As the Weather Heats Up,Your Sales Should Too

As the Weather Heats Up,Your Sales Should Too

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As we dig out of the long, cold winter weather, it's time to think about heating up your aftermarket sales. With millions of affordable DSLR and point-and-shoot cameras in consumer hands, the arrival of warm weather provides retailers a solid opportunity for building additional camera and camera accessory sales. Right now is the time to start planning promotions that can trigger sales of photo enhancement software, lens filter sets, tripods, camera bags, memory cards, printers, albums and more.

Mother's Day, Father's Day, graduation, vacation time and the prime wedding-season are all key photo-taking occasions, as well as important promotional opportunities for retailers.

With family and friends taking more digital pictures than ever before of soccer, baseball games, outings, vacations and the like, there's a fast-growing need that can heat up as the warmer weather approaches for products to protect their investment, and enrich their picture-taking experience. Doing so increases your profitability. Every DSLR camera lens needs a protective filter, such as our Tiffen filters. They are an investment that can pay huge dividends. Not only protection against dirt and scratches, but even with the lens that accidentally gets dropped, it can often be the difference between replacing an expensive optic or simply replacing a filter.

Tiffen offers an array of filter effects to choose from that protect expensive optics or let customers try new and creative effects. Remember all this great equipment needs to be stowed and carried in a protective camera bag. You can find bags that are dependable, durable, functional and stylish for still and video equipment. Our new Ruggedwear line for example offers distinctive styling with a great look that doesn't scream camera bag.

Tripods are absolutely a product category every retailer needs to promote. They let customers capture those great outdoor panoramic scenes or be part of a family portrait. There's nothing more disappointing than not getting that once in a lifetime sunset shot because a tripod (or monopod) was not along for the ride. Tripods, monopods and similar accessories offer quality and dependability, with a wide variety of styles, sizes and features to choose from, as well as extremely attractive price points.

Let's not forget that many of today's DSLRs and point-and-shoot models now offer basic image enhancing capabilities with limited in-camera effects and GPS geo-tagging. These built-in features actually can make it easier to sell more sophisticated software. Once photo enthusiasts experience the fun of using these basic pre-set filter effects, many will want to step up to more comprehensive software systems offering far greater flexibility and a much wider range of creative special effects. As enthusiasts gain an understanding of the creativity that software offers, many will want to explore the possibilities.

As a leading manufacturer of award-winning photographic accessories for over 70 years, Tiffen has followed the trends and created software for professionals and enthusiasts alike. For example, Dfx creative digital effects software is a major technological breakthrough. It allows consumers to experience the incredible range of optical filters digitally emulated as well as a host of great special effects and easy-to-use masking tools. We've even developed products for the novice user including an introductory application which is a fun, easy-to-use software that allows users to just “select, click and apply”—perfect for the point-and-shoot photographer. It comes with a step-by-step, easy-to-follow video tutorial with audio as well.

Whether it's filters, tripods, camera bags, batteries or even software, retailers need to encourage and help teach their customers how to use those great features their cameras and accessories offer. Enabling your customers to be more creative creates more opportunities for profit.

Paying close attention to emerging trends in the digital imaging market is key to understanding—and stocking—products that the consumer will want—and seek out—to enhance their photo or video experience.

Get to know your customers and encourage their desire to be more creative. Offer them incentives to come back to you as the weather warms and picture-taking opportunities increase. It will enrich their picture-taking experience and your bottom line too. As we leave the winter blues, it can help make your spring and summer sales really go green.

Steve Tiffen is President and CEO of The Tiffen Company and also chairs CEA's Digital Imaging Division.

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