Digital Asset Management (DAM) for manufacturing and industrial companies:
Company: MacLean-Fogg
Industry: Automotive and industrial manufacturing
Company size: Approximately 2,400 employees
Use case: Marketing asset management, website redevelopment, employee communications, sales enablement, safety approvals and content sharing
TL;DR
MacLean-Fogg uses Stockpress to bring together digital assets previously scattered across SharePoint, OneDrive, hard drives and other storage systems, making them easier to organize, find and share across its manufacturing business.
With approximately 2,400 employees, multiple brands and a small central marketing team, MacLean-Fogg needed a Digital Asset Management platform that could support an enterprise-sized organization without requiring an enterprise-sized implementation project.
After evaluating established DAM providers, Nick Stauffer discovered Stockpress through ChatGPT. Transparent pricing, the ability to try the platform immediately, and straightforward setup made it stand out.
Within his first day, Nick had configured the platform, uploaded approximately 600 photographs from 20 locations, established content-sharing workflows and introduced an approval process for the company’s Environmental, Health and Safety (EHS) team.
The result was a working DAM environment in approximately 72 hours, with the functionality MacLean-Fogg needed at a fraction of the cost of other platforms evaluated.
About MacLean-Fogg
MacLean-Fogg is a family-owned American manufacturing company with more than 100 years of history.
Its businesses manufacture components and engineered products for automotive, industrial, agricultural and other demanding applications.
With approximately 2,400 employees, multiple brands and facilities across the United States, the company manages a wide variety of digital content across its operations.
For its organizational development and marketing team, that includes product and facility photography, employee images, quality data sheets, HR templates, sales presentations, marketing collateral and internal communications.
As MacLean-Fogg invests in modernizing its marketing operations and redeveloping multiple websites, making this content accessible and reusable has become increasingly important.
The challenge:
MacLean-Fogg had built a successful manufacturing business over more than a century without needing a sophisticated, centralized marketing content operation.
But as the business invested in new websites, marketing agencies and more structured sales and marketing processes, the limitations of its existing file management approach became increasingly apparent.
Digital assets were stored across SharePoint, OneDrive, local hard drives, flash drives, on-premise servers and cloud storage.
Many files had generic names, making them difficult to identify or retrieve. When employees needed a product image, sales presentation or marketing resource, they often had to ask the central team to locate it.
For a marketing operation with just two people supporting a much larger organization, that approach was not going to scale.
“We realized how many assets we have that are spread out from SharePoint locations, OneDrive locations, flash drives, hard drives, on-premise servers, cloud servers.”
– Nick Stauffer, Director of Organizational Development and Marketing, MacLean-Fogg
The team needed a central location for its content, but also a system that employees could navigate independently without extensive training.
And it needed to avoid creating another administrative burden for the people responsible for managing it.
The solution:
When Nick started exploring Digital Asset Management platforms, his priorities were straightforward: AI-assisted organization, an intuitive experience, useful integrations and a setup process that would not require weeks of implementation.
He used ChatGPT and Claude to research the market and initially explored several established DAM providers.
But the buying experience quickly became frustrating.
Multiple introductory calls, staged demonstrations, lengthy implementation processes and pricing that could run into tens of thousands of dollars made it difficult to assess whether a platform would actually work for MacLean-Fogg.
Nick refined his ChatGPT search to identify platforms with comparable functionality at a more reasonable price.
That’s when he found Stockpress.
Unlike the other providers, Stockpress offered transparent pricing and immediate access to a working platform through a free trial.
Instead of waiting for another demonstration, Nick could upload MacLean-Fogg’s own assets, configure its workflows and see how the platform performed in a real working environment.
“I was over the moon and almost couldn’t believe the price of Stockpress, even at the highest tier.”
– Nick Stauffer, MacLean-Fogg
With the help of Stockpress’s Help Center and ChatGPT, Nick configured the workspace in approximately an hour.
He uploaded hundreds of photographs, introduced internal communications resources, created sharing workflows and invited colleagues to review content.
Within approximately 72 hours, the platform was being used in production.
Results:
With Stockpress in place, MacLean-Fogg has already benefited from:
- Production-ready in approximately 72 hours: A working DAM environment was configured and introduced to other employees without a lengthy implementation project.
- Approximately 600 photos organized from 20 locations: Content from a recent company photoshoot was uploaded and made available during the initial setup.
- A centralized content environment: Product photography, employee imagery, quality sheets, HR materials and marketing resources can be managed together.
- AI-assisted setup: Nick used ChatGPT alongside Stockpress documentation to help plan and configure the DAM around MacLean-Fogg’s needs.
- A simpler experience for employees: Colleagues from outside the marketing team were able to access files, comment and participate in workflows with little instruction.
- Safety review and approval workflows: The EHS team can review photographs, leave comments and update metadata and tags to record whether imagery is approved for use.
- Easier internal content distribution: Share links make it simpler to distribute campaign resources, presentations and employee communications.
- Version control without broken links: Updated files can replace existing versions without requiring the team to redistribute links.
- Enterprise-scale functionality without enterprise-scale costs: MacLean-Fogg found the features it needed at a significantly lower price than other DAM platforms it evaluated.
- No lengthy buying process: Transparent pricing, immediate trial access and flexible billing removed much of the friction associated with selecting a DAM.
Q&A with Nick
Interviewee: Nick Stauffer, Director of Organizational Development and Marketing, MacLean-Fogg
Interviewer: Veronica Sierra, Stockpress
Introduction
Manufacturing companies produce and manage far more digital content than product photography alone.
Across multiple facilities, brands and departments, employees need access to marketing materials, sales resources, quality documentation, internal communications and approved images.
For a small central team, organizing that content across a large organization can become a significant undertaking.
In this conversation, Nick Stauffer, Director of Organizational Development and Marketing at MacLean-Fogg, explains why the company started looking for a DAM, how he discovered Stockpress through ChatGPT, and why being able to get started immediately changed the buying experience.
He also shares how MacLean-Fogg configured its DAM in approximately an hour and was using it in production within 72 hours.
“We have about 2,400 employees and a small team managing our content.”
Veronica Sierra, Stockpress: Can you tell us about your role at MacLean-Fogg and the types of content your team works with?
Nick Stauffer, MacLean-Fogg: I’m the Director of Organizational Development and Marketing.
MacLean-Fogg is an automotive and industrial component manufacturer, so we produce components that go into vehicles, heavy machinery, agriculture and all sorts of industrial applications.
We work with a lot of different assets, from employee photos and facility photography to product images, quality data sheets, HR templates and sales collateral.
We want to make sure employees have access to the resources they need to be successful in their roles.
Internally, we’re a small team of two supporting an organization of approximately 2,400 employees.
That means we need tools that allow us to operate efficiently without requiring somebody to spend all their time managing content.
“Our assets were spread across SharePoint, OneDrive, hard drives and servers.”
Veronica: What made you start looking for a Digital Asset Management platform?
Nick: MacLean-Fogg has been around for over 100 years, and we’ve been very successful without having a particularly sophisticated sales and marketing structure.
Over the last year, we’ve started investing more in marketing agencies, new websites and more advanced processes to support future growth.
As we went through that, we realized just how many assets we had spread across different systems.
SharePoint, OneDrive, flash drives, hard drives, on-premise servers and cloud servers. Everything was in different places.
And then you’ve got filenames like Image 1234, so there’s no efficient way to find what you’re looking for.
We were receiving requests from people looking for a particular product image or a sales presentation template.
We needed a more organized way to manage all of that.
Putting everything in Google Drive or SharePoint wasn’t going to be the right scalable solution for us.
“We needed easy maintenance that could work at an enterprise level.”
Veronica: What were your priorities when you started evaluating DAM platforms?
Nick: The biggest thing was figuring out how to do this efficiently with a small team.
We have approximately 2,400 employees, multiple brands and locations across about ten states.
We needed something that would help us tag, organize and share assets without requiring a dedicated person to maintain everything.
AI was really important. We wanted to leverage it to help organize assets and provide metadata, rather than having to do everything manually.
We also wanted something that was easy for administrators and, just as importantly, the people actually using the system.
When we looked at other DAMs, it became pretty apparent that not all user interfaces are created equal.
If the platform wasn’t intuitive, our employees simply weren’t going to use it.
Integrations were another priority, particularly with systems such as our CRM and identity provider.
Ultimately, this should be a tool that empowers people to do their jobs, not something that creates more frustration.
“We started with ChatGPT and Claude to build our shortlist.”
Veronica: How did you go about finding and comparing DAM providers?
Nick: Like a lot of people in 2026, we started with ChatGPT and Claude.
We asked about the best DAMs available and initially got a lot of the more established names.
Those platforms often came with pretty premium price tags.
So we started tailoring our search to find something more cost-effective, while still having the functionality we’d expect from the bigger players.
That’s where Stockpress came up.
I was immediately impressed by what I saw, even just looking at the website.
“I wanted to actually get in and experience the product.”
Veronica: How did the buying experience compare between Stockpress and the other vendors?
Nick: With most of the other vendors, there were multiple stages.
You’d have an introductory call, then another call with somebody different, and eventually you’d get to a demonstration.
And that demonstration was usually 30 or 45 minutes of somebody showing you a perfectly configured environment with somebody else’s content.
But every business is different. The content we’re managing is different, and our workflows are different.
I wanted to be able to get into the product and experience it for myself.
That’s what I really appreciated about Stockpress.
I could go to the website, learn about the platform and sign up for a full trial right there.
I actually think I did that on a weekend.
I could immediately start testing the product with our own content and see whether it was right for us.
I had a couple of questions about integrations, reached out to the team, and I think the whole process took less than 30 minutes.
That was less time than just scheduling one of the conversations with another vendor.
To me, it shows confidence in your product when you’re prepared to let potential customers experience it for themselves.
“I was over the moon when I saw the price.”
Veronica: What was your reaction when you compared Stockpress pricing with the other vendors?
Nick: That was probably the most exciting part.
The pricing was right there on the website. I didn’t have to go through fourteen different phone calls to find out what it was going to cost.
With other vendors, we’d ask for a ballpark and get ranges that could be anywhere from $20,000 to $100,000.
That’s a pretty big range, especially when you’re new to Digital Asset Management and still figuring out exactly what you need.
When I saw Stockpress pricing, even at the highest tier, I almost couldn’t believe it.
It was a fraction of the cost of the other vendors, and it had the functionality we needed.
The other big thing was not having to commit to a long contract.
One of the first quotes we received from another vendor came with a default three-year commitment.
That’s a pretty significant commitment when you’ve never implemented a DAM before.
Being able to start with a trial and then choose month-to-month billing made the decision much easier.
“We have every feature we could possibly want.”
Veronica: What does fair and transparent software pricing mean to you?
Nick: I think it’s incredibly important.
I’ve worked with software vendors across lots of different industries, and there’s often a huge amount of negotiation involved.
You start with a really high price, go back and forth, and eventually get somewhere more reasonable.
What I appreciate about Stockpress is that we didn’t have to do any of that.
The price is transparent and reasonable for both sides.
With some of the other vendors, they were willing to negotiate, but often that meant removing features or reducing functionality.
With Stockpress, we have every feature that we could possibly want at a price that we don’t have to go back and forth and negotiate.
For marketers and people who work with content, that’s what matters.
I don’t want to spend my time negotiating with software vendors.
I want to focus on developing content.
“I configured our entire DAM in maybe an hour.”
Veronica: Once you’d signed up, what did the initial setup look like?
Nick: I was new to configuring a DAM, so I wanted to make sure we got it right from the beginning.
I used Stockpress’s Help Center and ChatGPT to help work through best practices for setting everything up.
I gave ChatGPT some context about MacLean-Fogg and the way we work, and asked it to help me figure out the right configuration.
After going through some questions, I had a configuration document that I could work from.
I was then able to configure our entire DAM in maybe an hour.
And then I started uploading content straight away.
We’d recently completed a photoshoot with around 600 photographs across 20 different locations.
I uploaded those on the same day I started the trial.
I added metadata, organized the files and started testing how everything worked.
And the best thing is that it wasn’t just a test environment.
That’s now the environment we’re actually using in production.
“AI helped configure the settings on my behalf.”
Veronica: You mentioned using ChatGPT to help configure Stockpress. Can you tell us more about that?
Nick: I pointed ChatGPT towards Stockpress’s Help Center and library of resources.
I asked it to work with me on the different use cases we had, so we could create a configuration that made sense for our organization.
After going through that process, it gave me a configuration document.
I then took it a step further and used AI’s computer interaction functionality to help configure settings in the platform on my behalf, with my input where needed.
That accelerated the setup considerably.
I also provided examples of the assets we manage so it could understand our content and suggest improvements.
As we’ve added more content, I’ve been able to use AI to help identify adjustments that might make the structure work better.
It’s been a great way to avoid some of the mistakes I probably would have made starting from scratch.
“Our internal teams immediately said how much easier it was.”
Veronica: What did you start using Stockpress for in those first 24 hours?
Nick: We started with photos, quality sheets and other documents from our recent photoshoot, including consent forms and photo releases.
We were also working on internal communications around employee benefits open enrollment.
I thought Stockpress could be a great place to organize and share the posters, presentations, templates and other campaign resources.
So I started creating share links and distributing those to our internal teams.
People immediately responded by saying how much easier it was compared to what we’d done before.
We also had some resources that needed updating.
Being able to upload a new version without changing links or telling everybody to download a different file was amazing.
Everything just worked.
“Our safety team could review and approve imagery without needing training.”
Veronica: Were you able to introduce workflows for other departments as well?
Nick: Yes, and this was particularly important for us as a manufacturing company.
Safety is a big priority.
When we’re using photography from our facilities, we need to make sure employees are wearing the correct protective equipment and that the images are appropriate for external use.
We wanted our Environmental, Health and Safety team to be able to review and approve photographs before they were used.
Previously, we didn’t really have a mechanism for tracking those approvals.
With Stockpress, we were able to set that up in minutes.
I invited members of the EHS team, configured permissions and gave them very little instruction.
They were able to go in, add comments and update metadata and tags to indicate whether an image had been approved.
All of that happened within the first 24 hours.
“We were production ready within about 72 hours.”
Veronica: At what point did you feel Stockpress was ready for your organization to start using?
Nick: For me, the moment was when we invited people outside the marketing team into the platform.
It’s one thing for me and my creative team to understand how it works.
But when we invited our safety team, they were able to get in and start using it without asking questions.
We hadn’t even finished configuring single sign-on with our IT team yet.
We just invited them, they logged in, and they were able to do what they needed to do.
That was really important because we have employees across a lot of different locations, and not everybody is particularly technical.
We needed something with a low barrier to entry.
When they told me it was easy, I knew we were ready.
I’d say we were production ready within approximately 72 hours.
We still have lots more content to upload and organize, but we already had real assets available to employees and real workflows operating in the system.
“Don’t overlook the companies that aren’t the biggest names in DAM.”
Veronica: What advice would you give somebody starting their search for a DAM?
Nick: I’d definitely recommend doing your due diligence.
Look at the big names and see what’s available.
But don’t forget about some of the newer companies or the ones that aren’t necessarily spending the most money on marketing.
Stockpress is a great example.
You can find companies offering the same sort of functionality as the big players at a fraction of the price.
And you’re not necessarily sacrificing support, implementation or features either.
I’d also recommend looking at reviews on G2, Capterra, Reddit and other places where customers share their actual experiences.
You want to get past the marketing and understand what the product is really like to use.
And I think it’s a red flag if a vendor won’t let you try the platform for yourself.
If Stockpress can let you create an account and get started immediately, why can’t some of the much more expensive providers do something similar?
“Find out about pricing and implementation before you spend weeks on demos.”
Veronica: What questions do you think buyers should ask when evaluating DAM providers?
Nick: First, I’d ask about pricing.
Try to understand the cost based on your particular use case, your industry, number of users and storage requirements.
There’s nothing more frustrating than going through multiple demonstrations, getting excited about something and then discovering it’s five or ten times what you expected to spend.
I’d also ask about AI, both what a company offers now and what they’re planning to introduce.
Implementation is another important one.
We needed to move quickly. A six-week implementation with weekly meetings and a project manager wasn’t going to work for us.
And finally, integrations.
You need to understand how a DAM will fit with the systems you’re already using, whether that’s your CRM, identity provider or creative tools.
Those are things you should establish early, rather than discovering problems after you’ve invested a lot of time in the evaluation process.
“Seamless, fast and easy.”
Veronica: How would you describe the DAM buying experience in three words?
Nick: Before discovering Stockpress?
Frustrating, difficult and unknown.
But Stockpress was pretty much the opposite.
Seamless, fast and easy.
That’s what you want from a software vendor, especially when you’re implementing something that’s new to your organization.
It completely changed our experience of buying a DAM.
“Let customers get into the product and see for themselves.”
Veronica: If you could send one message to DAM vendors, what would it be?
Nick: Allow potential customers to actually get into the platform and experience it for themselves.
I’m a hands-on learner.
I want to interact with the software and see whether it’s the right fit for our organization.
Even if that’s within a limited trial environment, giving people the opportunity to test the product makes the whole decision so much easier.
With Stockpress, we were able to do exactly that.
And we’ve already seen the value it brings to our organization.
I’m excited to expand it to even more of MacLean-Fogg.
What This Means for Manufacturing Companies Managing Digital Assets
Nick’s experience highlights several challenges that manufacturing companies face as their content operations grow:
- Product images, facility photography, technical documents and internal communications often live across disconnected storage systems.
- Small marketing teams may be responsible for organizing and distributing content across thousands of employees.
- Generic filenames and fragmented storage make content difficult to find and reuse.
- Manufacturing photography may require safety reviews and approval before external use.
- Different departments need access to content without requiring extensive software training.
- Traditional DAM buying and implementation processes can introduce unnecessary complexity, cost and delays.
- A lengthy implementation can be particularly difficult when marketing teams are already managing website redevelopment and other major projects.
For MacLean-Fogg, Stockpress provided a more practical way to approach these challenges:
- A single searchable environment for marketing, operational and employee communications assets.
- AI functionality and tagging and metadata to reduce the burden of manually organizing content.
- Flexible permissions and collaboration tools supporting cross-departmental review.
- Version control that keeps shared resources up to date without changing links.
- Unlimited users without per-seat charges.
- Transparent pricing and flexible billing.
- Immediate access to a working platform without lengthy demonstrations or paid implementation.
- A setup process that allowed a small team to start using the DAM in days rather than weeks or months.
Perhaps the most important takeaway is that the size of an organization doesn’t have to determine the complexity of its Digital Asset Management platform.
MacLean-Fogg is a large manufacturing business with diverse teams, multiple brands and thousands of employees.
But its DAM needed to be straightforward enough for a two-person central team to manage and simple enough for employees to use without training.
By removing much of the traditional buying and implementation friction, Stockpress allowed the team to focus on getting content organized and into people’s hands.
“We have every feature that we could possibly want.”
For MacLean-Fogg, introducing Digital Asset Management was about more than creating another place to store files.
It was about making content easier to find, easier to share and easier to use across a large manufacturing organization, without adding unnecessary work for the people managing it.
With Stockpress, Nick and his team were able to move from researching DAM platforms to using one in production in approximately 72 hours.
And unlike the lengthy sales processes and expensive implementation projects offered by other providers, they could experience the platform for themselves, using their own content, before making a long-term commitment.
“We have every feature that we could possibly want at a price that we don’t have to go back and forth and negotiate because it’s the right price that’s fair for both parties.”
– Nick Stauffer, Director of Organizational Development and Marketing, MacLean-Fogg
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