San Diego, CA—Taopix Limited has expanded the sales and support structure for its U.S. business, with technical support for the company’s customer base now being provided by the newly established Taopix USA team based in San Diego, California.
The company’s Taopix Photobook is an end-to-end platform designed to enable photo labs and commercial printers to offer digital photo merchandise products to their client bases. The company also noted that its sales reach will now increase via an expanded network of dealer channels and a coast-to-coast direct sales force. Gadi Kovarsky, vice president, Americas, will head up the U.S. operation.
The Taopix Photobook system was developed to enable users to profit from production of digital scrapbooks, proof books, trader cards, calendars, greeting cards, postcards, posters, photographic prints, T-shirts, mouse mats and self-published books. Users can benefit from exclusive control over their business model, including branding, pricing, templates and client page design.
Taopix also promotes several go-to-market strategies to allow customers to target different markets and tailor their products accordingly. The flexibility of the platform means that personalized photo products can be sold—via download or on CD—direct to the consumer, as well as indirectly via a “white label” service to partners who have ready-made customer bases.
Originally developed in 2006 for the British marketplace, Taopix Photobook gained recognition as a trusted solution throughout the European graphic arts markets. The company opened its first international office in Singapore in June 2009, headed by Richard Watson, president (Asia), which was quickly followed by the opening of sales offices worldwide. Today, a global network of 30 distributors has been established to meet the demand for sales and support of the product globally. Taopix employs 28 staff members worldwide, the backbone of which is a development team supported by technical personnel in the UK, Asia and now the USA.
“As traditional photo print volumes and revenues decline, generating revenue from photo merchandise is certainly one way most vendors in the consumer photo market can increase sales,” said James Gray, CEO and founder of Taopix. “Consumers are taking more photos than ever before and still want to do creative things with them, rather than just view them on a PC screen or make traditional prints. Photo merchandise opens up that creative avenue, giving consumers a variety of unique options for output.”
The Taopix Photobook suite is devised of three main modules:
• Taopix Designer. This module is designed to enable print service providers to create a fully customized and branded customer interface that can be delivered as a download and/or on CD. The drag-and-drop software encourages customers to create any photo gift product from their Mac or PC. The admin interface permits features to be turned on and off per application or product, helping beginners and professionals alike to produce photo keepsakes.
• Taopix Web. This shopping module allows customers to choose and pay for their digital creations. Users are provided with a shopping basket with a pricing engine that offers tax, shipping, voucher, discount and per-page pricing options. Customers can also choose preferred payment methods (credit card, account, check, PayPal). Once payment has been made, Taopix Web encrypts the customer file and uploads it securely to the user’s server to be delivered to the production workflow as a print-ready PDF, JPEG or TIFF.
• Taopix Production. This module aids printers and pro labs in managing their photo book businesses within one application. Taopix provides notification of orders and tracks job progress from the initial receipt of the customer file and payment confirmation to printing the final product. Print-ready files are sent to the output device with customizable job tickets, including a barcode for tracking and managing each job. Users can even track jobs that require multiple output devices and follow the complete production process. taopix.com
