Kylie Davis:

Welcome to the Proptech podcast. It's Kylie Davis here, and I'm delighted to be your host as we explore the brave new world where technology and real estate collide. It's so great to have you here and to share stories of innovation and opportunity across real estate, property, and building services. And the aim of each episode is to introduce listeners to a Proptech innovator who is pushing the boundaries of what's possible across how we design, build, buy, sell, rent, and invest in property, and all of the associated behaviour and activities around that.

Now, none of this would be possible without our sponsors. So a big shout-out to the Direct Connect team, making moving easy. Dynamic Methods, the innovators behind the Forms Live, and Real Works Forms, and the Proptech Association of Australia. Thank you for your support of the podcast. My guest in this episode is the irrepressible Brad Filliponi, co-founder of Boxbrownie.com, one of Australia's most globally successful proptechs with a website active in four languages, and operations in more than 112 countries around the world. Started by professional real estate photographer, Brad and his friend, technical guru, Mel Myers, BoxBrownie is a 24/7 photo editing company providing a range of services for real estate marketing. It offers a no subscription, pay-as-you-go service with edits returned in 24 hours. Globally, they use more than 2,000 editors and they have a team of around 200 people with their home base being in Maroochydore on the Sunshine Coast of Queensland.

BoxBrownie have simplified so many elements of real estate, photography, and marketing already, including creating floor plans, virtual staging, and virtual tours. And in early 2023, they will be raising the bar again with the launch of their new iPhone app, SnapSnapSnap, which allows agents to take professional quality DSLR photos using just their mobile phone. So here to tell us all about it, Brad Filliponi. Welcome to the Proptech Podcast.

Brad Filliponi:

Thank you for having me, Kylie. It's really great to be here.

Kylie Davis:

Yeah, it's great to have the BoxBrownies out back on the podcast. So, Brad, look, I know we've talked to BoxBrownie in the past, but you are the founder. Last time, I spoke to Petrov, and I'm really looking forward to hearing the story through your lens. And I know you've got some new stuff to announce. But before we kick off, the job that we make everyone do is what is the BoxBrownie elevator pitch?

Brad Filliponi:

All right. So Boxbrownie.com is a real estate photo editing website. I like to say, think Photoshop on a menu for property professionals all around the world. In a nutshell, you send us a photo, a floor plan, any type of property marketing, and we'll make it look fresh and fantastic and ready for marketing.

Kylie Davis:

Awesome. Okay, awesome. So tell me a little bit about your journey starting up BoxBrownie.

Brad Filliponi:

Sure thing. I've literally been a real estate photographer my whole career. I do have my REIQ sales licence. I got that back many moons ago. I did work in a boutique, high-end real estate office. We sold multi-million dollar beachfront and waterfront property here on the Sunshine Coast.

Kylie Davis:

Nice.

Brad Filliponi:

Elite Lifestyle Properties, they still operate today.

Kylie Davis:

Quick shout out.

Brad Filliponi:

Yeah. I branched out and I did photography at TAFE, really followed that photography path, you'd say. Loved real estate, always have, and really just tied the two together. And literally, I've been shooting real estate since film cameras, so there's not a lot of property photographers that can claim that.

Kylie Davis:

Yeah. So you remember getting your photos developed and how did that used to go?

Brad Filliponi:

A 100%. So when I first started out, I remember there was professionals up this way. I used to take photos for them, film camera. You never really knew what you were taking photos of or you did, but you couldn't see on the screen like you can today. So it was really the big time when you got your photos processed, you really never do how they going to turn out, to be quite honest. I used to always remember just sorting through the pile as soon as I'd get there and go, "That's a good one, that's a bad one. There's another bad one. That one I could probably give to them." So depending on the photo shoot and how it was shot, you could have got back maybe five photos or you could have got back 25. It really just depended on how good each image was exposed. And then of course when digital came out, it got a bit easier and a bit easier as time moved on.

Kylie Davis:

So tell us about what made you start up BoxBrownie.

Brad Filliponi:

Great question. I absolutely loved my career as a real estate photographer. I used to shoot up to around between seven and nine properties every day. So I was very highly sought after. Did it for a long lot time.

Kylie Davis:

That's a lot.

Brad Filliponi:

Yeah, yeah. I still remember when I first started shooting our local property week here, the edges were all colour gloss. So maybe three or four pages at the start, maybe probably four at the end, let's call it. The rest was all black and white. So I remember taking photos back then and I've just been doing it such a long time. BoxBrownie concept actually came out of, I needed a career change. I was a bit burnt out. I was doing the same job over and over and over. I felt like I was definitely in the rat race. I wanted to start a family and I was actually looking at going to work over in Perth at the mines with some friends of mine, earn some big money. Obviously could get to switch off when I wasn't at work. And I was really just trying to get my family house paid off a lot quicker. And that was my concept. Back then, my wife said, "Hey, that's a big no." Reason was she didn't want a long distance relationship.

Kylie Davis:

No, fair enough.

Brad Filliponi:

And I remember the first time we met was in New York, I believe, at an Inman conference, I still quite remember it to this day.

Kylie Davis:

Did I give you the lecture?

Brad Filliponi:

And now we travel more than. I'm overseas more than when I'm home. But it's all for a different reasons, it's for a different purpose. And I'm so proud of what we've collectively achieved here at BoxBrownie. We're a self-funded business still to this day, based on the Sunshine Coast when people said we couldn't do it from here, and we're really just trying to do it our way and just treat everyone right.

Kylie Davis:

So how has BoxBrownie changed from when you started? What was it and how has it changed in that time?

Brad Filliponi:

Well, it's funny, I've still got early... These are called wire frames now. I didn't know what they were back then, but I've still got drawings of what I thought the website would look like, and it looks like it does today. It's quite cool. But in a nutshell, what I had imagined is really what you see today. We just wanted a cost effective marketing solution, pay upfront because obviously we don't want to chase global invoices, but we just wanted to make it easy because I physically needed the service myself as a professional photographer. And I thought, "Well, I wonder how many other professionals or real estate agents or photographers, et cetera, may want to use it as well?" And I did some early calculations. And to be honest, I just haven't stopped following my heart. I've just kept going at it.

And what you see today is literally my third time lucky as they call it. I'd built two working prototypes prior to meeting my current business partner. But sometimes I think you need to fall a few times to really succeed and to know how much you really want something.

Kylie Davis:

Yeah. So tell me about your business partner. Shout out to Mel.

Brad Filliponi:

Mel, my work wife or brother from another mother, I guess you'd say. He's amazing. Between the two of us, we're literally yin and yang and you could not be more opposite if you tried.

Kylie Davis:

That's true.

Brad Filliponi:

Of course.

Kylie Davis:

I can verify that.

Brad Filliponi:

But I think when you have the same personalities and you have the same beliefs and you're going towards the same goal. It's been the best relationship ever. I love him to bits, hopefully he says the same thing about me, and between the two of us and the rest of our amazing crew, we're just making this magic happen. And it's super great. We build all the tech here, mainly in Maroochydore here on the Sunshine Coast, which I'm still super proud about. And it's just a lot of fun. Today's a Monday, but it feels like a Friday to me. Every day is Friday. I literally love work and I'm so grateful to be in this position.

Kylie Davis:

So how big is BoxBrownie these days?

Brad Filliponi:

I believe we are the global leader at what we do. We have paying clients in over 110 countries, which is pretty awesome. Our website is translated into six different languages. That would be English, Japanese, Spanish and French. We did have Korean and Portuguese, but we just dropped those recently just to focus energy because I suppose you've only got so much energy. But with those languages, that's 24/7 customer support, live chat, phone call, email, website translation. We have over 200 staff globally in 19 countries last I heard and we have over 2,000 editing teams on top of that. So there's a lot of payments that go out monthly to pay our crew. So I guess you'd say mid-size operation, but completely bootstrapped still to this day, which I know is a huge accomplishment and something I'm quite proud of. I've always been a bit of an underdog and we're still just doing our thing that way.

Kylie Davis:

Awesome. And just to be clear, so the BoxBrownie website, as a real estate agent or as any user really, I can upload photos and you guys will edit them and make them look schmick. And what other sorts of things do you do to those photos?

Brad Filliponi:

A 100%. So you can take a photo on your phone, any type of digital camera, you can even have shots taken by professional photographer. We can edit, change, modify those photos for any type of marketing. Let's say you're in Canada, it's snowing, but you want to show what the property's going to look like during the summertime. We can do that. It's called season change, we call it. We have a custom job section for that, but literally we can do anything. You can give us-

Kylie Davis:

You do sunsets and that, don't you?

Brad Filliponi:

A 100%. We can turn photos from daytime to nighttime. We can add in that blue sky on the overcast day. We can remove tenanted clutter from any property photo. We can even add virtual staging, which is our best seller in every country, digital furniture into a vacant space. If you haven't tried it, would love to give you the opportunity.

Kylie Davis:

So Brad, I want to ask a bit more about that because it drives me crazy. And look, I know that there's a million tenants at the moment for every property that's out there. And so no one has to bother doing any kind of marketing for property rentals, but it's always bothered me that property managers just post up empty rooms for property management. If I have say, four photos of a standard apartment and I then virtually stage them, what's the cost of that, to virtually stage four separate rooms?

Brad Filliponi:

Great question. And very, very of the day because we're finding now a lot of property managers are actually using that virtual staging edit, but we're really simple. It doesn't matter how much furniture you place into the shot, it's only $30 including GST here for all of our Australian listeners, which equivalates to US$24 in the USA, of course.

Kylie Davis:

Okay. So it's like 120 bucks to turn marketing for an investment property from meh to, "Oh, awesome, I can see that my queen sized bed would fit in that room."

Brad Filliponi:

Exactly. And that's really-

Kylie Davis:

That's nothing. I'd pay that as a landlord.

Brad Filliponi:

That's just it. And you've got the photos forever. So if you ever go to sell the property later on, these are available to you. Best thing about using our service, we don't own the copyright. We give that all to our clients. We just try and make it as seamless as possible. So you can use them for your property management and if you ever sell, you can use them again later. So even if you half that cost for each occasion, super cost effective. And we still recommend physical staging. You honestly can't be walking into a property and seeing the furniture for real life. But the idea of virtual staging, it can almost become your silent salesman when you're not around. If you've got a vacant room, you might not know what it is, but you add a bed in there and you know straight away it's a bedroom.

And really virtual staging, it's a fraction of the cost, but it still gets you the same impact by getting people to call that phone and view the property. And a really great tip a lot of our clients use when they get to the property and it's vacant, they'll set up a mood board or a vision board and display our virtual staged image and put that on a display easel or a music stand. That way the buyers can almost treat it like a vision board and still imagine the furniture and the property.

Kylie Davis:

Okay, that makes sense. Yeah, that sounds like a good idea because that way you're not, "Look, we advertised it with photos, but the property's now empty. But here's what it looked like." I guess you're not trying to trick anyone.

Brad Filliponi:

Exactly.

Kylie Davis:

Awesome.

Brad Filliponi:

No, it's all about showing best potential, you'd say.

Kylie Davis:

Now, was there a period when BoxBrownie was also the Uber for photographers? Are you guys still doing that or not?

Brad Filliponi:

Yeah, no. Look, we did have that. We set up the Uber of real estate photography. There's plenty of companies out there still doing it like Snap is one of them and there's many others around the world. We decided to pull back on that. A, it was taking a lot of my focus. I was managing around 300 photographers while we were probably doing 300 trade shows a year within reason. And we just ran out of time and resources. So we just went back to more of our core business, which is just editing people's photos and making them look fantastic.

Kylie Davis:

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Dynamic Methods is also proud to host quality integrations with some of the Proptech industry's most powerful technologies such as DocuSign, Secure Exchange, Equifax, and more. Putting everything you need to get forms and contracts filled in, signed, verified, and exchanged into one easy platform. So if you're ready to ditch the pen and paper, make your agency look more efficient, head to dynamicmethods.com.au/partners to learn more.

Though up until now, it's relied on people to come to your website and upload their shots, tell us about this new development or this new thing that you're launching in January.

Brad Filliponi:

Yes. I love how you tiptoed around that, but I can tell all the viewers very, very excited to tell that. We have an iPhone app coming out, Kylie. It's revolutionary. I believe it's a world first. If not, it would be one of the world firsts. It pretty much activates your iPhone and turns into a DSLR style camera. A DSLR camera is pretty much the same camera your photographer will be using. And what it does is it brackets or it does HDR photography. And to all the viewers out there. In a nutshell, it means when you take a photo inside on a tripod exactly the same way a pro photographer does, you can clearly see that view outside. That could be a canal, that could be a lake, that could be mountains or forestry, anything like that. That is really what distinguishes a pro photographer from an amateur photographer, is being able to balance that light in any conditions and clearly see outside the window. And that's exactly what our app does.

What it also does is it talks to our photo editing business, which is Boxbrownie.com. And of course we can remove items, we can add in furniture, virtual staging, straight off your phone, and also do that beautiful day to dusk, which is our twilight conversion. The app is called SnapSnapSnap, all one word. Please download it from the App Store. If you listen right to the end, I may have a code word for you for free trials. But apart from that, I'm a photographer, I've been one my whole life. It's literally scary how good the quality is. Sony released a statement about four months ago saying in three years, they believe that DSLR will be dead. And if Sony's releasing that, you know Sony makes cameras for phones, they know what's coming. I can already see what's coming. Since the iPhone 11 released with the wide angle lens, that's really what activated it for me.

We have a lot of other things coming in our app as well. So the photo in the camera app is just the start. So stay tuned. But I believe every property manager, every commercial agent should be on this app as a minimum for their marketing. And also all your residential sales agents and realtors out there, this can be a great app for pre-listing photos as well. You can snap a couple off, have them submitted straight away, get them back literally overnight. You've probably got your photographer booked in a couple of days and you've got some fresh and beautiful looking shots ready just for pre-listing. You can get those out to people and you might even be able to sell it before the photographer makes it. It is that good, I promise.

Kylie Davis:

Awesome, awesome. And look, the iPhone is the preferred mobile or the preferred cell phone of the majority of real estate agents easily. I can see that through my Spotify numbers.

Brad Filliponi:

There you go. Well, I think the best camera is the one you've always got on you and that's literally a smartphone. And when Sony have bold claims like that, there's been other very big claims from other big camera manufacturers. I'm 80% sure that in the next few years, 80% of agents will be using their phone for most of their marketing. The technology's already there. We're seeing the trends and it's just too easy not to do it. It really is. By the time you've snapped, snapped, snapped a few shots off, it's crazy how quick it is. By the time you've done them, you hit submit, the photos are uploaded onto the Boxbrownie.com platform by the time you've even left the front door and they're in motion, they're getting edited. You'll have them back in a guaranteed turnaround time. For me as a photographer my whole life, how easy it is. It just blows me away. It really does.

Kylie Davis:

Yeah, awesome. So once they come back, do they come back to your email or do they come back on your phone or a notification or all of the above?

Brad Filliponi:

All the above.

Kylie Davis:

Oh, awesome.

Brad Filliponi:

Love the question. So for everyone out there listening, if you do want to trial it, it's best to have a Boxbrownie.com account first. Yep. Then download SnapSnapSnap. Use the exact same login and email password as your BoxBrownie account on the SnapSnapSnap app and everything just links automatically. It's super seamless.

Kylie Davis:

Awesome, awesome. So Brad, what's been the biggest challenge in getting this out? Tell us about how long has it taken to build this out?

Brad Filliponi:

We've been playing on this app the last year or two, I'd say. Let's even call it year and a half. It's been quite difficult for us to get the quality we want. And obviously the iPhone has certain algorithms in their cameras and all that fun jazz. But I leave that up to the beautiful Malcolm. Melvyn's got it sorted. It just blows me away. I've got these great brackets. So the camera will actually take seven brackets and that's why we recommend a tripod. I'll give you those for the show notes as well. The recommendations for equipment. You can use anything.

Kylie Davis:

So you put your phone on a tripod?

Brad Filliponi:

Yes, yes.

Kylie Davis:

Not just walk around and shoot like a crazy woman.

Brad Filliponi:

We have people who do that too. But there's two versions. So you can have a handheld version, which just takes the one shot. But as standard, we highly recommend a tripod and those little clamps that almost hold your phone on a tripod. There's plenty out there, you can use just about any one you like. But that keeps your smartphone steady and holding it in place. You literally hit the button. It takes seven shots. Once you finish with that, you submit it and those seven brackets almost become one magazine print ready image. And that's how it works. Pretty much the brackets mean different photos with different lighting from dark to light and we blend them all together, if that makes some sense.

Kylie Davis:

Oh, okay. Because look, I'm not an Apple girl, I'm a Google girl, I'm afraid. So I'm a Pixel girl. And it's got the rapid fire shots and I never really understood what that was.

Brad Filliponi:

And just so everyone knows, we do have an Android version coming in the early next year. It is easier just to build one first and then replicate it, I've been told.

Kylie Davis:

Yeah, no, no, I've heard that from tech people myself. Yeah, true, true. So getting it right has been the biggest challenge. What do you wish you knew now before you started? Is there any lessons that you've taken out of it?

Brad Filliponi:

No, that you just got to be patient and tech takes time.

Kylie Davis:

It does.

Brad Filliponi:

It always takes longer than what you think it's going to take. So I'm a pretty patient man, I've waited a long time for this. So I'm actually really thrilled to be able to sell it and literally just go kick some doors down and just show people how good it is. It really just speaks for itself. I just can't wait to show more people, to be honest.

Kylie Davis:

What do you think's going to happen to the real estate photography industry?

Brad Filliponi:

They will be a bit worried.

Kylie Davis:

You're disrupting them.

Brad Filliponi:

Yes, my plates on my car say disruptor, that's me. So no, literally they have nothing to worry about. I think they will think they have something to fear. I still get my old clients ring me out of a joke sometimes, "Brad, can you still come take some photos for me?" I think a good photographer is always sought after. This app is just picking up the scraps, to be honest. And I mean that in the nicest way possible where a photographer probably wasn't going to get the job anyway. Property management, there's not a lot of marketing dollars there. Same with commercial. They can get a bit left out. This app for $2 a photo, you can get magazine quality professional shots. So yeah, I think that there's room for everyone. I think when you're a great photographer, people are buying you and your images, they're not buying the tech. So a lot of the time, you are representing the agent in that transaction as well. So them inviting you to the photo shoot, you're another tool in the agent's tool belt is what I'm trying to say.

Kylie Davis:

A good photographer's part of your staging team, aren't they? Because I remember when we sold our house in Balmain a 100 years ago, but the photographer came and he said, "Have got a piece of newspaper or some paper?" And he twisted it up and threw it into the fireplace, lit it on fire, and quickly took some photos so that the fire looked like it had been going for... The shots looked beautiful.

Brad Filliponi:

And you know what, I used to do that back in the day. I still remember it now. I'd actually take newspapers with me on photo shoots because not all clients had newspaper just for that exact reason because Photoshop wasn't as good back then or maybe my skills weren't, and we actually lit real fires and staged the shot and quickly took the shot. These are all the things that we can now do digitally.

Kylie Davis:

Yes. This was quite a while ago. Oh my goodness, this is like 2000 or something like that.

Brad Filliponi:

So good.

Kylie Davis:

And I think what you guys are doing is, like you said, the best camera is the one that you've got on you. It's expanding your opportunity to capture photos and to display things visually, isn't it? And I think I remember when I was at HomePrezzo, our brains recognise imagery in a 10th of a 10th second before rather than words. So it is so powerful, the ability to tell a good story by showing someone a shot that captures everything.

Brad Filliponi:

And I think a photos says a 1,000 words. We've all heard that term. I believe it's 86% of buyers want to view photos. It's the top tier, the National Association of Realtors, they have statistics saying, people want to see photos. It's still the top photos, floor plan, virtual tours and neighbourhood information, that's really what people want to see. Videos were actually right down the bottom, believe it or not. But video is still great too. I think it's all the little 1%s that add up. And with Boxbrownie.com, we pretty much do what your real estate photographer does. If you want to learn how to shoot your own 360 virtual tours, we can help you. If you want to market something off the plan that's not even constructed yet, we can do that for you. And we can even create renders or even a 360 walkthrough as well of that property.

We can show you how to do floor plans. Of course we can teach you how to take your own photos or how to edit them even better from your pro photographer. I think marketing is still so simple in property. It's just doing those simple things right and capturing those leads and then just doing your job as a salesman from there afterwards.

Kylie Davis:

Do you run a proptech business or are you the founder of a proptech? Make sure you join the Proptech Association of Australia. It's Australia's new, not-for-profit association, made up of tech people who are passionate about the property industry and committed to improving experiences in how we buy, sell, rent, manage, build and finance property. Joining will give you access to events and networks across Australia and globally to help you promote and grow your business. Go to Proptechassociation.com.au and follow the prompts to join.

So Brad, what do you see coming down the pipe in this space? So obviously the photography's getting better and better inside our phones. What do you think you see as coming next in real estate photography and in photography generally?

Brad Filliponi:

I can say it, but I probably shouldn't. But I honestly think some of the big plans I have here at the organisation, I honestly believe that our apps out there will become the real estate photographer in your pocket. The apps can do everything. To give you an idea, you can scan a room using the LIDAR scanners on your iPhone now and create a floor plan. Maybe we'll do that one day or even your phone right now by using Google Maps, you can create a 360 photo and you can create a virtual tour using BoxBrownie's tour creator. You can do that right now. You can do copywriting off your phone. You can do so many things, you can fly drone off your phone. I honestly feel that the iPad and smartphones, they're going to be doing so much in the near future. These are the personal computers we always have on us and they're just getting more powerful with every release.

And I think as soon as I saw that LIDAR scanner, I was like, "Wow." It just blew my mind. It actually feels like you're in the metaverse and you're scanning this room and it almost looks like a Matterport Dollhouse 360 degree floor plan when you finish with it and it's just taken off your phone. Anybody can do this. It's just remarkable, it really is. That's where I feel it's going to go. Who knows, we might even be able to book a button one day and a drone flies out and does all this for you. Who knows? It's actually crazy to think. I think technology just grows so quickly year after year. So that's my ink inkling over the next couple of years. But who knows with tech? It can change so quick.