Cloudinary Blog

While COVID has affected most businesses, it has been particularly hard on those that sell products for the physical ‘brick and mortar’ world. One company that literally fits that bill is our Australian customer James Hardie, the largest global manufacturer of fibre cement products used in both domestic and commercial construction. These are materials that its buyers ideally want to see up close, in detail. When customers have questions, they expect personal service.

With the holiday season upon us, it’s time to take stock of what brings us joy and for many of us giving gifts to loved ones is at the top of the list. We’re lucky that so many of our customers are also our favorite brands -- which makes gift giving pretty easy.

VELTRA (a wordplay on TRAVEL) is a leading Japan-based travel marketplace with 4,000 international travel-agency partners, offering 27,000 local tours to over 150 destinations worldwide. In addition to featured travel itineraries, the VELTRA site also serves leisure travelers with meticulous support including tips and pointers along with comprehensive and helpful responses to questions.

As we spend more time at home, many of us are adopting pets for the joy, companionship and a surprising range of health benefits. In Australia, where our nonprofit customer PetRescue is located, there’s a shortage of pets to adopt. Last August, the Guardian reported that dog shelters in Australia emptied and adoption fees for puppies were running as high as $AUS1800.

I was first introduced to A Second U Foundation through a social post by a dear friend who works for Bombas, which happens to be a Cloudinary customer, and as I came to learn, a corporate supporter of the Foundation.

Simplotel’s mission is to help independent hotels of all sizes to grow their direct website bookings by providing Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) technology that enables them to compete at a higher level, drive greater awareness and increase direct sales. With the help of its easy-to-use product suite, Simplotel’s customers often see their bookings double and revenue multiply within a matter of months.

The Hub is decentralizing the creative process through its two-sided online marketplace that changes the way brands hire creators. The old model of committing all creative resources to one agency of record has proven time-consuming and expensive. Additionally, brands are limited to content that is only as good as the handful of people on that agency’s team.

From the news we read to the e-commerce sites we shop, we better connect with experiences that are rich in visuals. The creation, delivery and consumption of visual media has skyrocketed in recent years, and as a result companies and their digital libraries are exploding with assets. Determining the most efficient way to manage these assets -- and extending their value beyond web and marketing teams -- has become a mission-critical exercise for most organizations.

We are in uncharted territory. As humans no matter where you call home. As parents juggling work and childcare. As employees trying to maintain some semblance of normal, and as a broader tech community learning from each other -- and in some cases leaning on each other.

You only have to be a consumer to know that digital has dramatically transformed the consumer buyer journey. It stopped being linear and location-based a long time ago. So what can retailers do to deliver the kinds of digital experiences that today’s consumers have come to expect?