Case study · Marquise Jewelry · Beirut · 2020 to today
Before there was an agency, there was Marquise.
A small jewelry shop in the worst year Lebanon had seen in a century. The client we started Good Timbers for, and the one we grew up alongside.
August 2020
The doors were closed for days.
By that summer the lira had lost around eighty percent of its value, on its way past ninety. The World Bank would later call it one of the three worst economic collapses since the 1850s. Then the pandemic closed the shops. Then, on the fourth of August, the port.
- The shopMarquise, a small jewelry house we had bought from as customers, and whose owner had become a friend.
- The yearSales for all of 2020, by August, came to seven thousand dollars.
- The questionWe asked whether digital marketing was on the table. The budget said no, and honestly, it was right.
The bet
So we paid for it ourselves.
Not as an agency. There wasn’t one yet. As two people who believed the shop wasn’t the problem, the silence around it was. We put our own money in to test the idea on a business we cared about.
A digital campaign, built properly
Targeted, measured, adjusted weekly. The fundamentals, before the fundamentals were fashionable.
A modest billboard presence
Enough to be seen in the right streets, not enough to bankrupt anyone.
Professional photography
Studio sessions with models and the pieces themselves. Back then AI didn’t exist for this. It cost what it cost.
Content, every week
A feed that made a small shop look like a house with a point of view.
Enough throttle to keep going. Marquise became our first official client. The owner returned every dollar we had put in, gracefully. And Good Timbers was born.
The photography
Jewelry photography in Lebanon, the way it deserves.
Real studio, real light, real stones. The work that carried the first campaign and set the visual standard the brand still keeps.
Move your cursor across the pieces
The feed
Social media for jewelry, with a voice.
Chapter two · 2024
Then another war, and a different answer.
In 2024 the country was hit again, and so were budgets. We had put AI into our workflow earlier than most, not out of foresight so much as necessity: we needed to keep clients alive on less. For Marquise, production costs fell dramatically. Same eye, same standard, a fraction of the spend. That is how a small brand endures a second storm.
Back then very few had access to this. Today the tools are far better and everyone has them. What doesn’t change is knowing what a beautiful jewelry image looks like before you ask a machine for one.
AI-assisted photography for Marquise Jewelry, 2024 to today
In motion
Scroll sideways · AI-produced video for Marquise Jewelry
For brands like Marquise
Photography at this level, without the studio bill.
If you sell something beautiful and can’t justify a studio day every month, this is what we do now: jewelry and product imagery at this standard, produced with AI by people who spent years lighting the real thing. In days, not weeks. At a fraction of the cost.
Ask about AI photographyDo you offer AI jewelry photography in Lebanon and the Gulf?
Yes. We produce AI-assisted jewelry and product photography and video for brands in Lebanon and across the Gulf, working from your real pieces and your brand’s standard.
How is AI photography different from a studio shoot?
A studio shoot needs a photographer, a model, a set and a day. AI-assisted production starts from your actual products and builds the scene around them. The result is faster and far less expensive; the taste behind it is the same.
Can you handle the whole account, not just images?
That is how we work with Marquise: strategy, content, campaigns, media buying and the imagery, as one team. Ask us about the full scope.
Two crises. One client. Still here.
Marquise is where Good Timbers began. Six years later, we are still in the same room.
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