The Challenge: outages, rising costs, and a platform that stopped listening
Outdoor Living Today designs and manufactures premium Western Red Cedar outdoor structures — sheds, gazebos, pergolas, playhouses — sold through a nationwide dealer network. Managing creative assets for a business like this means coordinating product photos, videos, renders, ad creative, and approved marketing materials across an internal team, external social media partners, and dozens of dealers who all need reliable access to the right files.
Their previous platform, Air.inc, wasn't holding up. Partial outages were becoming routine. Costs kept climbing. And when the team submitted feature requests, nothing happened.
"We moved to Playbook from Air.inc after dealing with frequent partial outages, rising costs, and a platform that felt increasingly resistant to feature requests and improvements."
- Austin Gray, Marketing Manager
They also evaluated alternatives including Dash, Brandfolder, Box, Aprimo, and Stockpress, but found most of them priced for enterprise accounts that didn't fit a small-to-medium business's needs or budget.
"Some platforms tailor all accounts to enterprise-grade prices, which is not suitable for small to medium-sized businesses — and some of these platforms don't seemingly offer many or any additional features to warrant those exorbitant prices."
Key pain points before Playbook:
- Frequent partial outages disrupting daily workflows across the team
- Rising costs without corresponding improvements or features
- Assets scattered across drives, folders, emails, and teams in multiple locations
- No reliable way to share approved assets with external dealers and partners at scale
The Solution: one hub for the whole operation
Outdoor Living Today migrated their entire 1TB library — 33,000+ assets — out of Air and into Playbook. The onboarding process was the opposite of what they feared.
"They made onboarding and migrating all of our assets out of Air and into Playbook essentially stress-free, which was a huge relief for our team."
Today, Playbook runs every part of their asset operation:
- Centralized storage for all company photos, videos, product renders, and ad creative — replacing scattered drives and inboxes with one organized visual workspace
- Website content hosting directly from Playbook, keeping approved files accessible and up to date
- Dealer network access via secure share links, so partners can download approved assets without needing accounts or causing version confusion
- External partner collaboration with social media managers and agencies who upload and approve content inside the platform
- Internal team collaboration for daily creative workflows — ad creative, product renders, campaign files
- Team onboarding — new hires get access to everything they need from day one, all in one place
Impact: stability, value, and every day usability
For Outdoor Living Today, the switch came down to three priorities: stability, value, and responsiveness. Playbook delivered on all three.
"The difference in value has been substantial. Playbook offers an incredible balance of functionality, stability, and affordability, especially for companies managing large amounts of creative and marketing assets."
A platform that just works
After dealing with Air's recurring outages, reliability became non-negotiable. Playbook's visual storage gave the team a stable, fast foundation they could depend on daily internally and with external partners.
"The platform is fluid, easy to work within, and for the most part it simply works — which is exactly what you want from a DAM platform. Our team uses it every single day."
Seamless dealer and partner access
One of Outdoor Living Today's core use cases is getting approved assets to their dealer network quickly and cleanly. With Playbook's guest sharing and secure links, dealers can access the files they need without friction — no accounts required, no version confusion.
A team that responds
The difference in customer support wasn't subtle. Feature requests that went nowhere on Air were actively addressed on Playbook.
"The Playbook team has been highly receptive to feedback, quick to answer questions, and willing to implement feature requests. Since we joined, the platform has continued to evolve with meaningful updates and new features."
Pricing that makes sense for all team sizes
Outdoor Living Today didn't need enterprise pricing for enterprise problems they didn't have. Playbook's pricing fit their scale and gave them more functionality than platforms charging twice as much.
Looking ahead
For a growing product brand managing creative assets across internal teams, external agencies, and a dealer network, that kind of confidence in your infrastructure matters. Playbook is now the operational backbone of everything Outdoor Living Today publishes, shares, and sells.
"As long as Playbook continues improving the platform while maintaining its current value proposition, we honestly don't see another DAM option in the market that competes at the same level for the price."
👉 Ready to give your team the same advantage? Schedule a demo with Playbook today.