Taking our lab services on line
At the PMA Fall Imaging Conference in Atlanta,
Brian Noble (Noble's Camera in
Hingham, MA) told us why he offers online photofinishing. He surveyed his
loyal customers - the ones who were continuing to see him day after day -
and found that about 70% of them had already tried online
photofinishing from somebody.
The survey convinced him that he'd better get a share
of that online work for himself. What's good enough for Brian is good enough
for me!
My digital minilab had been in the store, up and
running, for more than 3 months. Our personnel had learned most of its idiosyncrasies.
We were ready to try something new.
Step One - Evaluating the systems
From time to time I'd had customers send me photos by
e-mail. That's strictly a stop-gap measure. It's slow and inexact and
labor-intensive. There are those who can write software. I'm not one of
them, and I'm not a big believer in reinventing the wheel. There are already
several highly developed programs which provide for online photofinishing
solutions.
Some solutions provide for on-line albums and the
storage of customer digital photos. That business model didn't make sense to
me, and I don't want the responsibility of storing other people's photos. In
recent years a lot of web sites which offered free long-term storage of
customer photos have gone out of business, and some customers had been foolish
enough not to keep their image files on their own computers. Such a project
requires huge servers and 24-7 online connections. Not for me.
Requirements:
Here's what I did want:
- A tested system, with a large user base
- Intuitive interface for my customers
- Something that could be customized so that my brand
name is the one consumers see
- Modest hardware requirements
- Strong technical support
- Speedy transfer of orders from customers to my lab
- Compatibility with my existing equipment
- Ease of operation for my staff and for me
- Reasonable up-front costs and low ongoing costs
I queried my fellow dealers who are members of Independent
Photo Imagers to see what they were using. Most were using either
Photogize or Fotowire (now called Silverwire). IPI had established favored
vendor programs with both. After working my way through a couple of sample
orders using each system, and based on my projection of costs over the first
several years, I chose Fotowire. (and yes, you will see inconsistencies in
my use of the two names "Silverwire" and "Fotowire"
throughout this series) Fotowire's software
enables any lab with digital printing capabilities (printing from digital
files onto photographic paper) to accept files over the internet to your lab
with ease. It handles ordering, sizes, resolutions, pricing, invoicing,
credit cards, payment, etc, all in an automatic or semi-automatic manner
depending on which lab equipment you use. This is perfectly suited for
prints for digital camera users. Fotowire does not own or use any processing
facilities of its own. They only act as a conduit to feed digital orders to
their member labs and collect a royalty for the service.
The customer can "find" your lab from either the Fotowire site
itself, from your own website or from software on a floppy or CD that you
can distribute to your own customers.
Next chapter
Our story so far:
|
