Photo Puppy Greeting Card Templates are economical
alternative to lab makers' limited selection
Chris Lydle, editor
Owners of digital labs - Noritsu, Agfa, Fuji Frontier,
Konica and the like - soon discover that conventional developing and
printing is just the smallest part of their business. The real profit
potential comes from the exciting ancillary services you can now offer, and
photo greeting cards and announcements are the cream of the crop.
 Less
time consuming than d&p, greeting card orders generally retail for at
least 3 times as much as a 24-exposure roll. In addition to commercially
available design templates, some lab operators have experimented with making
their own. They quickly realize how difficult it is, but at least one has
done such a great job that he's shared his designs with others. (That's one
of his wackier designs to the right)
Jim Schwarzbach,
owner of Jim's Photo Lab in El Paso, knows how to get the most out of his
digital lab. Here's his story:
"It all began in 2000, when we paid Noritsu two or three hundred
dollars for 14 Holiday Greeting Card designs. Nine of them were
horizontal and five of them were vertical. But they were the
best looking designs you had ever seen. Sales went through the roof
and they were so much easier to print than in the old days of lithos and
Kroy typesetting machines.
"The number one drawback was every third customer seemed to want
to put their horizontal image into a vertical card or vice-versa.
The second drawback was that some people wanted those ugly litho designs,
they liked the "plain" look.
"So we did what anybody would do, we complained via email to
Noritsu and Kodak that there weren't enough designs and that each design
needed a horizontal and a vertical permutation. After the 2000
Holiday season, we promptly forgot all about our complaints. We
owned a copy of Template Generator software at the time… An idea
was born.
"Why don't we make a set of 100 greeting cards, each in a vertical
and a horizontal format? Better designs, more choices and best of
all, a great price. K&N were charging about $20.00 each,
Phototidings was charging about $30.00 each - we were going to make the
set of 100 for $500.00. That's only $5.00 per design or $2.50
per card! (editor's note: keep reading, that's not the price you'll
have to pay!)
"Then my marketing side took over. What if we had a matching
calendar for each card? Nobody else had anything like that!
The labs purchasing our PhotoPuppy designs could offer a free calendar
with each greeting card order and offer additional calendars for sale.
At Jim's Photo Lab we offered the additional calendars for $5.00 each or five
for $20.00. About 20% of the people took us up on the offer, and
we added about $1,000.00 to our greeting card sales just by giving
away the matching calendars.
"Calendars had an additional benefit, they made it impossible for
consumers to compare pricing. How nice it was to tell every
price shopping walk in and phone customer that they would get a free
photo calendar with each order of Holiday Greeting Cards. Our free
calendars were driving up the sales of our greeting cards and adding extra
profit for every time a customer ordered additional calendars. Not
bad for an extra 20¢ worth of raw material!
"And - here's the good part - every lab would need to buy an
updated set of calendars each year. Instead of a single sale of
lithos that could be reused year after year, we created a product
that requires other labs to come back every year and buy an upgrade!"
Jim ran into a snag this fall. His
"PhotoShop Guru" messed up the 2003 calendar designs, and there
wasn't time to design new ones for the holiday season. Here's your
opportunity to save:
"If you want a really fine set of greeting cards without
calendars, we do have some of the best designs available.
"Instead of selling the basic and deluxe sets for $295.00 and
$495.00, we are selling the entire set of 72 cards for $250.00.
I'll be the first to admit that some of them are less than great, and they
won't make the cut next year, but there are many wonderful profit making
designs for your lab - just nothing new for 2003."
When you buy a complete set of Photo Puppy templates
you get Jim's 12-step program for selling more cards for free! It's called Twelve
Tips and Tricks to Doubling Your Holiday Greeting Card Sales, and
there are really 13 tips. The program alone is worth the price of
the templates. Check out the Photo Puppy website.
disclosure: Photo/Image News has received reimbursement for the
banner ad that is linked to this article
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