Fast Digital Photos

Opportunity: Real-time Online Digital Photo Printing Services

The other week I found out that it’s really difficult to prepare a simple anniversary surprise.

I wanted to print some digital photos, choose one that looked best and frame it as a gift. As I only had a day left, I wanted a quick solution. I searched for online photo centers but couldn’t find any that matched my needs. Remembering I had seen an add about DivertaOnline, i checked out their offer.

The prices were good, I could pick the photos from a location I chose among many options, but…after completing the purchase I found out that the photos would be ready no sooner than 3-5 days later, that I couldn’t cancel the order(even though I had not paid yet) and that I still had to pay the price or even double if I refused. They didn’t give me a fixed date when I should pick up the photos and I didn’t receive any notice when they were ready. I later saw that the entire site is a disappointment to quite a few.

Wouldn’t it be nice to have an easy to use digital printing service that would :

  • offer low-per-print prices
  • charge reasonable shipping costs
  • deliver prints in 1 hour
  • provide additional services, such as creative gift choices
  • and most important of all, be transparent about the terms and conditions.

This could be implemented as a franchise by an existing retail business, such as a drug store chain (see Rite Aid and CVS/pharmacy ) or a stationery shop. As the retailer already has an appropriate location, the franchiser would have to provide the equipment,the implementation of the online store, training and eventual troubleshooting.

What other type of business would you combine with an online photo service? Would you use such a service?

Written by Anca Dragusin


2 Responses to “Fast Digital Photos”

  1. Diana Says:
    November 1st, 2007 at 1:24 am

    My name is Diana and I am a student in Rennes,France. Here people are accoustomed to using sites on the internet like: http://www.photobox.fr for printing high-quality photo. This kind of sites offer a lot of options on the size of the photos you want or the quality of the paper and even on the delivery date(from 24hours to a week or more). Putting an order on their site is easy, you create a temporary album where you upload the pictures you want, you select the quality and size and the delivery date, you pay by card usually and it’s done. I tried with some friends of mine last week( we were 5 to place an order beacause there was an offer for an order of al least 200 photos). We recevied the photos at time and I am very satisfied of their quality. I think that this should be accesible in Romania too.

  2. Anca Dragusin Says:
    November 3rd, 2007 at 11:42 pm

    Photobox has a nice site and they even have a blog http://photoboxfr.wordpress.com/.
    That’s a good idea for announcing new offers but also for customer support.

    I see that they are present in a lot of European countries, maybe Romania’s next. The 24 hours delivery would be a first, and a good step towards the 1h ideal.

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