10/30/2006

Talking to Matt Smith can make your head spin. And that's just what this energetic 31-year-old business guy wants.

His job is all about spinning. Taking products that look lifeless and drab when shot with still photography and turning them into moving, twirling PhotoSpherix.com>3-D products.

Think Web sites, the cool ones, where objects pop up on the screen spinning around to show every side, facet and movement they can make.

PhotoSpherix, Smith's Beech Grove-based technology company, is responsible for a lot of that movement on the Internet. His company is one of just a handful in the country with the equipment and knowledge to make the concept work. Because of that, clients from as far away as Canada seek his services.

From home builders wanting virtual tour shots of homes to sports venues that need to show ticket holders what the view will look like from their seats (all the way around) to orthopedics companies wanting to show clients what a replacement hip looks like inside out, they ask PhotoSpherix.

"Customers are getting pickier and pickier," said Smith, who started the company a year ago. "This is a way for the retailer to really grab the end consumer, to show them exactly what they will be getting."

The trying factor for Smith has been making companies aware the technology is out there.

"Most people don't even know this technology exists," he said. "We are on the rooftops yelling and screaming."

Folding Bench, headquartered in Canada, credits its rapid success to PhotoSpherix. The company, which sells portable seats that fold up and can be carried to ballgames and picnics, saw PhotoSpherix's work on the Internet and made the call.

Before hooking up with Smith's firm, Folding Bench had tried to describe its product to consumers and shown them pictures, yet the majority of the population still didn't get it, said Perry Senko, vice president of the company.

"Now when they see the animation of how easy it opens and closes, they finally get it," he said.

Senko takes a DVD of his moving product shots to trade shows and just last week was in China at the Chinese Commodity Fair with PhotoSpherix's work in hand.

"This has been vital to our success," he said. "It would take years of marketing and a huge expense to get where we are if it had not been for them."

That message is one Smith has been trying to get out since the company's inception.

PhotoSpherix, appropriately enough, is a spinoff of Smith's first company founded 10 years ago, Quijibo Design, a Web design company. Quijibo still exists and meshes well with its sister firm, but Smith's focus has moved to PhotoSpherix. He uses mostly freelancers to do Quijibo work.

"I found out building these great big monster Web sites was not as fun as I thought," he said.

What is fun is getting products shipped in and then finding a way to spin, photograph and sometimes move them to show their functionality all at the same time.

"It's a marriage of tech geek, photography and a great balance," said Brian Covert, Smith's business partner and the photography guru.

Inside the modern tech office with glass meeting tables and splashes of color on Main Street in Beech Grove, three rigs accommodate the small, medium and large items that need to be photographed. They allow PhotoSpherix to shoot everything from toy cars to real autos. A finished product can take anywhere from 20 shots to 480 shots depending on how detailed the client wants it to get. The cost? As low as $250 to thousands of dollars.

But the service Smith provides actually can help clients save money.

DePuy Orthopaedics in Warsaw, for example, wanted a way to let salespeople show their $5,000 replacement hips to clients without actually giving them one to take on the road. PhotoSpherix did the spin work that then was downloaded to each salesperson's personal digital assistant. Clients got a look at the real thing without it being physically present.

Besides company accounts, PhotoSpherix has seen many quirky products arrive inside its studios, including a 500-pound rock.

The rock's owner, a Cincinnati man, wanted to show it to archaeological experts -- but toting a rock all over the world wasn't feasible.

He did manage to get it to the PhotoSpherix studio, where they hooked it up to the large rig and began shooting.

PhotoSpherix has done other nonretail work, including art pieces for the Eiteljorg Museum and city projects for Beech Grove.

Davis Homes, whose Web site was designed by Smith, has taken advantage of his expertise. The home builder has a spinning shot inside its 10,000-square-foot design studio showing consumers the options they will have for their new homes, from carpet to cabinets.

Also on the site are virtual tours of four floor plans, which are looked at 40 percent more by Davis' homebuyers than the other 36 plans the company offers, said Raegan Potter, director of marketing for Davis.

"We felt like it would be popular, but we had no idea," she said. "It's just a really cool thing that people are amazed by."

Copyright 2006 IndyStar.com. All rights reserved

Indianapolis Star
By Dana Knight
(317) 444-6012
dana.knight@indystar.com