Singaporean startup KittyKat does affordable brand photoshoots for small online businesses

To attract potential customers, eye-catching visuals (photos and videos) are critical for online businesss, such as e-commerce shops, marketplaces, and e-magazines. However, getting affordable, fast visuals is costly and challenging.

While large brands can afford professional photo shoots, smaller brands trying to move onto e-commerce platforms are less fortunate.

“A professional shoot is expensive and difficult to execute,” Kathy Sheehy tells e27. “Lots of efforts are going into it, from hiring a photographer, renting out a studio, renting lights, hiring a stylist, models, make-up artists. Quotes for bespoke shoots could run into thousands of dollars.”

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There should be a way to make photoshoots affordable for smaller brands without compromising quality, Kathy thought to herself. The Singaporean national, who has a background in brand building, social media and communications, broached this subject with Des Sheehy, her self-proclaimed “worst half” and a 35-year veteran of investing, and KittyKat was born.

Based in Singapore, KittyKat is the next evolution of brand photography, claims Kathy, the Chief Creative Officer. The startup works with brands and SMEs to create photos, videos, and GIFs affordably. “We produce images that are fast, aesthetic and affordable. We leverage AI to produce brand visuals and then use tech/humans to present, refine and multiply these images.”

As a business owner, you can book your shoot on the KittyKat website and send your product to the company for the shoot. You can then join the shoot virtually and get the pictures and videos later. Businesses can also get photoshoot recommendations from KittyKat.

The startup works with in-house and freelance creators, providing them more work, tools, and training to elevate their output.

KittyKat targets businesses where the image they present online is important: a web page, e-newsletter or social media account. According to Kathy, KittyKat has already worked with nearly 100 SMEs, brands, and MNCs across the US, Australia, and Asia.

Like most startups, the AI company also faces several challenges, of which behaviour change is the biggest. Small companies beginning their online journey don’t think visuals are essential, while large companies with in-house marketing teams need the incentive to change their traditional ways.

“Overcoming the assumption that we are a photo studio was challenging. While we take photos, we are a service that uses innovation, new technology, and AI to ensure we maximise the impact of the client’s visual assets,” she says. “We help SMEs/brands scale and sell across geographies as we can create visuals that match local market needs.”

In her opinion, the best way to overcome such challenges is by experience.

KittyKat doesn’t charge thousands of dollars for shoot unlike other service providers. Instead, it provides a personal dashboard where the clients can access all the digital visual assets. They can pick new visuals from this dashboard to use later.

These assets constantly grow as KittyKat keeps adding new images through its multiplier and user-generated content (UGC) creators. The dashboard also provides access to content, training and tools to improve the performance of the marketing team and the brands. “We don’t want a client to come back for another shoot; we want the client to select from their personal gallery in a single click,” Kathy notes.

The startup offers various payment models to its clients: pay-as-you-go, SaaS, or account model to draw down these assets from their dashboards. They can also order new shoots or new formats from this, such as 3D, NFT, Print Ready etc.

A bootstrapped company, KittyKat recently raised a strategic investment round from 11 family members and friends. It has 23 staff workers across Singapore, the US, Ireland, Malaysia, and Australia.

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In the next six to nine months, the firm plans to open a physical presence in the Middle East, Europe and the US, to better capture the initial images in mature markets.

“An image is worth a thousand words – one of the hardest parts of a digital transformation/platform are the images. At the end if the day, you need good visual assets to sell online,” Kathy signs off.

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