LifePics helps digital camera users picture photofinishing in new light

BOULDER — Once a digital camera is purchased, the film drop off and print pickup relationship is over as folks download their images into their PCs, never needing to visit the camera shop again.

But longtime photo industry veteran Vahe Christianian is determined to rekindle the fading relationship between photofinishers and consumers. In September 2000 Christianian founded LifePics Inc. to develop and market online-imaging and customer-management technology, giving the consumer a way to manage digital images and the photofinisher something to entice the consumer back to his shop.

LifePics provides photofinishers with a private-branded Web site where their customers can view, share, organize, archive and order reprints and enlargements. This innovative concept earns LifePics a 2003 IQ Award in the Internet category.

LifePics makes it possible, Christianian said, for photofinishers to “provide the same layer of service they always had and move into the 21st century.”

It’s a business-to-business solution — LifePics provides the online infrastructure to the photofinisher behind the scenes so all the consumer sees is their familiar photofinisher with an Internet presence.

“The innovation is maintaining a true consumer-driven proposition while addressing work flow,´ said Christianian, who serves as LifePics president. About 97 percent of traditional photofinishing is completed in photo shops, so he has a huge target market. His goal? To become “the largest aggregator of photofinishers in the country,” he said. “We’re hoping to become the FTD of picture delivery.”

From the consumer side it works like this. John Consumer has taken 286 digital pictures of his family’s annual fishing trip. He plugs his digital camera into his personal computer and logs onto his favorite photofinisher, Eastern Camera’s Web site.

Immediately after he uploads his files, he receives confirmation e-mail. An hour later he receives another e-mail saying the pictures are ready to review. He logs in again, looks at the images and chooses 60 to make into three online albums — one for each of his kids. He then sends each child an e-mail inviting him to take a look at his online albums.

Then he asks his wife to help him choose pictures to print for their “rogues’ gallery” — the wall of family snapshots they have in collage frames in the den. After they’ve decided on the best 30 of the lot, they edit a great shot of the entire family and order 8-by-10-inch glossies for both sets of grandparents.

By the time John is finished editing and e-mailing, he receives an e-mail stating that the 30 prints are ready to pick up at Eastern Camera. He decides to wait an hour to go pick them up because he knows by then the glossies will be ready, as well.

This service costs John $19.95 per year and includes 300 megabytes of storage. The only other charges are for prints and optional enhanced services including additional storage. Because he deals with Eastern Camera, John has no reason to know LifePics is the engine behind Eastern Camera’s online photo service.

Meanwhile, the Eastern Camera’s workflow is completely handled by LifePics’ proprietary client software. Functions are based on old-fashioned film processing with an Internet twist. Consumer image uploading, shopping cart management, order forwarding to the store photo lab, marketing and promotional material presentment, e-mail, applicable taxes and shipping charges calculation, order tracking, sales and commissions reports and so on are all automated, eliminating much of the paperwork and a lot of the boredom of photo lab film processing.

Since LifePics hosts all online transactions, Eastern Camera employees are unaware that the Consumer family has been uploading, editing and requesting prints of digital images. LifePics software interacts directly with Eastern Camera’s in-house lab, not the storefront.

“The images are grabbed from the (LifePics) archive and automatically dropped in the computer that runs the lab,” Christianian said. “The labs don’t want headaches and heartburn. They just want to receive the order.”

LifePics’ software works with any digital photo lab equipment including Noritsu, Fuji, Agfa and Konica. This means if Eastern Camera changes lab equipment it doesn’t have to change LifePics’ integrating software.

Eastern Camera paid LifePics a $4,995 startup fee that included creation of the private Web pages and licensing the LifePics software. Beyond that, LifePics has a revenue-sharing plan for subscriptions, prints and other consumer-driven transactions.

In November 2002 Christianian signed national photofinishing franchise MotoPhoto, and he is adding new clients daily to the more than 200 already using LifePics.

“From the dealer’s perspective it’s a very practical application for practically no money,” he said. “It’s their brand, their technology, and we provide everything.”

Christianian said building a comparable, in-house solution would cost about $500,000.

LifePics appears to be in the right market at the right time. According to a recent Retail forecast by Boston-based digital imaging technology market researcher InfoTrends Research Group, digital photofinishing sales will experience a compound annual growth rate of 15 percent through 2007, and about 30 percent of all photo lab installations in North America are already digital.

InfoTrends also found that 20 percent of U.S. households now own a digital camera, and digital camera penetration is rising rapidly and is expected to reach 30 percent by the end of 2003.

Consumer end users number in the tens of thousands, Christianian said. And it’s no wonder since they get a good deal on digital image storage and prints. A printer capable of producing lab-quality prints could run upward of $1,000. Top-quality photo paper costs about $50 for 100 8 1/2 -by-11-inch sheets, while photo editing software can range from “you get what you pay for” freeware to as much as $600.

The 300 megabyte disk space will take a long, long time to fill up since, even conservatively, it should hold about 3,000 images. Even though it would be possible to store those images on a hard drive or CD-ROM, it would difficult to sort and search those images without LifePics’ archiving software.

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