Digital Asset Management (DAM) for ecommerce and consumer brands:
Company: Duke Cannon
Industry: Men’s grooming, ecommerce, consumer goods, retail
Company Size: 200+ people
Location: United States
TL;DR
Duke Cannon uses Stockpress to organize product photography, ecommerce assets, advertising content, and creative media in one searchable workspace. The result is faster collaboration, better metadata management, and a single workspace for marketing, sales, and creative teams.
About Duke Cannon
Duke Cannon Supply Co. makes premium men’s grooming goods, including soap, deodorant, cologne, beard care, hair care, and personal care products for hardworking men.
For Duke Cannon, product media plays a central role across ecommerce, online marketplaces, retail, advertising, marketing, creative production, and vendor communication.
The challenge:
Before Stockpress, Duke Cannon managed product images and creative assets across SharePoint and Dropbox folders.
That meant teams often had to search through old links, folder names, and disconnected storage systems to find the content they needed. The art director was regularly asked where assets lived, and there was no easy way to search by SKU, UPC, product name, descriptor, or metadata.
“There was a lot of just looking for old links or folder names that had certain things, and our art director was constantly getting bugged as to where things were on the server. It was kind of a mess.”
– Jules Ameel, Senior Visual Content Specialist, Duke Cannon
The solution:
Duke Cannon needed a Digital Asset Management platform that was user-friendly, flexible, and practical enough to support both tech-savvy and less tech-savvy users.
Stockpress gave the team a central source of truth for product media, with search functionality that could support different ways of finding assets — from SKU and UPC numbers to more descriptive, everyday search terms.
Instead of forcing Duke Cannon to fit into a rigid DAM structure, Stockpress gave the team a flexible environment they could shape around their own content, metadata, and workflows.
“What was great about Stockpress is we did start from a really bad place of organization, and we were able to grow within Stockpress.”
– Jules Ameel, Senior Visual Content Specialist, Duke Cannon
Results:
With Stockpress in place, Duke Cannon now benefits from:
- One platform for all product media: Teams can access product images and creative assets from one central platform instead of searching across Dropbox, SharePoint, and old folder links.
- Better search across product content: Assets can be found using SKU numbers, UPC numbers, product names, descriptors, tags, and metadata.
- Fewer internal interruptions: The creative team is asked far less often where assets live because teams can search and find content themselves.
- More control over approved assets: Stockpress helps reduce the risk of incorrect or outdated images going live.
- Flexible metadata workflows: Duke Cannon uses IPTC tagging, Stockpress tags, and Smart Collections to organize content more automatically.
- A fast rollout: The team began adding content, launched to a wider portion of the organization within one to two weeks, and reached official launch in about three weeks.
- Accessible customer support: The Stockpress team was available through chat and email, giving personal attention to questions and resolving issues quickly.
Q&A with Jules Ameel
Interviewee: Jules Ameel, Senior Visual Content Specialist, Duke Cannon
Interviewer: Veronica Sierra, Stockpress
Introduction
For ecommerce and consumer brands, product media needs to move quickly across creative, marketing, sales, retail, online marketplaces, vendors, and ecommerce teams.
At Duke Cannon, that meant finding a better way to manage product photography, product detail page images, ad production assets, commercial content, and other visual media in one place.
In this conversation, Jules Ameel, Senior Visual Content Specialist at Duke Cannon, shares how the team moved from SharePoint and Dropbox folders to Stockpress — and how Stockpress became the source of truth for their product media.
“I help teams get the content they need to their vendors, online, and in store.”
Veronica Sierra, Stockpress: Can you briefly describe your role and responsibilities within Duke Cannon?
Jules Ameel, Duke Cannon: My role at Duke Cannon Supply Company is Senior Visual Content Specialist.
What that means is I do a hybrid of production and image creation, and then also help the back end so teams can get the content they need to their vendors, online, and in store.
“All of that currently goes into Stockpress.”
Veronica: What kind of content or digital assets do you manage regularly?
Jules: I manage digital content for our product description pages, our online marketplace, photo shoots, ad production for videos, commercial production, and all of that currently goes into Stockpress.
“Before Stockpress, we were using SharePoint and Dropbox folders.”
Veronica: Before using Stockpress, what tools or systems did you use to manage those assets?
Jules: Before Stockpress, when I joined, our team was utilizing a series of either SharePoint folders or Dropbox folders.
There was a lot of looking for old links or folder names that had certain things, and our art director was constantly getting bugged as to where things were on the server.
It was kind of a mess.
“It was missing the search functionality and the rich content to search from.”
Veronica: What were the biggest challenges you faced with your previous file management system?
Jules: Our previous system didn’t have the search functionality, and there was a lack of rich content to search from.
It was missing certain descriptors in the file name. It didn’t really have metadata to be able to search with.
So it was a big untangling from the old ways to get into a true DAM system.
“We needed different people to find content in different ways.”
Veronica: What were you hoping to improve when you started looking for a new solution?
Jules: When we were looking for a solution, it was really to help those who were very tech-savvy and those who were a little less tech-savvy find what they were looking for.
For us, that means being able to support teams who use different search functionality.
In our case, some people are looking for products using a SKU number or UPC number. Others just want to use a descriptor that is more layman’s terms.
It was about being able to look at all those different things in one area and find images related to those different queries.
“The hidden cost is time, and potentially having things go live that are incorrect.”
Veronica: What do you think are the hidden costs of not finding the latest version of your file?
Jules: Definitely time, and potentially having things go live that are incorrect.
You have less ability to manage and gatekeep some of those images going out into the world.
“Stockpress was user-friendly, and we could make it our own.”
Veronica: What initially drew you to Stockpress?
Jules: We really liked that it was very user-friendly, and it was a sandbox that we could kind of make into our own.
It seemed like with other larger DAM platforms, we had to either be way ready and organized ahead of time in order to get the most success out of them, or we had to configure our content to fit their platform.
What was great about Stockpress is that we did start from a really bad place of organization, and we were able to grow within Stockpress.
We were able to do a couple of different phases that allowed search functionality within it. That started with name searching, then adding richer metadata, and allowing those to be added as tags so users could find things more fluidly.
“The Stockpress team was so accessible.”
Veronica: What was the onboarding process like?
Jules: The onboarding process was great because the Stockpress team was so accessible.
I felt like I could drop a line either in the chat or in an email, and I’d get a response and really get one-on-one attention to the question or problem I was trying to solve.
“We were officially launched in about three weeks.”
Veronica: How long did it take for your team to get comfortable using the platform?
Jules: We probably started adding content to Stockpress, and then in maybe one to two weeks, we launched to a wider portion of our organization.
I think we were in official launch about three weeks from starting the platform.
“I get personal attention to the issue I’m having.”
Veronica: How has your experience been with Stockpress customer service and the team?
Jules: The customer service and the team have been great at Stockpress.
They are always really accessible. I definitely feel like I can either send an email or use the chat functionality, and I get personal attention to the issue I’m having.
Usually things are resolved fairly quickly.
“I get asked way fewer times, ‘Where does this asset live?’”
Veronica: How has your team’s workflow changed since using Stockpress?
Jules: Our team has really appreciated the workflow that Stockpress can provide.
There were a lot of issues before, cross-functionally, between our creative department, sales department, and marketing department, where people were trying to access content for certain products and had no idea where it was.
Ever since we started using Stockpress, I get asked way fewer times, “Where does this asset live?”
We’ve been able to provide everybody with a rich media environment to search for content in a variety of different ways.
It really is a fluid place for all of our teams to find what they need within our product media.
“The metadata side has been the most valuable.”
Veronica: Which features do you use and value the most?
Jules: The features I’ve been valuing the most have been on the metadata side.
I’m using a lot of IPTC tagging that will automatically map to our Stockpress tag functionality, and utilizing the Smart Collections that automatically generate some of the folder structure once images are uploaded.
“Stockpress is the source of truth for all our images.”
Veronica: Do you feel Stockpress fits your team’s needs better than other solutions you’ve tried before?
Jules: Stockpress has been great for our team compared to what we were using previously, which was Dropbox and SharePoint.
Everybody on this team has been really appreciative to have Stockpress as the source of truth for all our images.
“It can be made into a platform that suits your needs.”
Veronica: If you were to recommend Stockpress to someone like you, what would you say?
Jules: I would recommend Stockpress to somebody like me who is looking for something user-friendly that they can start with right out of the box, that’s cost-effective, and that can be made into a platform that suits your needs.
It can do a lot of things right out of the box and then some. You can tweak it to become a tool that’s beyond just a DAM too.
“Stockpress can be used by small marketing teams, individual photographers, and organizations like ours.”
Veronica: What kind of professionals or teams do you think Stockpress is best suited for?
Jules: I think Stockpress can be utilized within small marketing teams, individual photographers, and organizations like ours.
We’re an organization of about 50 to 60 people who all collaborate within Stockpress.
What This Means for Ecommerce and Consumer Brands Managing Product Media
Jules’s experience reflects a common challenge for growing consumer brands and ecommerce teams:
- Product images are spread across disconnected folders, links, and storage systems.
- Teams search for assets in different ways, from SKU and UPC numbers to product descriptions.
- Creative teams are interrupted repeatedly with questions about where files live.
- Incorrect or outdated images can make their way into live channels.
- Rigid DAM platforms can require too much preparation before teams can get value.
For Duke Cannon, Stockpress offered a more flexible way to work:
- A central platform for product images and creative content.
- Search that supports both structured product data and everyday descriptions.
- Metadata and IPTC tagging that make assets easier to organize and retrieve.
- Smart Collections that help automate structure as files are uploaded.
- A user-friendly platform that teams could shape around their own workflows.
Most importantly, Stockpress helped Duke Cannon move from folder-based searching to a richer, more reliable way of managing product media across teams.
“A source of truth for all our images.”
For Duke Cannon, Digital Asset Management was not just about replacing Dropbox or SharePoint. It was about giving creative, marketing, sales, and ecommerce teams a shared place to find and trust the product media they need.
By moving to Stockpress, Duke Cannon created a central, searchable, flexible media environment that supports the way different teams actually work.
“Everybody on this team has been really appreciative to have Stockpress as the platform for all our images to live.”
– Jules Ameel, Senior Visual Content Specialist, Duke Cannon
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