How Valuence Japan cut editing from 800 to 200 hours and saved ¥12M a year

Valuence Japan, a Tokyo-based luxury resale retailer selling pre-owned brand items, replaced a seven-person offshore editing team with Photoroom's background removal API and batch editing. The team now edits 24,000 product images a month in-house, and editing time fell from 800 to 200 hours a month, saving ¥12 million (~$80,000) a year in outsourcing costs. Valuence Japan chose Photoroom over a cheaper alternative because Photoroom's AI shadows looked more natural on product images.

Life before Photoroom

• An offshore Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) team handled editing

• 800 hours a month to edit 24,000 bag images

• Two to three day delays on weekends and holidays

• Communication issues due to language gaps

• Inconsistent photo quality

• Higher costs with limited control

Life with Photoroom

• Editing time cut from 800 to 200 hours a month

• Saved ¥12 million (~$80,000) a year in outsourcing costs

• 24,000 product images edited in-house every month

• Faster time-to-market and shorter lead times

• Backgrounds, margins, and shadows edited in batches

• Consistent and high-quality image output

"It's useful having a single tool that handles the entire retouching process. Photoroom has significantly reduced cost for us while improving quality. This is the kind of solution that's well-suited for companies selling through e‑commerce platforms, handling a certain volume of products, and aiming for high image quality."

— Takanori Hirai, Deputy General Manager, Product and Photography Section, Valuence Japan Inc.

In the heart of Tokyo's luxury retail district, Takanori Hirai faces a challenge that would make most product managers lose sleep. As deputy general manager of the product and photography section at Valuence Japan, he oversees the photography and presentation of 40,000 unique luxury items every month, each one a pristine Hermès bag, vintage Rolex, or rare piece of jewelry that demands perfection.

Unlike traditional retail, where you photograph a product once and sell thousands of copies, every item that comes through Valuence Japan's doors is one-of-a-kind. Each one needs its own photo and its own edit, to the standard of customers who expect the best when spending thousands on pre-owned luxury goods.

For years, that reality meant outsourcing the editing overseas. On paper it looked cost-effective. In practice, it had become the bottleneck for the whole operation, and the team wanted the control that comes with editing in-house without hiring a studio to get it.

800 hours a month of outsourced editing, with weekend delays and inconsistent quality

Valuence Japan’s visuals relied on a seven-person team in the Philippines, six operators and one supervisor, to edit its product photos. Labor costs were roughly two-thirds of domestic rates, but the hours added up: for the bag category alone, the team needed 800 hours a month to process 24,000 images from 12,000 individual items.

Cost was only part of the problem. The arrangement created friction on four fronts:

• Communication barriers: "Communication had to be conducted in English, making it difficult to convey the nuances of specialized terminology," Takanori explains. When the difference between "gently used" and "excellent condition" can mean thousands of yen in value, precise instructions matter.

• Quality inconsistencies: The overseas team opted for aesthetics that often conflicted with Japanese standards. "Due to differences in photo quality standards between Japan and overseas teams, the final output often differed from the original requirements," Takanori recalls. High-contrast image edits, preferred overseas, caused unwanted brightness issues.

• Operational delays: The team worked weekdays only, so products waited two to three days to reach the e‑commerce site whenever processing stopped over a weekend or holiday. In luxury resale, where every item is a single unit, a delayed listing is a delayed sale.

• Rising costs with limited control: Expenses for all seven staff members accumulated month after month, excluding quality control costs.

"We knew something had to change," Takanori reflects. "We needed a solution that could give us better quality, faster turnaround, and actually reduce our costs instead of just shifting them around."

An AI editing partner chosen for its shadow quality

Takanori searched online for AI image editing tools that could bring the work in-house. Three services made the initial cut, and two reached the final round. Both removed backgrounds with comparable accuracy, so the decision came down to a detail that matters more on a product page than most teams expect.

"The key factor in selecting Photoroom was the superior quality of its shadow rendering. While both Photoroom and the alternative offered comparable cutout accuracy, Photoroom's shadows appeared more natural and better suited for product images."

— Takanori Hirai, Deputy General Manager, Product and Photography Section, Valuence Japan Inc.

The Photoroom API was slightly more expensive than the alternative. After taking time to compare editing APIs, Takanori and his team chose quality over the cheaper option. For a retailer whose customers judge items like a Hermès bag or a Rolex watch from a photo, that trade-off made sense.

Photoroom's 2026 State of GenAI in Marketplaces report found that 87% of shoppers say product visuals are the most important factor in a purchase decision. Shadow quality is also what separated Photoroom from other tools when Decathlon benchmarked AI editing solutions for its catalog, so Valuence Japan was not alone in paying for that detail.

After a three-month trial, Takanori switched fully to Photoroom. The goal was to bring editing in-house and gain control over quality without creating extra work for the team.

How Valuence Japan edits 24,000 images a month in-house today

The team now edits 24,000 product photos each month with Photoroom, specifically for luxury handbags, which account for about 12,000 unique items. The process has four steps:

• Capturing products: 30 to 40 photographers take 40,000 product photos monthly.

• Preparing images: The team uploads 24,000 of those images into a product management system, and retouchers download them for processing.

• Batch-editing images: The retouchers edit the photos in batches through a Google Drive script integration built around Photoroom, which applies three edits to every image:

  • Unify backgrounds: Every product gets a clean, white background for consistency across listings.

  • Adjust margins: A fixed 10% margin keeps framing uniform.

  • Add realistic shadows: Photoroom renders AI shadows automatically, the visual detail that decided the purchase.

• Re-uploading: After processing, the team uploads the edited images back to the original system before listing the items.

"Although automating photography is difficult, Photoroom allows for easy quality enhancement even with iPhone-level photography, which now offers sufficient image quality."

— Takanori Hirai, Deputy General Manager, Product and Photography Section, Valuence Japan Inc.

A monogram sling bag, raw photo on the left, Photoroom edit on the right with white background, tighter framing, and a soft shadow. Source: Valuence Japan

An orange messenger bag, raw photo on the left, Photoroom edit on the right with white background, tighter framing, and a soft shadow. Source: Valuence Japan

Editing time cut from 800 to 200 hours a month

Since bringing editing in-house with Photoroom, Valuence Japan has:

• Cut editing time from 800 to 200 hours a month, a 75% reduction for the bag category.

• Saved ¥12 million (~$80,000) a year in outsourcing costs.

• Edited 24,000 product images a month with Photoroom, across roughly 12,000 handbags.

• Gained faster time-to-market, as lead time shortened because editing now happens every day instead of pausing on weekends and holidays, so new inventory reaches the site sooner.

Quality control moved in-house with the editing, and the team sets the standard it photographs to. "We've reduced outsourcing management and communication costs," Takanori shares. Time once spent coordinating with an overseas team and chasing quality issues now goes to the core business.

Edited listings on ALLU, Valuence Japan's online resale store, with a Chanel, Hermès, and Louis Vuitton bag sharing the same white background and framing. Source: Valuence Japan

With capacity to spare in its Photoroom subscription, Valuence Japan plans to extend Photoroom to its jewelry and accessory lines, categories where fine visual detail matters just as much as it does for bags. The team is also exploring how to reuse every edited image for social media and advertising.

Photoroom is the AI product photography platform that enables retailers and resale operators to bring high-volume photo editing in-house and produce consistent listing images without a studio or an outsourcing team. At Valuence Japan, 24,000 one-of-a-kind items a month now get the same white background, margin, and natural shadow every day of the week, and the shadow quality the team paid extra for is what keeps an expensive pre-owned bag looking real on screen.