Online print lab and marketing: interested ?

[Henry Ambrose]

Jack,

For what its worth, here's what my lab (Chromatics in Nashville, TN) does:

http://chromatics.com/Serv-PhotoPrints.htm

You can see pricing by scrolling down.

I can FileFlow them a file pretty easy and its ready in short order. Their pricing is somewhat higher than what you are writing about but not much. Their profiles are dead on. I get what I want pretty much first try. But I also don't use them so much since I have a 24" printer.

I did just do a couple of big 40"x40" prints for a client to hang in a public building. They were sent on Tuesday then printed and delivered by courier on Thursday while I was out of town. None of this was real cheap, but the service was available to me.

I like your idea and I think it might fly but mostly in places where there's not a strong local lab. I wonder how many people are under-served these days with labs bonking out left and right? I suspect there's quite a few. Which may be what got you thinking this way, I dunno.

[QT Luong]

Personally, I prefer to print myself so that I can inspect, reprint immediatly several times if necessary, and sign the print, but since you asked, could you explain what would the differences be between your proposed service and, let say pictopia.com (which is only one of the companies in the online-printing space) ?

As for Frank's comment, I am not sure why your technology costs would be low if you build a world-class site.

[Frank Petronio]

Well not "low" but since expected behaviours have already been well figured out on the big stock websites, there is a model to work from.

From my experience most of the website development time and money gets spent on the decisions, mistakes, and revisions. If you can steal the proven models from Getty and write a really defined specification of work, then you can get very competitive bids.

And stealing from Getty? Please, go for it

[Henry Ambrose]

OK just to be devil's advocate:

http://tinyurl.com/2gb6fm

Why would folks looking for cheap art come to JacksPictureJoint.com?

Art.com - it already exists, much to the dismay of anyone who thinks they're gonna sell posters.

[QT Luong]

The proven models from Getty work well only for a corporation with Getty's size and budget. If a small company tries to emulate the core of them, I very doubt they would be successful. For instance, Getty doesn't do SEO, as they have other means to reach creatives. Try to do the same with a budget of "just" a few millions, and see if this works.

[Greg Lockrey]

Jack, I am speaking from the viewpoint of being in the custom printing business already. Making prints that satisfy yourself (and I know your standards are very high) is a whole different ballgame when you have to deal with a client's idea of what they think they are looking for. When doing custom printing, I find that my clients like to be part of the process until they are comfortable that I get their view. You are going to look at a lot of images that need fixing, but it's theirs. Now, admittedly I have a cheap website that has links to send full size files to me to be printed and after five years plus on the web, I can count on one hand the number of clients that bothered to use the feature. Large files take a long time to send. Another issue is what they see on their monitor isn't necessarily going to match yours....that alone is a problem. Getting into custom printing is very rewarding and you get to meet a lot of neat people, but I wouldn't quit your day job if the plan is web based. JMHO

[Jack Flesher]

Thank you all for your responses so far. It is clear I need to clarify a few things though

1) Let me be perfectly clear, I am *NOT* going to be doing the printing myself! We have already contracted with existing custom labs (yes, ones you've heard of) to fulfill the print orders, ditto custom framing shops. Companies like Chromatics give us better pricing due to the net volume we supply, that's how we get good prices to our members.

2) I reiterate, we are offering a total, turn-key, e-commerce enabled website for our members. This is in addition to the order fulfillment feature and in addition to marketing their work to potential COMMERCIAL art buyers. The fact this is all integrated into a one-stop shop for the artist is what makes it somewhat unique.

3) There are two distinct types of art sales -- collectible and decorative. The artist selling collectible art is going to want to personally inspect and hand-sign each and every print they sell, whereas decorative art may be sold without that level of artist interaction, though it certainly can be. If you sell collectible art, you still might want to use our printing services and possibly mounting and matting services, but it is unlikely you would use our framing partners since you would want to inspect and sign the print before it was framed and delivered. The commercial buyers we are promoting artist's work to might want 50 copies of a single image to be part of the collective body of work that decorates say a new 1000-room hotel in Las Vegas. This type of work is usually sold at lower prices than collectible art, usually is not limited to a specific edition and it is unlikely an artist would feel the need to touch every piece before cashing the check. Obviously, an Artist may sell both types of work and our system would support both or either to varying dgrees.

4) Lastly, our fulfillment services might be useful even if you have an Epson 9800 sitting next to your desk. For example, I have a friend who has been asked to produce 25 images of specific size for a gallery show. He has an Epson large format printer, but is outsourcing this particular print job due to personal time constraints.

Hope all this clarifies,

[Edwin Beckenbach]

One thing I don't get...are you going to market the work of every Tom, Dick and Harry who wants to throw together a web gallery a get a few prints made? If the marketing angle is the hook, what do you do when you get flooded with unmarketable products by clients with unrealistic expectations? Photographers often have an overvalued impression of their own work. I know I do

It just seems that you would want to throw a wide net for the printing end of things but on the other hand be very discriminating for commercial marketing purposes.

[Jack Flesher]

are you going to market the work of every Tom, Dick and Harry who wants to throw together a web gallery a get a few prints made?

The simple answer is the work will be part of the searchable database for buyers based on key words the artist attaches to the images. Ironically, in decorative art sales, the key buying factors are often only a very general subject matter (ie; ocean, flowers, etc) but something with specific color tones (ie; pastel blue, red-orange or bright yellow).

[Greg Lockrey]

This sounds very similar to what "American Frame" has at their website.