How RevenueCat launched a Shopify store without a product photoshoot

RevenueCat had wanted to launch a branded merch store for years, but the logistics of photographing products across a fully remote team kept the project on hold. Inventory was spread across several countries, and the team only had limited in-person time. They used Photoroom to photograph products, create listings with AI, and publish everything to Shopify. The result was a professional storefront with 40–50 products, created in days instead of weeks, while saving thousands of dollars in photography costs.

The challenge

• Merch store launch stalled by operational complexity

• Inventory spread across the US, UK, and Japan made studio photography impractical

• Traditional photography required shipping, coordination, and extensive editing

• Tight deadlines ruled out a conventional workflow

What Photoroom unlocked

• Launched RevenueCat's first Shopify merch store with 40–50 products

• Built a mobile workflow from photo to live Shopify listing

• Created professional product images without a studio

• Published individual products in 2–3 minutes

• Saved several thousand dollars versus a professional photoshoot

• Established a scalable workflow for hundreds of future products

From an idea that never happened to a store launched in days

RevenueCat is the platform behind subscription infrastructure for thousands of mobile apps. While software is its core business, the company had long wanted to create a branded merchandise store for customers and community members. The ambition was there. The logistics weren't.

As a fully remote company, merchandise was spread across employees in Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Building a traditional photography setup would have meant shipping products, organizing studio photography, and coordinating multiple teams, all for a project that wasn't central to the business.

Creating their Shopify store listings with Photoroom finally gave the team the opportunity to move forward. Steve Kelly, Content and Growth Marketing at RevenueCat, explains: 

"Photoroom just seemed like a really good, straightforward, easy-to-implement option that we could do pretty much with our phones."

- Steve Kelly, RevenueCat

Professional product photos without a studio

Instead of hiring photographers or setting up a temporary studio, the RevenueCat team photographed around 40–50 products using their phones. From there, Photoroom removed backgrounds, created Ghost mannequin images where needed, cleaned up products, generated titles, descriptions, and image metadata with AI, and published everything directly to Shopify. The team also used AI Product Staging to create clean, consistent product imagery without building physical sets.

The new process also replaced much of the team's editing work. Rather than switching between multiple tools for retouching and cleanup, RevenueCat's design lead completed almost everything inside Photoroom. Even small fixes, like removing wrinkles from folded apparel, were handled during editing.

Accuracy mattered just as much as speed. Photoroom maintained product fidelity and kept products true to the original products with sharp logos and consistent colors.

"Everything looked like the original photos. I wouldn't do a double take. The images on our site look fantastic. They look professional. There's no real difference, I don't think, for the average person."

- Steve Kelly, RevenueCat

One app instead of multiple tools

Once the Shopify store was set up, creating a new product became a quick and almost entirely mobile process.

"You can go from photo to product in your list of products on your Shopify store in probably two or three minutes."

- Steve Kelly, RevenueCat

Multiple team members worked in parallel, photographing, editing, and publishing products at the same time. Without a shared studio, expensive photography equipment, or a traditional workflow, the team could divide the catalog and move quickly.

Compared with organising a professional product shoot, Steve estimates the company saved several thousand dollars while avoiding the challenge of shipping inventory across multiple countries. More importantly, the store finally launched. "We just wouldn't have gotten around to it without Photoroom," Steve says. 

Scaling for the future

The current store represents only a fraction of RevenueCat's catalog. Hundreds of products remain to be photographed, making scalability increasingly important. Following the launch, the team identified additional Photoroom capabilities it plans to explore: AI-generated product videos, Listing score for Shopify optimization, and the Recolor tool to create instant color variants across SKUs.

Although merchandise isn't RevenueCat's core business, Steve expects Photoroom to remain part of the team's process:

"Photoroom offers a smoother workflow end to end than pretty much any other way you could do it."

- Steve Kelly, RevenueCat