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Situation

Consumers hold millions of hardcopy photos but do not have a simple, inexpensive way to convert them to digital images.

Objective

Provide a cost-effective, easy way for consumers to digitize decades of photos and then do more with their new collections of digital photos.

Solution

A big idea, a KODAK i660 Scanner, and DVDs.

Millions of photos sit in shoeboxes, drawers, and closets all over America. Since the introduction of digital photofinishing, photo labs have told consumers that “any picture is a digital picture” once it’s scanned. Yet consumers weren’t willing to take the time to sort their shoeboxes or pay a high cost for digitization. Enter innovative entrepreneurs like Mitch Goldstone and his scanmyphotos.com Web site. Goldstone provides a fast, useful, cost-effective solution for consumers and their years of accumulated prints, thanks to his KODAK i660 Scanner.

Decades of photos go digital, fast

It’s your choice: send scanmyphotos.com up to 1,000 pictures, and for $49.95 they will put both sides of the images on DVD. Or, for $99.95, they’ll scan as many photos as you can fit into their supplied box, scan the image side, and pay for shipping both ways.

Thanks to those offers, each day thousands of black-and-white, sepia and color prints arrive at 30 Minute Photos Etc. in Irvine, CA, the parent company of scanmyphotos.com.

“We’ve been in business with 30 Minutes Photos Etc. since 1990,” says Goldstone who co-founded the photofinishing business with Carl Berman. “People trust us with their valuable photos because we have a history and are a leader in the memory business.” To help assure mail-order customers (90% of business), Goldstone archives images in digitized form for 30 days.

As box after box arrives daily (“It’s like a zoo in the morning here ... UPS, Fed-X, the postal delivery guys are in and out throughout the day,” Goldstone notes), prints are fed into the KODAK i660 Scanner that can handle up to 750 pictures every five minutes. “This is an extraordinary product,” Goldstone raves about his i660 Scanner. “We’ve scanned up to 80,000 photos a day without any issues, and the software works beautifully.”

Goldstone is planning to order additional i660 Scanners in the near future. “One thing Kodak does very well is constantly improve the product,” he praises. “For example, they’ve added a device that blows air across the inside of the scanner so dust particles and other debris are trapped in a filter. As you would imagine, we receive some prints full of dirt and cigarette smoke residue, so every advance in keeping the scanner clean is valuable.”

Goldstone is referring to software that comes packaged with the i660 Scanner, and also with lower-volume solutions such as the new KODAK s1220 Photo Scanning System (30 prints per minute). The software provides image capture and simple enhancements, such as sharpening, removing red-eye and color restoration. (The s1220 Scanning System is targeted for availability in June, 2007.)

Out-of-the-shoebox thinking

Usually, Kodak presents all the business opportunities that can be created and grown by purchasing a scanner. In this case, Goldstone helped Kodak picture the possibilities. “I’ve had a long-term relationship with Kodak as a photofinisher and through my involvement in the industry,” Goldstone says. “I’d watched this scanner work and saw the potential for a photofinishing venture of this type.” Thanks to Goldstone’s vision, Kodak has now created other hardware/software packages for finishers to utilize in both high-and lower-volume applications.

Goldstone’s rapidly growing business is definitely targeted at high-volume production. “Our average order is 1,500 to 1,800 prints, but we’ve had larger orders. One gentleman brought in over 19,000 photos in 26 boxes. He dropped them off on a Saturday, and on Monday morning he picked up eight DVDs and his original pictures,” Goldstone recalls.

Once a customer receives a DVD with up to 3,000 images on it, they’re able to view the images as thumbnails. Goldstone also recommends customers write and place index cards between groups of photos they’re submitting. In this way, they’re able to have the cards scanned along with the prints and know where one event or group of photograph starts and another begins.

Reprints, enlargements and photo specialty items can easily be ordered once the images are on DVD. “The image quality is exceptional as we scan at 300 dpi,” says Goldstone. “8 by 10-inch enlargements turn out wonderfully, for example.”

Customers from consumers to lawyers

While you would expect consumers, scrapbookers and those interested in genealogy to be the largest users of scanmyphotos.com, many types of business customers also submit photos. “At first we were surprised to have a growing business from divorce attorneys,” Goldstone says. “Yet it makes sense. In this way, there is no fighting over who gets the family photos, as providing them on DVD allows each party to receive a complete set.”

This also ties in with another add-on service popular with businesses: basic print making. “We had one customer bring in 1,500 pictures, then order a 4 by 6 print of every one of them,” he notes. Obviously, combined with enlargements and photo specialty items, this post-scanning market creates great sales and profit potential for the photofinisher.

“This has been a great addition to our business,” Goldstone concludes. “We’ve tapped a market that our industry had not been able to bring to life, and we’ve awakened it. And we appreciate the productivity and ongoing performance and image quality that our Kodak Scanner provides. That’s why we’re buying more.”