Case Study - Empik Foto & Antigro Designer
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About Empik Foto
EmpikFoto is a leading online photo service and part of the Empik Group, whose total GMV exceeded USD 1.1 billion in 2024. The company operates in Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Romania, Bulgaria, and Hungary. EmpikFoto offers a wide range of personalized products, including photo books, calendars, canvas prints, posters, mugs, magnets, accordion photo books, cards, and photo prints. Created using customers’ own photos, these products are available through the website and mobile apps for iOS and Android, making it easy to turn photos into high-quality keepsakes for yourself or as gifts.
EmpikFoto’s most popular products are photobooks, with customers preserving over 10 million pages of memories in them each year. However, like most retailers in the personalized print market, EmpikFoto faces recurring challenges: significant order peaks during key seasons, the need to continuously innovate and surprise customers, the introduction of new products to the offering, and the ongoing necessity to ensure that thousands of incoming files are correctly prepared for printing.
About Antigro Designer
Antigro Designer is a cloud-based software solution that provides advanced print personalization tools, enabling companies to offer customers the ability to personalize virtually any type of printed product, regardless of their design experience. It was created for businesses facing challenges similar to those encountered by EmpikFoto, such as managing complex, personalized orders at scale. By shifting the design creation process for various products directly to end customers and automatically generating print-ready files, the system significantly streamlines and automates print shop workflows.
The EmpikFoto & Antigro Designer Story
In June 2021, EmpikFoto began working with Antigro Designer to improve sales performance in the mobile channel. The company noticed that some products in its offering were barely selling through the mobile web version. Looking to increase sales of 13-page spiral-bound A3 and A4 calendars, which were almost non-existent for these items, EmpikFoto decided to test Antigro Designer Print Customizer and see how customers would respond to the solution. Initially, EmpikFoto chose to implement Antigro Designer in just one sales channel: the web version available on mobile phones.
We didn’t want to take a major risk, so at the beginning we tested Antigro Designer only on products that were generating almost no sales. The results exceeded our expectations: as soon as we launched spiral-bound calendars with Antigro Designer in the mobile version, we went from no sales at all to strong demand for these products. That was a clear signal for us that Antigro Designer had significant potential, so we decided to implement it across more of our products.
Since 2021, together with Antigro, EmpikFoto has introduced a range of new products that were not possible to create using its previously developed in-house technology. These include the accordion photo card, new types of photo books and calendars, a dedicated wedding stationery collection, phone cases, and personalized children’s books. In total, the company has launched 448 products in the Antigro Designer system, with more than 6,800 available templates.
Together, we introduced new products that were not possible with our own technology, such as the accordion photo card and wedding stationery. In terms of time to market, the fastest product we launched was an accordion photo card: it took just two business days from sharing the product specification to going live with eight templates.
Antigro Designer and EmpikFoto Collaboration on Software Development
Before EmpikFoto decided to fully migrate, they approached the process cautiously and based on data. For several months, they used Antigro Designer in parallel with their existing internally developed solution, directing only selected product categories to the new system. This allowed them to closely monitor stability, print file generation time, and business impact, while ensuring that the change would deliver clear, measurable benefits before expanding the use of Antigro Designer across the entire product portfolio.
Before making the decision in January 2025 to migrate to Antigro’s technology, we monitored its performance for two years. In 2023 and 2024, their annual system downtime was limited to just 15 minutes, resulting in an SLA of over 99.99%, which met our expectations.
From an IT perspective, the second key factor was the time required to generate print-ready files. According to our tests, the average file generation time for multi-page products, such as 13-page calendars, was 29 seconds. This was a very important aspect for us due to the express shipping option we offer.
Thirdly, before we decided to fully transition to Antigro’s technology, we were already processing a seven-figure number of paid orders per month through their system. At that stage, the system had been tested thoroughly enough that migrating additional products did not involve significant risk for us.
From the very beginning, our goal was to develop the application together in a way that would support ambitious targets for increasing conversion and order volume. Each subsequent milestone was the result of the work of dozens of people on both sides – the EmpikFoto and Antigro Designer teams – who step by step continued to improve the entire solution.
Antigro Designer and EmpikFoto joined forces to create the best photobook editor on the market
Experienced UX specialists from EmpikFoto, who have a deep understanding of the needs of the photo and personalization industry, worked closely with the Antigro Designer team on changes to the interface and the design journey, ensuring it was perfectly tailored to customers buying personalized products. Particular emphasis was placed on creating a dedicated tool for designing photo books. The teams set themselves a clear goal: to build the best photo book editor on the market. From that moment on, Antigro Designer and EmpikFoto formed a dedicated task force that worked side by side on one mission: to refine every detail and ultimately achieve this ambitious goal.
In January 2025, we decided to stop developing our own technology and fully moved to using Antigro Designer. Our collaboration with Marcin, Wacław, and their team has been exemplary – they develop the solution very quickly, and the product itself has enormous potential. We recognized this potential at an early stage and decided to actively support them in refining and polishing the tool.
We created a joint team that worked on improving the most important elements of the print editor. We enhanced the user experience by redesigning the personalization journey to make it clearer, faster, and more intuitive – from product selection and personalization through to order completion. After the first changes were introduced, conversion in the photobook creator increased to 7.5%, and just four months later it reached 17%. And we don’t plan to stop there – we have even more in store!
Building on these foundations, the teams jointly delivered several key improvements to the configurator itself. The most important features developed together include a significantly refined UX/UI at every stage of the design process, as well as an automatic photo book layout mechanism that reduced the average creation time from 3 hours to 9 minutes. These improvements made the creation process more intuitive and directly contributed to an increase in conversion.
Thanks to the changes introduced together, the design process became much simpler and more intuitive for customers. These improvements significantly reduced potential drop-off points in the purchase journey and directly translated into a 127% overall increase in conversion.
The main focus when improving the tool was placed on photobooks and photo calendars, as these are EmpikFoto’s most popular and most profitable product categories. At the same time, they are among the most complex products from a design perspective. EmpikFoto’s photobook offering, based on the Antigro Designer configurator, currently includes 44 types of photobooks, including Instabook and other specialized formats, as well as many types of photo calendars, such as spiral-bound calendars, calendars with the spiral in the middle, three-part calendars, planners, desk calendars, book-style calendars, and single-page calendars.
Due to the complexity of these products, simplifying the creation process is critical for conversion. Thanks to the teams’ joint work on UX and workflow, the average time needed to create a photobook was reduced from 3 hours to 9 minutes, eliminating many potential drop-off points along the way. In addition, the auto-layout feature increased the average number of pages ordered in photobooks. When customers see a ready-made design immediately after uploading their photos, they are more likely to find it attractive, keep the number of pages unchanged, and simply approve the layout generated by the system.
Photo book creation has been significantly improved through the use of intelligent automation in Antigro Designer. Customers simply upload their photos, and the system automatically and intelligently arranges them across the pages of the photobook. Advanced smart-cropping technology ensures that photos fit perfectly into photobook templates, while the photobook configurator automatically adjusts the page layout based on the number of uploaded photos, making manual editing unnecessary. As a result, the average time required to create a photobook using auto-layout is now 95% shorter, and 17% of customers complete their projects using automatic photo placement, which both speeds up their work and increases overall satisfaction.
Each year, an increasing number of products is added to the offering, made possible in part by the development of automation in the template-adding process. In 2024, around 1,000 templates were added to the system, while in 2025 this number doubled to over 2,000 templates – representing 29% of all templates.
Results of Implementing Antigro Designer at EmpikFoto – Summary
New Revenue Streams
By using Antigro Designer technology, EmpikFoto was able to introduce new product types that its previous technology solution did not support. Today, as much as 6% of revenue comes from these new categories.
Product Conversion Growth – Higher Sales
Thanks to an improved design and purchase experience, conversion on key products increased significantly – reaching 17% for photo books, while other products recorded double-digit conversion growth. This translated directly into higher sales.
Opening New Sales Channels
Today, around 6% of revenue comes from new sales channels opened thanks to Antigro technology. The implementation of Antigro Designer made it possible to launch additional channels, allowing the company to reach new customer groups.
Sales are now carried out through the mobile web application, desktop web application, integrated editor in the iOS app, editor in the Android app, as well as marketplaces such as Allegro and empik.com.
Greater Solution Stability – No Sales Gaps
Stable, scalable technology reduced the risk of downtime and technical issues during key periods. This ensured uninterrupted product availability and eliminated gaps in sales. In November and December 2025, the creator’s availability/SLA reached 100%.
No Complaints Related to Production Files
Files generated in Antigro Designer always meet production requirements. This makes it possible to automate the printing process while eliminating complaints related to production files.
Our print files are now perfect, which significantly speeds up the entire production process. We record only a marginal number of complaints thanks to the consistent and repeatable files generated by Antigro Designer. They ensure that customers always receive exactly the products they envisioned and designed.
Further Development Plans for Antigro Designer and EmpikFoto
Antigro Designer and EmpikFoto continue to develop the Antigro software, with a strong focus on both user experience and business results. The roadmap includes further UX/UI optimizations of the editor, the implementation of automatic photo enhancement, the introduction of product bundling to increase average order value, and additional AI-powered features in the creator. Further initiatives are also planned in the areas of marketing automation, as well as new cross-selling and up-selling features.
Together with Antigro Designer, we are consistently developing Antigro software to better meet the needs of EmpikFoto customers while also supporting our business goals. We are focusing on further UX/UI improvements, automatic photo enhancement, and solutions that increase basket value, such as product bundling. We also believe that additional AI-powered features, marketing automation, and the development of cross-selling and up-selling will result in an even more intuitive purchase journey and stronger sales performance.
