Rack Room Shoes — Case Study
Nationwide Brand-Library Capture
Rack Room Shoes runs one of the largest specialty footwear footprints in the United States. When their team needed every store photographed for a unified national brand library, C&I Studios delivered all 235, in 30 days, with one studio managing the entire production. As their sole production partner, we owned the entire US-side execution: talent sourcing, route planning, on-site capture, payment, and delivery.
Rack Room Shoes — Case Study
Nationwide Brand-Library Capture
Rack Room Shoes runs one of the largest specialty footwear footprints in the United States. When their team needed every store photographed for a unified national brand library, C&I Studios delivered all 235, in 30 days, with one studio managing the entire production.
THE FOOTPRINT
One brief. 235 storefronts. One studio.
Every Rack Room Shoes and Off Broadway Shoe Warehouse store delivered by C&I Studios between October and November 2025. Coverage spans the Southeast, Mid-Atlantic, Texas, Arizona, and California — the entire continental US footprint, executed without a single sub-vendor in the chain.
THE OPERATION
Every region, every route, every photographer
THE PIPELINE
Built for 28 photographers, every day
Every capture day ran the same loop. 28 photographers across 14 states moved in sync — every hand-off confirmed, every store folder labeled and waiting on Qubee before the photographer rolled to the next location.
Photographer pings the producer the moment they reach the store.
Shotlist worked top-to-bottom — exteriors, interiors, fixtures, signage.
Files pushed to the producer before the photographer leaves the lot.
Producer uploads, labels every folder by state, store number, and city.
Every required frame ticked off before the location is closed.
Photographer greenlit to roll. Same loop, next store. 28 in motion daily.
211 store folders. Every one tagged with state, store number, file count, and proofing status.
This is how C&I runs a multi-store rollout. Same network, same Qubee infrastructure, same producer-led oversight. Built to handle one brand, ten brands, or a Fortune 500 portfolio without dropping a frame.
WHAT THIS ENGAGEMENT PROVES
Why a national retail brand books C&I
A nationwide store-by-store retail capture would normally take an in-house team six weeks of planning, a national talent agency on the back end, and procurement onboarding for every photographer. Rack Room briefed one C&I producer once and got 235 finished storefronts back in 30 days.
Single producer, single brief
One C&I producer owned the entire project — sourcing, scheduling, contracts, on-site QC, delivery. One brief, one timeline, one invoice; 235 finished storefronts in return.
National photographer network at scale
28 vetted local photographers contracted across 14 states inside a 30-day window. No fly-out crews, no cross-country travel cost, no quality drift between markets.
Route logistics built around store density
53 routes engineered against actual store density — not against a calendar grid. Texas alone ran 8 distinct routes covering 30 cities from El Paso to Brownsville without sending the same photographer to two ends of the state.
Consistent capture spec, store after store
One brand library, 235 storefronts, one consistent visual standard. Photographers worked from the same shot list, the same exterior framing rules, and the same delivery spec — so Rack Room’s review pass moved fast.
Single delivery pipeline
All 235 store galleries pushed to Qubee, our cloud media platform. Rack Room reviewed the entire run in one place — not 53 separate Dropbox links.
Vendor admin handled end-to-end
28 photographers onboarded, contracted, and paid in USD on Net-30 cycles. All 1099 paperwork, vendor agreements, and payment processing handled by C&I — Rack Room procurement onboarded zero new vendors for this rollout.
BUILT FOR RETAIL AT SCALE
One partner, every category
The Rack Room Shoes engagement is a template, not a one-off. C&I Studios runs the same playbook for any multi-store retail brand — or any national operation — that needs every location captured to one spec, on one timeline, by one vendor.
235 stores. One brief. One studio.