Prepress
Retailer Sees Photo Scanning, Printing and Specialty Business Pickup In Blue Economic Environment
Wednesday 24. December 2008 - ScanMyPhotos.com owner Mitch Goldstone cites contributions of innovative KODAK Products
Despite the challenging current economic environment, ecommerce and photo imaging retailer Mitch Goldstone has seen a healthy uptick this year in customers requesting photo scanning services, specialized photo services, and photo printing from digital files.
“My sales this year have exceeded any other since founding my company in 1990,” said Goldstone, President and CEO of ScanMyPhotos International. “Today, I have three times the number of people employed compared to a year ago and we are all working 20-hour shifts, not because of the holidays, as my business model is not reliant on seasonal fluctuations. I owe it all to KODAK Technology.”
ScanMyPhotos International operates worldwide via an Internet site, ScanMyPhotos.com, and has a brick-and-mortar store in Irvine, Calif., for closer to home business. Goldstone explained that the retailers photo scanning service has grown by leaps and bounds largely through online orders, necessitating him to recently purchase two additional KODAK i660 Scanners to supplement his one original. Recently, he has started offering KODAK Picture Movie DVD service online. For the walkup self-service side of his business, Goldstone purchased Kodaks new modular, thermal dry lab system for making digital prints, the KODAK Adaptive Picture Exchange (APEX). It is connected to a bank of self-serve KODAK Picture Kiosk G4s at the Irvine location.
“To offer more convenience, weve set up a number of KODAK s1220 Photo Scanning Systems enabling customers to scan their own photo prints. People love the flexibility to scan and even enhance their original photo prints. And, they love the image quality,” Goldstone said. “As fewer people are traveling over the holidays, weve seen a number come into our retail location to revisit decades of special family photo memories in gathering the family together for a special, inexpensive adventureall powered by KODAK Technology.”
Goldstone volunteered that despite being in the photo business for nearly 20 years, he still finds himself holding back emotions when watching customers openly display teary eyes when reviewing family and friend photos they scanned onto CDs.
“I love the quality of the service provided by ScanMyPhotos. They are the first price-within-reach photo scanning service which allows families to scan their whole collection,” said Maxwell Taylor Kennedy, author of Dangers Hour: The Story of the USS Bunker Hill and the Kamikaze Pilot Who Crippled Her. “Photographs preserve in memory and contextualize family life. If I could take only one non-living thing from my home in an emergency, it would be the photos.”
“Kodak is pleased to provide the technology, products and services to enable retailers, like Mitch at ScanMyPhotos.com, to assist their customers in so many unique ways,” said Sue Cardot, Worldwide Director Solutions, Document Imaging, Graphic Communications Group, Eastman Kodak Company.