22. Poplar.Studio

Founders: David Ripert and Laurie Ainley
Founded: 2018
Website: www.poplar.studio

Following a very respectable inaugural appearance in the Startups 100 at 39 last year, we’re delighted to see Poplar – an AR and 3D platform for marketing and ecommerce – rising up the ranks in 2021.

Founded by David Ripert and Laurie Ainley in 2018, Poplar’s project management tools allow brands to create and deploy 3D and AR experiences on any social or ecommerce platform.

In practice, this allows customers to better visualise products when shopping online and even try on clothes using AR, which helps to increase engagements and conversions, and reduce returns.

The tech allows customers to better visualise products when shopping online and even try on clothes using AR, which helps to increase engagements and conversions.

All a brand needs to do is upload a 2D picture through Poplar’s CMS. Poplar’s ‘talent cloud’ community of 3D and AR creators then quickly turns it into a 3D or AR model, and the brand gets access to a range of analytics to see how the end customer is engaging with the feature.

For this, they pay anything between £5,000 and £100,000 depending on the experience, or a licence fee of between £200 and £6,000 per month for its embeddable software and analytics.

Poplar’s ‘talent cloud’ community of 3D and AR creators quickly turn an uploaded 2D image into a 3D or AR model

A number of big global brands have already recognised the benefits of Poplar’s technology, and it counts L’Oréal, Nestlé, the BBC, Speedo, Universal, J&J, Disney, Made.com among its clients to name a few.

It also integrates with some of the biggest names in the ecommerce space, including Shopify, BigCommerce, WooCommerce, Wix, and Magento.

Poplar has already grown significantly since its last appearance in the Startups 100, and with 60% of shoppers keen to see products online in 3D and AR (and 20% willing to pay more for it) Poplar is in prime position to capitalise on this ever growing market.