR x Retail: A More Intuitive, Sellable Experience

Big changes have landed to make Background Removed (BGR) images shine where it matters... in your customers’ galleries and carts.

Here’s what changed:

  • BGR Renders in Personal Gallery Downloads: Pre-rendered BGR images are now included in the downloadable gallery, making products more attractive and support calls less frequent.
  • 🔄 Smarter Image Order in Retail Gallery:
    1. Background 1 pre-renders
    2. Cutouts with "Select a Background" labels
    3. Original Images
    4. Backgrounds 2–4 Pre-Rendered
    5. Group Photos / PhotoTagged images
  • 🛍️ Smarter Package Image Selection:
    • Pre-rendered BGR images now appear during image selection for packages.
    • Ordering of images follows the same flow as above, bringing consistency across the experience.
  • 📱 Mobile Background Step Skipped:
    • Pre-renders act more like real images now, with background selection skipped on Mobile devices to reduce confusion.
    • Background selection still available on Desktop
  • 💡 Visual Cue for BGRs:
    • BGR images now feature a subtle “Select a Background” overlay to help guide customer expectations and improve product engagement.

Theme: Liquorice

🏷️ Product Pricing Updates (Including Lower Statuette Costs!)

We've made changes to product pricing and shipping rates, with statuettes dropping over 40% in product cost!

Some costs have gone up slightly, but others went down—here’s a rundown of the biggest changes:

🧾 Highlights:

  • 📉 5×7 Statuette: $12.24 → $6.97 (↓ 43.06%)
  • 📉 8×10 Statuette: $17.21 → $9.97 (↓ 42.05%)
  • 📈 Travel Mug: $11.09 → $12.19 (↑ 9.92%)
  • 📈 16×20 Hanging Metal Print: $66.42 → $71.83 (↑ 8.15%)
  • 📉 11×14 Group Print (Shipping): $7.25 → $7.00 (↓ 3.45%)

More detailed breakdown at the end of the post!

🧍‍♂️ Live Statuette Previews with Cutout Images

When a customer selects a BGR image, statuettes & acrylic cutout magnets will now render in real time using their PNG cutout—just like our other dynamically-rendering products!

No more generic preview. What they see is what they’ll get. 👌

Theme: Liquorice

🎆 New Retail Theme: Pop Rocks (Just in Time for the 4th of July!)

Get ready to light up your storefront! Our brand-new Pop Rocks retail theme has officially launched—a bold, dark mode layout featuring an eye-catching fireworks background.

It’s the perfect festive look for Independence Day events, summer festivals, or any celebration that deserves some extra sparkle.

This theme brings:

  • 🌌 A sleek dark interface that makes photos pop
  • 🎇 A dynamic fireworks background for an instant party vibe
  • 🛍️ The same easy shopping experience with a more celebratory feel

Photographers can enable Pop Rocks from the Custom Offer Creator under Theme Settings—just in time to make your July events feel a little more explosive. 💥

Found via a Custom Offer's Editor

📚 Resources Page Reimagined

The Resources section has been split into five focused pages to remove clutter and confusion:

  • Every button is now better labeled with detailed descriptions so you know exactly what it does and why it matters.

Better clarity = better confidence!

🖼️ New Product Render Creator Tool

Found under Marketing Materials (in the new Resources section), this lets you:

  • Upload a sample image
  • Generate live product previews
  • Download and use those previews for your own promotional content

Perfect for flyers, social posts, or emails. 📣

Upload your own pics, and click the products to download them!

👥 Contact Stats Now More Accurate

Going forward, the system now tracks Participants vs Additional Contacts more accurately in new events. While this doesn’t retroactively change old events, future reports will give you a clearer picture of who engaged with your Event and how.

📝 Full List of Pricing Changes

Here’s the full breakdown of this week’s product/shipping adjustments:

That’s everything for this week!

The BGR improvements and new marketing tools are sure to make your Events feel sharper, simpler, and more sellable than ever.

Until next time,

📣 Candy

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Amy Lombardo, and her photography group recently sent several photographers to a military ball and at the time of writing this article, had over $15,000 in sales! To accomplish this, Amy used Now Candid’s Party Pics Now program & Tap A Face workflow with 4 photographers at the event. Several of these photographers worked photo stations with backdrops Amy provided (gray backgrounds with flags bordering the background) while other photographers roamed the party taking posed photos of the guests.

$15,000 is a lot of sales for one social event already, but it is especially impressive when you consider the fact that this was Amy’s first Now Candid event.

Amy Lombardo had this advice for those considering using Now Candid for their next event: “Keep it simple and trust the process. … When planning my first Now Candid event, I was advised to not overcomplicate things and to not get hung up on some of the more minor details. Following through with how the system is intended to work turned out very well for us!”

Thanks for trusting the process Amy! We wish you many successful events to come. To see Amy’s entire video testimonial, click the play button below.

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We have a new update now available for the Now Candid Microsoft Store App! This update has several quality of life changes and logging improvements, but the main change is that Scanner Identification has finally been implemented!

 

Scanner Identification is a system that positively IDs images to your customers using, as the name implies, a scanner to scan a customer’s QR card.

 

When setting up your event you can generate these QR cards (more on that later) that your customers can scan with their phone to input their contact information. From there, the info & QR code are linked. Any time a QR code is scanned by the photographer that starts a session, and all subsequent photos taken will be matched to that contact info until another QR code is scanned.

 

At this time, Scanner Identification will only be usable with Sports Pics Now and Portraits Now. During event creation, when one of those two programs have been selected, you’ll choose either the “Tap A Face & Selfie Registration” option, or the “Scanner Identification” option. Once Scanner Identification has been selected and the event created, you’ll be able to input how many QR cards you need and a PDF will be generated with that many cards.

 

You’ll want to print out the PDF on perforated paper such as this 4 up card paper found on Amazon to more easily distribute cards without manually cutting all the paper.

 

The Scanner Identification workflow does require an LTE tablet! It’s required both as a device to connect your scanner to and as a way to upload your images live at the event so that guests can have links to buy their images moments after their session ends! Since facial recognition is not being used, galleries will be sent even more quickly and with 100% of the images taken during the session.

 

If you happen to have a very poor internet connection at your event, bringing the tablet and camera to a location with a strong internet connection after the event will send up all the images at that time! Paired to the data you scanned with it at the time of taking the image.

How Bruce H. Used GradPics Now to Increase Sales
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How Bruce H. Used GradPics Now to Increase Sales

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Bruce Heflin utilized Now Candid’s Grad Pics Now, with Selfie Check-In at a recent graduation, so far racking up roughly $2600 in total sales in less than two weeks.

Heflin had covered this Nursing College’s graduation in previous years, generating roughly $200 in sales each year. The sales had been so dismal the administrator would provide gas money to keep Bruce coming back. This year was a different story, Heflin has managed to increase his sales by roughly 1200% with the help of Grad Pics Now’s Selfie Check-In Workflow & automated marketing campaigns.

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2. Sent automated marketing messages during the event

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4. He used a mix of GPN Price Levels 1 & 3

5. He had a total profit margin of roughly 75% across the College’s ceremonies after accounting for the 85% margin for digital downloads.

6. We’re excited to see people discovering the effectiveness of Now Candid’s systems in action when executed properly with quality photography!

We recently caught up with Bruce to get a better idea of how he started incorporating Now Candid's tools into his existing photography business. Watch the video below to hear from Bruce.

Let’s get in touch

If you’re a photographer looking to add NowCandid services to your wheelhouse – set up a call by clicking the button below.

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How to customize formatting for each rich text

How to customize formatting for each rich text

How to customize formatting for each rich text

How to customize formatting for each rich text
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