In his fall 2009 newsletter CEO and President of Zookbinders, Mark Zucker published an article that inadvertently ruffled more than a few professional wedding photographers feathers. If you’re a DWF PRO member you can read other members opinions in this thread but the gist of the discussion goes something like this.
They want me to lower my prices? And still buy their product! Say what…?!?
Of course that’s general paraphrasing but having known Mark for quite a few years I thought it only fair to ask him for some clarification on a few points for the benefit of our readers.
DWF – Your most recent Zookbinders newsletter article, “Your Business Needs to Lose 1,000 Pounds” has caused a bit of a ruckus in the wedding photography community. Most of the stickiness surrounds the arbitrary pricing model you describe.
The key is to repackage your services to include image files with a basic album order at a competitive price of $1,500 and make the same profit as you did at $2,500.
Would you like to clarify your numbers and the point you were trying to make for our readers?
Mark Zucker - Since the advent of digital, there’s been an increasing amount of pricing pressure each year. Several years ago, a professional photographer with pricing starting at $2,500 was in the game. Today, there are “shoot and burn” photographers advertising on Craig’s List to shoot a wedding for a few hundred dollars. When a prospective bride sees: $500 vs $2,500….the higher priced “full service” photographer is going to get less calls. The “losing 1K lbs” is a way of saying that if you’re pricing started at $1,500, the likelihood of staying in the game is much higher. The way to get there is to do a deep dive into all of your expenses and ask yourself: how important all of your costs are to the client. One suggestion was to work out of your home which will dramatically reduce your overhead and allow you to get to that $1,500 price threshold. Another way to reach a lower price threshold is to develop a no bells and whistles package with or without an album/photo book with a limited number of photos taken at the event.
DWF – It seems to me that your article is specifically geared towards “Shoot-n-Burn” wedding photographers. Can you describe in your own words what is a shoot-n-burn photographer?
Mark Zucker – We define a “shoot & burn” photographer as someone who “shoots” the job (a wedding), “burns” a disc and delivers it to the bride. This photographer is generally a ‘hired gun’ who has no interest in designing or producing an album.
DWF – You give us a rather scary estimate in your article, “reality, I estimate that the shoot & burn marketshare will reach 75% by the end of 2010″. Can you elaborate on how you come to that conclusion?
Mark Zucker – All day long we talk to photographers and they tell us how their business is performing compared to the prior year. Right now, the vast majority of photographers are doing less work than last year. This is a trend we can trace back 6-7 years. A typical professional photography business that shot 40-45 weddings per year pre-digital has watched their numbers drop to 15-20 per year…..AND at lower prices. There’s also a growing trend among “full service” photography businesses that are now offering “shoot and burn” services. This is the highest growing segment for many of them.
DWF – You also note that “Full service is not dead”. As a full service photographer, what can I do to make sure my boat remains afloat in the changing world of wedding photography?
Mark Zucker -
- Make sure you strip out all of the “waste” in your offerings so that your clients aren’t paying for services that they don’t see value in. For example, the average bride buys 100-120 photos for her album. This has increased slightly from the pre-digital days in which the average bride purchased 80-100 images. The dark side of digital is that film photographers shot 400-600 images to sell 80-100, and digital photographers shoot around 2,000 to sell 100-120. To summarize, by shooting an additional 1,400 – 1,600 images, today’s photographer sells 20 extra images. More importantly, the manpower to edit the extra images has not helped. This has created a lot of “non-value added” work for the photographer.
- Improve your marketing skills. With the landscape being as competitive as it is, it’s not the best photographer that gets the call…but the best marketer. If this is not a strength, you’ll need to seek outside help. 3) Follow up with clients – call ALL clients you’ve done work for in the past and ask for referrals. If your client was satisfied with the overall experience, they should be willing to help spread the good word.
DWF – Care to share or clarify anything else.
Mark Zucker – Our goal at Zookbinders is to help professional photographers. We do this by not only producing quality products, but by sharing the ugly reality that we’re in……and offering solutions to stay viable. While we understand the delicacy of the situation, we also know what changes we’ve had to make to stay viable in a changing and rapidly shrinking industry. We just launched the PhotoBook Plus in August which is top quality bridal book that sells for $150 – $250. We saw that the days of the photographers buying $300 – $500 was diminishing and developed a new product that looks 85% as nice as our top of the line Zook Books, yet sells for half of that. What we’re hearing from photographers is that we hit a Home Run by filling a need – nobody wants to dummy down their quality…but by removing some bells and whistles (gilded edges, rounded corners, silver halide paper), we were able to shed 1,000 pounds and bring to market a product that perfectly answers the call of “good quality, lower price”.
20 Comments at "Zookbinders Newsletter Ruffles Feathers"
Very interesting, but I’ll pass on lowering prices. There is more to survival than lowering your prices to keep down with your competition.
Mark makes very good points…… it’s best to read them and then apply his logic to your individual case. If the shoe fits, then you’ll have to wear it.
His observation about film numbers and digital numbers is dead on. I have shot both film and digital and his conclusions match my experience. People only need a few more images than they used to,but they are different images. No more brandy snifters, now they want spot color and grim faced fashion/passion.
Most photographers need to make annual sales of around $150,000 to make a salary of 30-55k per year. (Per PPA’s Studio Financial Benchmark Survey). Think about this. If we’re shooting weddings at 1,500 or even 2,500 we’d have to be doing 2 or 3 each weekend in order to make ends meet. I do agree we have to be leaner with our packages, but devaluing what we do to compete with the $500-1500 shoot and burn crowd is NOT the answer in my opinion. We need to educate our market on what they’re getting for a $500 shooter vs a seasoned pro who actually needs to make a living from photographer. I’m grateful to have products like Zookbinders that I can offer to clients at a lower price point and still make a great profit, but I don’t see how this model is viable long term to drop prices.
Interesting to note that we don’t see zookbinders dropping their price from $700 for an album to $150, true?
I’d have to respectfully disagree. $1500 is not a price point that you can make money at unless you are doing 3-4 weddings a weekend (as people have stated).
Is Apple lowering their prices because you can buy computers for $400? Or smart phones for $50? No.
You have to price yourself in the market, market yourself to that market and make it work.
The smartest people in business say “never follow a trend.”
We’ve raise our prices and had our most profitable client/sale ratio ever.
Lowering prices and working harder for the same dollar just doesn’t make sense. I’d rather work smarter.
Fundy
Or the alternative is to take good enough pictures and market well enough to justify $2500+ weddings. . .
Agreed with Liana, I would trust the PPA industry-wide survey more than a vendor-specific survey.
Also, a note to ALL vendors. . .why not keep records of who your clients are and more importantly who they were!! I used to use Zookbinders and switched two years ago. . .I wonder if they have any interest in why I use another album company or what it would take to get me back!
I think this shows just how out of touch Mark is with the photographers he supposedly serves. Clearly…there are lots of craigslisters offering cheap services. That DOESNT MEAN that they are any good…at photography, business, marketing, customer service..the full monty. There is a reason why most of us ARE ABLE to command the prices we do and a reason these guys CAN’T. To say cut your prices to compete with these guys is ignorant. These so called shootnburners CANT COMPETE WITH US, on any number of levels…ie photo skills, pp skills, marketing skills, insurance, backup, experience, customer service…again the full monty.
He also completely ignores the affect the economy has had on all of us….sure many photogs are down in the past 18 months…..gee what other signifcant factors might that be attributed too…..get a clue. We arent down because of a bunch of craigslist shoot n burners. They will impact the lower priced photographer who dont have the skills to compete for the better brides no doubt. But the advice should have been…
“Hey guys, you are getting extreme pressure from these shoot n burn craigsliters…so you’d better hone your skills in all facets of the business if you want to be able to maintain your current pricing structure.”
IMO, all of you should really think twice about who you want to “partner” with.
Oh and one more note…
How about taking your own advice sir….
There are lots of labs offering a similar product with 1-3 day turn around at half the price of zookbinders. Mark, in order to better compete with these bind and burners, you need to cut the price of your albums in half. Thats the only thing thats different about your company and all these bind and burners right?? Cut your costs so that you can sell your albums for 250 and still make the same profit you once did…
Gee let me hold my breath while that happens….
Anyone who is telling photographers that they should include a package with files and an album for $1500 is absolutely dead wrong. You can’t make a living off of that, as people have already stated, and for someone to set themselves up as an “authority figure” of sorts and then pass around that kind of information.. Ugh. Either this guy is completely ignorant of how this industry works and how taxes and cost work, or he’s intentionally trying to thin the herd by giving advice that will put people out of business. Either way, I hope that’s the last bit of advice he doles out.
I’m finding fewer and fewer couples want albums. I took my lowest package, removed the album, put in the high resolution files as the only product, and raised my profit by $250. Know what? It sells and I’m not upset about “losing” the album sale.
I literally just read that article and was appalled! Glad to know I’m not alone.
Michele, you are correct that some are content to not do an album. Which is another good reason to NOT lower your coverage fees. If you are basing your profit on selling “product”….and that “product” goes out of favor…so do your profits.
I for one, love creating the images…..a lot more than doing album design, so frankly I could be quite happy if I never had to design another album and deal with the brides going back and forth…
just sayin…
bb
i agree with all the other commenters – this advice is terrible. Even my lowest package, with no album, is $3800. I simply don’t understand how anyone could make a living shooting $1500 weddings…..
Mark’s, comments referring to “waste”, “non-value added”, and implied “value added” are Lean Business Process terms. It sounds to me like they have undergone some internal process improvement studies to address the same economy and changing industry pressures that we are all feeling. If they have done this, good for them. All of our businesses can benefit by us taking a hard look at expenses and the efficiency of our processes and workflow, it’s just good business practice.
I think, as others do, that Mark needs to stay away from price theory comments about others’ business. The only cost element in our pricing decisions that he knows anything about is album cost. To comment on a price point for what we can and should be charging our customers is irresponsible. We are not making comments about what Zook should charge for their products…well, until now. We couldn’t, we have no idea what it costs to run their business.
Mark’s suggestion to work out of your home to reduce overhead is just stupid. Many of us do operate residential studios and though it’s true that many costs could be reduced, it’s not an option for many nor is it desirable. I wonder if Zook could run their business out of his garage? Come on, Mark, you are addressing PROFESSIONAL photographers.
He says that Zookbinders goal is to help professional photographers. Next time write an article about how to pull studios together to agree not to be shoot and burn. Better yet, write an article for brides describing the satisfaction they will get 40 years in the future when they can hold a print or an album and as they flip through the pages tell their grand children who the people in the pictures are and what what it was like back then. Now THAT’S value added.
-Jeff
I’m glad that I passed on Zookbinder as my album company for my business.
There is nothing wrong with evaluating your costs. I believe it’s wrong to lower your quality in order to lower your prices.
[...] look at our recent article on Zookbinders ruffling photographers feathers and listen to their CEO say that we should be offering super cheap [...]
True words, some authentic words man. You made my day.
“The key is to repackage your services to include image files with a basic album order at a competitive price of $1,500 and make the same profit as you did at $2,500.”
This can’t be done! So instead of making $2000.00 what do you make $1000.00 Maybe 1200.00
If you really tried to cut you expenses. You can’t stay in business like that. The big problem is that clients come in and want to see everything. If you show them a photo book and a Zookbook they will want the Zookbook for the photo book price. If you don’t give that to them they will shop around and keep shopping until they find someone who does.
I am one of those $1,500 photographers only because I am just starting out. I have been raising my prices every year and hope to get to the $2,000 level by 2011. Those of your charging $3,500 and higher had to work your way there in order to charge those prices. From what I am seeing, 75% of brides have budgets that don’t venture North of $3,000 at all. Which means that I have to shoot more weddings in order to make a living while those charging much more can shoot less. If you are honestly having wedding profits of $150,000 and are struggeling to make a living, then you need to make some changes in how you do things or hire a clever accountant. Most people will not see the difference between a Zookbook and a Photobook Plus and so on. If you are spending tons and tons of money on little things, I can tell you that most brides wont see the difference. Unfortunately Craigs List photographers are focing higher end photographers into getting creative with prices. The fact is, very few photographers actually make a great living in this business and 30,000-50,000 is about all your going to get.
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