The Last Word: Reinvent Your Business and Embrace E-Commerce

The Last Word: Reinvent Your Business and Embrace E-Commerce

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Do you remember the old days of “2nd set free” and other traditional ways to promote your retail photo lab? Today, with film fully transitioned to digital and photo-sharing apps replacing our once sturdy film developing business, those with the conviction to forge forward recognize these three marketing strategies.

1) Always be reinventing your business.
2) Always be reading about new technologies and following photo trends.
3) Always be looking for the next new, new thing.

Imaging trends like the vastly popular “Throwback Thursday” social media event, where millions of people post nostalgic photos from yesteryear, and photo-sharing apps are exploding. These start-up companies are absent from our storied past. These next new, new services are scoring stratospheric valuations, often without revenues or a plan to earn a dollar. Seemingly, nothing makes sense any longer.

Many friends in the photo-imaging industry have shuttered their life investments or worse, lost their passion. We need to repossess our goals and contemplate how to reignite and rekindle the fervency and fun that drove us into this business. More people are talking about and using photography—and in new ways than ever before.

Dream big. During the darkest days for retail photo labs, we had a single employee and barely kept the lights on. But after rebranding and fully reinventing the business, while continuing to pursue a passion and love of photography, ScanMyPhotos.com was born. Today, we operate out of a 6,000-square-foot corporate headquarters, with 24 employees in two shifts, from 5:30 a.m.–9:30 p.m., and we hold regular meetings to conquer the next new business.

What can you learn from our success? Follow these three strategies:
1) Support our industry and also attend trade shows outside your comfort zone in areas vertical to your business to identify how you can create something 10 times better.
2) Launch new vertical businesses (see below).
3) It is all about your employees; they are your business and they deserve 100% paid medical coverage, 401-K retirement plans and generous respect. Trust them.

ScanMyPhotos.com Enterprise for Business Bulk Photo Scanning
Does your business only promote itself in the business to consumer (B2C) marketplace? If so, consider doubling sales. My favorite business role model was the late Steve Ross, who created the old Warner Communications (Time Warner). His first enterprise was marrying rich. The father of Ross’s wife, as the story goes, owned a limousine service. Nothing unique there, and it was highly competitive. Ross told his father-in-law that he could double sales literally overnight. See, the limos were only used in the daytime for funerals and events, but they were parked in the evening. He promoted the service to celebrities for glamorous evening shuttles to events, and the rest is history. Have you looked into expanding your business from the B2C marketplace to reach new businesses? A growing trend is the business to business (B2B) market.

Having professionally digitized nearly a quarter-billion images, ScanMyPhotos.com launched a new “Enterprise for Business” high-volume, commercial scanning service for large organizations—and yes, for celebrities and movie studios, too.

What is the best way to promote a new business? Use social media. Contact your customers. Use wire services like PRWeb or Business Wire to shout your message to the world. You must have an e-commerce presence today. Your market therefore is national, and in some cases, international. ScanMyPhotos.com International was launched to reach a global market, and last summer we shared how to engage customers worldwide when I addressed the Internet Retailer Conference and Expo (IRCE) in Chicago.

To share an example of how to promote your new enterprise, here is an excerpt from the ScanMyPhotos.com Business Wire release.

“ScanMyPhotos.com, the e-commerce photo-scanning service which digitally preserved nearly a quarter-billion family photo memories, launched “ScanMyPhotos.com Enterprise for Business” today to professionally scan large-volume commercial orders.

“Large organizations, from the entertainment industry, motion picture studios, celebrities, government municipalities, multinational businesses and academic institutions with vast quantities of photographs, 35mm slides and film negatives now have an easy way for digital archiving with a commitment to protecting their privacy.

“ScanMyPhotos.com scans millions of photos in days with the identical, highly regarded services afforded to individuals and families. Its photo digitization services have been praised by major media, including the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Shutterbug magazine and scores of other social media and television news outlets.”

Catch your breath, dream again and reinvent your business as you grow it into a new industry leader.

With nearly 25 years in the photo-imaging industry, Mitch Goldstone is president and CEO of ScanMyPhotos.com and is regularly sought out as an industry expert by the media. Originally named 30 Minute Photos Etc., ScanMyPhotos.com started out in 1990 as a boutique retail photo center in Irvine, California.

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