Before Focht and I merged, he was using Graphi Albums in his studio. Now these are nice albums and have a lot of great features that some other album companies did not have. And everyone knows, I’m a bit of a freak about albums. I love everything from the software to hand-crafting albums, a la AltF (I don’t have time to do this anymore, though).
Coming into the studio as a partner, I knew that the direction of the studio as a business, meant that soon we would have a disconnect between our album company and our clients. Together we redid our family, children and high school senior pricing around albums. With inexpensive press books being sold just about everywhere, I knew we wanted something high end and something that looked completely different from what people could get at the mall or at Costco.
After a long search, we decided on the Finao Elements line. It’s made with actual photographic paper and the board between the images is thick and heavy. A ten page portrait album is just as thick and heavy as an 80 page press book. That heaviness, not to mention the high end fabrics available, adds value to not only the product, but also our photography. We want to communicate to our clients that our photography is a very high end, exclusive product, and our physical products need to communicate the same thing.
Next we had to look at our wedding albums. We needed consistency in our albums, so decided to move our entire album line to Finao, both for wedding and portrait albums. This was not an easy decision as it meant replacing all of our sample albums and completely redoing our pricing. But by making this decision we were able to increase, not only our album sales, but our sales across the board in all areas of our studio.
My point here is not to say that everyone should use Finao or any other brand of albums. That is what we use as it fits our studio and the look and feel of our studio.When choosing your vendors, it’s extremely important to choose based on your individual needs, not on what is popular, what is hip or what everyone else is doing. It’s especially important not to choose on price, as in the end, the money you save with a cheaper vendor will most likely lose you money in lost sales to your clients.
So, again, photography is about defining who you are as a studio and choosing products that fit that description.
Fundy
Fundy is the creator of the Fundy Album Builder, Album Approved and Mobile Fotographer.
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