The Future Of Photo Printing

By Greg Scoblete On Aug 20 2007 - 6:00am

TWICE: Is online printing a serious rival to home and retail printing?

Magee: From Kodak's perspective, it's a question of what the customer wants. So we're forced to kind of cover all bases and allow that customer to print where they would want. It's not a direct answer, but it's the statement about giving choice to the consumer.

Pepple: We believe that the pickup at retail [from online orders] will be about 50 percent of the market. We're committed to providing those services to our partners that allow them to develop margin solutions based on time, convenience and price. For the consumer it's a choice between minutes, hours or days.

TWICE: Do you feel that online printing with a mail back will be a significant chunk of the market? Because it seems now that a lot of the online growth is in orders picked up in store.

Pepple: We do believe that's a significant chunk. But we do also think the local convenience of sending your pictures to someone who you trust and know is compelling, so the upload online, pickup at retail model is really going to move.

Lubell: I think it allows the consumer to have that instant gratification. That's the advantage of being able to push your photos to a third party and, by the time you get in your car and get down the block, you can pick them up with instant gratification. But for those who want to do spot printing and one-offs, there's still opportunity in the home.

Rubin: For the consumers printing more than 25 images at a time, online photo printing for pickup at retail was 20 percent [of the market] in our last survey, 19 percent was consumers having it shipped home. Printing it at a mass merchant was 36 percent. There's still a lot of printing at home, but as Phil mentioned, it's more opportunistic.

TWICE: Is there still a concern that consumers are not printing enough?

Pepple: There's a huge opportunity for retailers here. We predict by 2009 there will be 134 billion pictures captured. That's five times what it was at the peak of film. There's a huge opportunity here.

Rubin: I think photo books are also an interesting play here. Coffee table format books provide an easy template to show a series of three or four shots whereas you might not get those as prints in the past.

Cordova: It's important to remember that retailers can offer services that the online guys just can't, and the expertise to get done what the consumer's looking to get done. I think that plays a large part in printing. I also think [print activity] depends on what generation you're talking about. Yes, we want to print. But I think nobody in the younger generation is interested in printing right now. We need to find ways to make sure that they do.