How Decathlon slashed image editing costs by 99% and delivered market rollouts 4x faster

Life before Photoroom

• External agencies handled editing via a manual process

• Two weeks to process 1,000 images, with 15K images in the backlog

• Constant back-and-forth with editors over guideline interpretation

• Inconsistent shadows, backgrounds, and product positioning across categories

• File renaming errors complicated DAM integration

• High editing cost of over several euros per image

Life with Photoroom

• Team workload reduced by 4x

• 1,000 images processed in 20 minutes via batch editing

• Saved six figures (in Euros) from reducing the workload to a quarter

• Reduced cost per image by 99%

• 35K images edited across the 3-month project rollout

• 99% of product categories pass quality tests

• Consistent images across product categories

• One to two people now manage the entire catalog transformation

"Photoroom is a trusted partner capable of supporting us in meeting compliance and image transformation challenges with a turnkey, flexible, and scalable solution. We’ve been able to process large product image volumes using a simplified process, at a very competitive cost."

— Matthieu Chatelain, Digital Project Manager at Decathlon

Decathlon is one of the world's largest sports goods retailers, operating over 1,800 stores across 55 countries with more than 100,000 employees. The company's product catalog spans dozens of specialty brands—Quechua for mountain sports, Tribord for water sports, Kipsta for team sports, and more.

Product visuals play a critical role in how customers experience that catalog. "The first objective of a packshot picture is to let the customer understand the product," explains Thomas Schouteeten, product content leader at Decathlon. "The second is to let them compare products on the listing page and have the same customer experience from one product sheet to another."

When product images are consistent and understandable, they help customers make confident purchase decisions, reduce return rates, and support Decathlon's revenue growth across multiple markets and brands.

While each specialty brand has its own marketing team producing product content, Thomas Schouteeten and Matthieu Chatelain guide Decathlon's broader product content strategy. Thomas leads packshot guideline development and oversees content production across brand teams. Matthieu contributes to the content rollout for the Revamp project, applying those standards across markets. Both manage operational challenges that require automation to maintain quality at scale and meet tight deadlines.

The challenge

Inconsistent images and a manual process that couldn't scale

With external agencies editing images manually, Decathlon faced inconsistent product visuals and long turnaround times. Teams at Decathlon would download pictures from their digital asset management (DAM) system, send them to the agencies, wait for editors to manually edit in Photoshop, review results, send feedback for revisions, and wait again for corrections.

As Matthieu recalls, "We were having a lot of back-and-forth with the agencies because they were interpreting the guidelines in their own way.” As you can imagine, this manual process presented several challenges for a brand with large catalog:

• Slow editing process: It took two weeks to process 1,000 images, and Decathlon’s teams spent hours managing files and agency compliance.

• High editing cost: Each image cost several euros to edit, which compounds and becomes inefficient for large catalogs.

• Inconsistent results: With external partners interpreting guidelines differently, edited images were often inconsistent and undermined the perceived quality of Decathlon's products.

• File renaming issues: There were challenges with renaming files, which is important for Decathlon’s DAM system.

Thomas had developed 150 comprehensive packshot guidelines to fix the issue and ensure that all images across Decathlon’s 500 product categories meet their product image standards of consistency, compatibility, and helping customers understand the products.

But then came the challenge of scaling production

Decathlon had launched an ambitious initiative called Revamp — a complete overhaul of the customer experience across its e-commerce website, which includes standardizing hundreds of product visuals for multiple specialty and partner brands. 

On the content side, this project reflected a broader principle driving Decathlon's approach to product images: at enterprise scale, quality and consistency require systems that simplify compliance, not isolated actions. For Decathlon, that meant applying the new packshot guidelines to maintain standards across high volumes of content, but it also meant a need for automation.

The team was operating within a three-month timeline on average to complete the Revamp rollout per country. However, working with external agencies required almost the same timeframe to edit manually before launching.

This time and cost constraint was a major challenge for Decathlon’s catalog size and project goal. Matthieu and Thomas decided then that they needed a solution to edit thousands of images across multiple countries within the same three months window, while other aspects of the project moved forward simultaneously.

A previous collection of inconsistent product photos. Source: Decathlon

The solution

An AI product photography partner for automation 

Thomas benchmarked AI image editing solutions. Most could handle background removal and adding margins. But there was one critical requirement almost no tool could meet: generating consistent, realistic shadows.

Decathlon’s new guidelines required shadows to help customers understand how products behave in space. So, the team needed a solution that could create shadows that aligned with this requirement.

"I discussed it with a creative director who was aware of all the solutions on the market, and he recommended Photoroom," Thomas shares. It was the right call. Photoroom was the only AI-powered product photography platform that could generate realistic shadows.

What impressed Thomas even more was how Photoroom processed complex products. The platform handles edge cases that typically require painstaking attention from skilled editors.

"With other platforms, it was difficult to outline a water bottle because of the transparency. But it's not a problem with Photoroom. We’re able to outline some intricate elements like hair on models and still retain the details."

— Thomas Schouteeten, Product Content Leader at Decathlon

How Decathlon processes images today using Photoroom

Photoroom's technical team helped Decathlon connect the Photoroom API to their DAM through a Google Sheet interface — a straightforward integration that didn't require heavy engineering lift.

“I have two words for the onboarding experience at Photoroom: reactive and constructive. When we faced some challenges with complex images, Photoroom’s team supported us through the process. They also proposed training and access to the Photoroom web app to let more of our brand teams learn to use the platform. ”

— Thomas Schouteeten, Product Content Leader at Decathlon

Here’s Decathlon’s workflow with Photoroom today:

• Preparation: The team created approximately 100 presets matching the packshot guidelines, each tailored to specific product types and categories. They enter product IDs into the Google Sheet with their assigned presets.

• Batch processing: Batches of 250 images process automatically, with multiple batches (up to four) running in parallel.

• Deployment: Edited images sync to the DAM with the correct file names and automatically update across all country websites within a day.

One to two people managed the initial catalog within a short period, and the Photoroom integration now saves the team time, prevents the issue of agencies interpreting the guideline differently, and ensures homogeneity in product images, which creates a better shopping experience for customers browsing Decathlon's website.

"Photoroom contributes to offering our customers a high-quality standard on packshots, comparable to major international brands like Nike and Adidas, strengthening the perceived quality of our products."

— Thomas Schouteeten, Product Content Leader at Decathlon

The result

Leaner, faster, and finally consistent

Since integrating Photoroom’s API, Decathlon has:

• 4x reduction in team workload, with single-person management vs. multiple agencies.

• Reduced editing time by 99.8%, from two weeks to 20 minutes for 1,000 images.

• Processed 35,000 images during 3-month deployment (total time spent on the Revamp project)

• Saved six figures (in euros) from reducing the workload to a quarter through automation.

• Reduced cost per image by 99%, from several euros to cents per image

• Achieved 99% of products passing quality tests, showing an improvement in brand compliance.

• Improved product image consistency and created a unified brand experience across its marketplace.

Crucially, it ensured the team could rollout countries following the deadlines and deliver a new best in class e-commerce experience.

“Without adopting Photoroom, we would not have been able to guarantee a constant quality level across our large image volume. We also would have missed the six-figures savings made possible by cutting the workload to a quarter through automation.

— Matthieu Chatelain, Digital Project Manager at Decathlon

What's next: expanding to all marketing teams

With the Revamp rollout progressing, Decathlon is already planning the next phase.

"We want to deploy Photoroom for all communication teams," Thomas shares. The goal is to make marketing teams across all of Decathlon's sports brands autonomous in applying the packshot guidelines, with the same quality and consistency that the central team achieved.

The team is also mapping an expansion to the Photoroom web app and additional use cases where AI tools could help, particularly Photoroom's AI Upscale and AI Expand features, trusting Photoroom’s innovative culture and reliable support with solutions.

"Photoroom has provided useful support throughout our process. Communication has been proactive, constructive, and reactive. Despite us not being a 'big client' (with 35,000 photos for this project only), they never compromised the quality of their support."

— Matthieu Chatelain, Digital Project Manager at Decathlon

For a company transforming the customer experience across multiple countries with thousands of products spanning hundreds of categories, this kind of reliable, scalable solution makes the difference to meet ambitious deadlines.