Pephoto Blog

A couple of interesting notes for this past week. We will be releasing the PEPhoto ROES this week. One thing customers will be very happy with ROES aside from the easy user-interface and desktop solution system is our revamped SHIPPING SYSTEM. One of the primary flaws with our competitors softwares is that shipping prices were either contingent on the # of prints ordered or the dollar value of your order. For example, other online photo printing companies have minimum shipping rates of $5 for a smaller order. So one can literally order just five 4×6 and then get hit with a $5 shipping rate. This doesn’t benefit the customer (and not the vendor either).

The new PEPhoto ROES solution will be charging by points system, which is based on the size and weight of the photo. This allows us to keep your shipping costs as low as possible and now our shipping rates start at just $1.99 for an order. You can check out our new shipping rates at http://www.pephoto.com/peroes_shipping.php.

The other piece of news is that Kodak has sent out a notice to its paper purchasers of a price increase. This has been rolled out and now we received notice as well (Click Here). For the majority of other photo labs, the price increase is around 12%. Our price increase is in the mid-single digits because we opt to take the shipping costs on our own since our volume shipments comes in trucks rather than single skid amounts. For now, we are keeping prices the same for our customers as we increased production efficiencies for our lab facility.

This past week, our marketing department is rolling out the new PEPhoto logo. The new design takes the photo scenery icon with our new font PEphoto text and combines it with red coloring. We’re excited about the new design because it communicates a digital image back to its basic roots. Our new packaging, web design, and retail stores will be unveiling the new PEphoto logo shortly. In addition, our future trade shows will also begin branding off the new logo design.

We are finally excited to launch our Remote Order Entry Solution (ROES) photo solution for all Best Color Photo customers. The ROES solution is presented by PEPhoto’s subsidiary, Best Color Photo Pro. The new solution boasts incredible processing power and is meant for massive photo ordering and file transfer.

• Desktop Solution, hassle-free of web browsers
• Custom image cropping and editing functions
• Flexible order transfer process: Send orders NOW or schedule transfers for a separate time
• Hundreds of templates for Greeting Cards and Collages
• Free shipping over $5 orders (introductory special) 
• Transfer thousands of images for orders seamlessly

With that said, the Best Color ROES uses ONLY Kodak Endura Professional Paper for finishing and is the best solution for professionals and photo enthusiasts. We are now quickly working on a PEPhoto ROES version which will be catered to the normal consumer photo market. The expectation is 2-3 weeks or sometime in mid-August to get the solution launched.

Our family took even more than that. With several family vacations and two pre-teens who aspire to be photo journalists, our family took several thousand photos in 2007!

When it comes to printing those photos we have more choices than ever before. From full service counters and self-service kiosks in stores to online services such as Snapfish as well as home printers we have more ways than ever to turn those digital photos into printed photos. But despite all these choices, most of us still print our photos at home. Why?

First of all, we can print great quality photos at home. Advances in printing technology and the affordability of home printers means the quality of the photos we can print at home rivals the quality of traditional in-store photo processing, and in many cases exceeds traditional photos when it comes to fade resistance.

Second, printing at home offers a number of unique benefits that other printing choices can’t deliver:

1. Printing at home gives us immediate results. Most of us print photos just after an important event – a birthday, graduation or family vacation and we want to see or share our memories right away. Many of our friends are including photos from parties in thank-you notes as mementos of the occasion. Printing at home allows us to quickly share our photos with family and friends, or put them in a scrapbook, while our memories are still fresh.

2. Printing at home is easy. Cameras, memory cards, docking stations and software have all become easier to use so that printing at home can be simpler and much faster than waiting in line at the photo counter or for the mail.

3. We can be more creative when we print at home. With easy to use photo software we can crop to the size we want, touch up those red-eyes, or choose different sizes – from wallet-size to letter-size for standard printers – to print photos exactly the way we want them, not the way a store has decided to give them to us. And, we can do in this in the privacy of our own homes without people watching over our shoulders at an in-store kiosk.

4. We can save money by printing at home. After taking everything in account, most of us see home photo printing as the most affordable option overall. In store printing may offer some of the lowest prices for 4×6 photo prints but you need to consider the hidden costs of driving to the store and waiting in line. Online services may advertise low prices, but other costs like shipping and fees for small or rush orders and minimum print quantities could result in higher prices than you expect.

And, printing at home is probably the lowest cost option for larger prints, like 5×7 and 8×10 sizes. A side by side comparison shows the prices you pay for a photo print can really vary. While printing at home may cost a bit more for 4×6- photos, it is clearly the lowest cost choice for printing 5×7 and 8×10/letter size prints. Since more of us are printing these larger size photos than ever before, it makes sense that most people choose to print them at home and save.

We are happy to announce the launch of our new photobook creation software website, PEPhotobooks.com. After months of development with Digi-Labs Inc, we had a successful release of the software to our general public and professional photographers within the industry. Our clients have complimented on ease of use for free download software. The big advantage for the new PEPhotobooks Digilabs solution is that it is made by photobook creators for photobook enthusiasts.

Some advantages of PEPhotobooks:

• Lowest prices online for each respective photobook size
• Superior photobook finishing powered by HP Indigo technology
• Select from dozens of templates for all occassions, including wedding albums, baby albums, family vacations, memory books, high school scrapbooks, college graduation gifts, etc.
• Easy user-interface that is a DESKTOP software, therefore avoiding the flaws and slow speed of web-based browser applications

The reason for introducing Digilabs solution is for the offline use and editing capabilities for users. Customers have total control as to how they want their photobook to look AND FEEL. The photobook creator can either provide you a pre-made template or you can create your own design for the photobook.

We are going to have some workshops on some of the cool tricks you can use for the photobook application shortly. In the meantime, you can review the help section here to get started on the new product.

“(AP) - AOL is shutting three data-storage services, including one of the Internet’s earliest photo-sharing sites, as it seeks to cut costs and focus resources on its advertising opportunities.

AOL Pictures, the year-old media-sharing site BlueString and the online backup service Xdrive will likely shut down by year’s end, though the company is looking to sell at least Xdrive, which AOL bought in 2005 for an undisclosed fee.”

Click here for Link

The news is getting tougher for photo-sharing websites as companies are either merging or being shut down.

Finally, we have begun the final testing phases for the ROES (Remote Order Entry System) for professional photographers. The development has taken several months but we are excited to get desktop solution for our pro-clientale that allows faster uploading than the web-based solutions.

The client is the application that your customers will use to create their orders and send them directly to our lab. The client runs on Windows PC or Mac. The ROES system offers our lab the ability to capture pro-sumer and consumer business via a set of simplified ROES Client interfaces - an application version, a browser-based version and a kiosk version for your storefront or use at a remote location.

Our testing link is at http://www.softworksroes.com/ROES/labs/BestColorTest/. Feel free to test out the software (you can checkout using the third payment method of Lab Account for the testing process) and email us at contacts@pephoto.com for any comments. We hope to finish testing soon and launch before the end of July for the ROES solution.

Click here to view the presentation

Attached are some notes pointing out the new dynamics to the professional pictures end-consumer market. The powerpoint presentation was presented at Kodak’s DP2 workshop two weeks ago in Rochester and it points out the where the consumer market is going right now and what the needs will be for high-quality professional digital prints.

The market for professional prints is expanding to the “special experience” moments. Some examples include personal limits or experiences in feeling,  unusual experiences, hands-on or action moments, and focus on connected activities. Read the presentation to understand more.

We are all getting things ready for the big July 4th rush. The summer is the photo industries busiest season and this year the pattern has been more towards scrapbooks, photobooks, and enlargement posters.

Apparently, here is the scoop with Rocketlife. Their current offering is going to be online based and they were so kind to furnish me with a list of there clients, which include: www.hitephoto.com, www.fromex.com, www.snapphoto.com, www.pictureslide.com, and www.pephoto.ca.

When I saw the list, I was completely floored at the last example. Someone apparently grew slick enough to grab the www.pephoto.ca website name. But when I check the website, I find out it belongs to Photo Express  in Vancouver, Canada. So innocently enough, we’re just both companies with similar names and websites.

Back to Rocketlife, I tested their online software and realized that it has NO FLOW. The software looks good but the ease-of-use and ordering system has absolutely no flow. To move back and forth between the pages is a hassle and apparently. The software is cumbersome and just not what was presented at PMA 2008.

After our debrief this week, here is where the schedule is going. Best Color Photo will be PEPhoto professional partner and we will be making the announcement next week, followed by the proper marketing and media exposure.

PEPhotobooks is our new Photobooks creative solution and the website is 95% done with some final tweaking to the web content and shopping cart. PEPhotobooks will utilize the Digi-Labs technology for photobook editing.

While BestColorPhoto.com will launch next week, it will have two software options for customers: Lifepics and the desktop photo software ROES. ROES is the preferred photo ordering software for all Professional Photographers due to its ease of use in professional editing as well as ability to handle bulk orders. ROES has a launch date of July 20th.

In our meeting with IT, we discussed the need to have everything out for July 25th. This will allow two weeks for any maintenance and support before we begin our internal automation project. We have a massive project to automate our internal printing processes because of the various software solutions we have operating from all our different photo print providers (Lifepics, ROES, Lucidiom, etc).

Wishing everyone a Happy July 4th.

We just concluded a meeting with our IT team and conference call with Rocketlife today. We signed our agreement with Visan over three months ago and the Rocketlife solution has still not be delivered or developed yet. What I am about to write is a very frank assessment behind the hype over Visan’s supposedly DIMA Award-Winning Software. In my opinion, Rocketlife is a big disappointment.

Here is a summary of problems with the Rocketlife Photo Technology Solution (and believe me, some of these problems are big):

1. No ability to select Glossy or Matte

2. Unable to add any photo sizes, we can only select the sizes Rocketlife provides and we have to provide at least 85% of the products that Rocketlife provides. Otherwise, Visan will outsource the product to a third party.

3. No way for resellers to add promotions or special offers by themself

4. No order confirmation page for the current set-up.

5. No ability to offer order pick-up or zip-code locator.

6. Crop Function does not work.

7. No Desktop Version, even though the product was branded as a desktop-version at the 2008 PMA.

I was talking to an industry colleague at Whitech, and this senior executive described the Rocketlife Solution perfectly by saying, “It might look good, but it has absolutely no flow.”

I am still hoping to get our Rocketlife solution complete and thankfully our other two solutions are coming along fine. I asked my contact at Visan one simple question about the Rocketlife Solution, “Does any reseller or web company use your software?” To my knowledge, no one is using Rocketlife’s technology. And I’m thinking to myself, “If no one is using Rocketlife’s technology, why are they getting this publicity for something that doesn’t work?”