At the recent DScoop Asia conference a panel discussion entitled New Innovative Ways of Capturing Retail Photo Business was moderated by Rob Tolmie and featured Benjamin Lamparter from HP Snapfish, Hanny Gan from HP APJ and Nic Peasley from Teds Camera Stores. Read more on the highlights of the challenges and innovations they shared with their audience …
Overall the panellists agreed that across the region in-store retailer business is shrinking as PSPs expand. As such retailers must consider which high-value products they should be offering their customers.
Here are some other key points you might find helpful:
• The panel agreed that Groupon and similar promotional organisations do not generate loyalty among customers and this is an important realisation for retailers still considering this channel to drive their business.
• Ted’s Website brings in 6% of all sales, and Club Ted has more than 140,000 members, with a steady growth of Facebook fans (12,093 Likes).
• Snapfish is the world’s largest online photo center platform with over 125 million registered network users and more than 55 billion images. It ranks in the Top 10 worldwide e-commerce platforms, handling over 42 million transactions a year.
• Hanny Gan spoke as an overall observer of regional retail outlets. She said there is no big retail channel in the region, as most photo shops have just 1-2 stores with limited space, with high rentals and are unable to create an online store. They generally only make significant profits from ID/passport photos.
• Ben said massive discounting is reducing the prices that online companies can charge in the region
• Nick indicated that retailers are using 6×4-inch prints as a loss leader service, and the sheer cost of having a store is a challenge.
• In the future, there will be fewer online players in the market, but those remaining will have more significant revenue. As such we all must rethink how to price products, adopting bundling strategies, such as offering packages rather than individual photo cards.
• Lay-flat books are gaining popularity, which may be difficult to produce in-store, especially as the number of pages has been increasing to more than 150.
Print and Photo channel readers of this blog will be interested to know that further to the panellists’ comments above Vistaprint the original kings of deep discounting, have publically acknowledged that their discounting model is not sustainable and have changed tack. Vistaprint Australia, NZ and Japan vice president Paul Heath says the company is now focused on getting more from each customer instead of selling solely on price. Heath adds the decision to reposition the brand was made because there is a higher return on investment for higher-value orders and that it wanted to change how the company was perceived.
Customers of Photo Direct are welcome to talk to its accredited marketer and consultant, Pete Budd on how best they can capture more retail business in 2014/15. Simply email peterb@photodirect.com.au