The industry is referring to it as the “Legacy Image” market and smart retailers saw it coming and set themselves up for the profit stream that comes along with it quite a while ago. We are talking about all those 35mm prints and slides the Baby Boom generation has lying around their homes in shoeboxes and draws.
This demographic is awakening to the idea of bringing these images back to life to be shared with grandchildren or used as a creative outlet for everything from wall prints to web sites. These folks have stories to tell and family albums to create, and many want to have their images as part of the legacy of their lives they leave behind.
As our columnists George Schaub recently wrote, “One of the challenges when film was king was to get people to remove negatives and slides from their shoebox and make enlargements and reprints, as the markup on that work was excellent and every print larger than 4×6 (or then, 3×5) was gravy. Now, it seems to me, we have a similar challenge, and opportunity, to get those legacy images into another medium. From there, some work will flow to personal desktops, where ink, paper, printers and on-line printing and sharing sites will benefit. But even more could flow into labs and kiosks that make printing from digital files easy for all. The benefit to the user is that they get a “legacy” CD or DVD in the bargain, something their kids can relate to as the proper form an image should take.”
How true this is and as we mentioned earlier, the smart retailers are already doing this. With the right marketing message and a well thought out infrastructure in place, the “old” form of imaging could become new again, and with it more business for everyone.
