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Comment by callmeed | Hacker News Reader

I don't mean to be a downer/naysayer, but how can you argue that photo printing is a growth industry?

I run an ecommerce service for wedding photographers and know a lot of other people in the industry. From where we sit, the consensus is that people are ordering less prints. All the growth we're seeing is from album/book sales and digital file sales. 5-10 years ago, a portrait photographer could charge a $100 sitting fee but still make $1,000+ on print sales. That is now hard/impossible. Everyone simply asks "Can I have the files on a disc?".

I can't see how it would be any different for the general consumer and their images. People get their utility from seeing the image on Facebook. My mom is 63 and she looks at our family pictures on FB every day.

Wont the generation that is accustomed to (and prefers) tangible prints be dead in 30 years?

My $0.02

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I disagree with your assumption. You're saying that because people order fewer prints from professional photographers, that people don't prefer tangible prints.

I think this points more to the fact that consumers don't value a photographers copyrights. Consumers know that it doesn't cost $50 for a 5x7 print and thus they'd rather buy the digital copy to have more control over what they can do with their own photos. Photos are meant to be shared and it's hard to share photos that cost $50 each.

From the vantage point of the consumer with a smartphone, PicPlum offers a very attractive value proposition to share tangible prints with family members. I don't believe that the desire to have printed photos will go away anytime soon.

>> I disagree with your assumption. You're saying that because people order fewer prints from professional photographers, that people don't prefer tangible prints.

Not exactly. I'm saying that (a) the preference for tangible prints is fading with every generation and (b) my experience in the professional space is one data point that supports this.

>> I think this points more to the fact that consumers don't value a photographers copyrights. Consumers know that it doesn't cost $50 for a 5x7 print and thus they'd rather buy the digital copy to have more control over what they can do with their own photos. Photos are meant to be shared and it's hard to share photos that cost $50 each.

It's harder to share a tangible/printed picture at any price, so how does PicPlum solve this at all? What you said above supports my thoughts more than it refutes them (IMO).

>> From the vantage point of the consumer with a smartphone, PicPlum offers a very attractive value proposition to share tangible prints with family members.

Maybe it does–I'm just saying the TAM is small is getting smaller. I personally don't build businesses around that.

>> I don't believe that the desire to have printed photos will go away anytime soon.

Replace 1 word and this sounds like a quote from a newspaper executive 10 years ago :)

---

(Let me be clear that I wish PicPlum the best of luck. I wouldn't invest my own money in the startup but I hope they can pull it off or pivot successfully.)

I will add that I don't argue that fewer prints are made. Even 10 years ago the majority of photos were printed. Digital photo sharing was still in its infancy. There's no arguing that fewer printed photos exist, but that doesn't mean that a market doesn't exist. It means that the market hasn't pivoted in a relevant way.

The value of printed photos has significantly shifted. 10 years ago, printed photos were necessary for archival and sharing personal photos. Today, photo prints serve a very emotional purpose.

>> It's harder to share a tangible/printed picture at any price, so how does PicPlum solve this at all? What you said above supports my thoughts more than it refutes them (IMO).

My point is that if you have 4 sets of grandparents that each want several prints of your wedding, it's generally not economically viable to pay $50 each for prints to share with them. Thus people order fewer prints from photographers and more digital/albums that they can share without incremental costs.

PicPlum seems to make the sharing of printed photos easier by removing the friction in getting prints done and mailing them out to family members. Note that PicPlum's target market isn't (yet) the professional photographer.

People are ordering fewer prints, but which percentage of the prints they are ordering are pictures of kids for grandparents? A significant proportion, I bet.

Anybody who has walked into a relative's house and seen their gorgeous DSLR emailed baby picture printed on some crappy paper by some crappy printer proudly displayed has died a little inside.

The reservation I have about PicPlum (and, I suspect, why I never got around to signing up for its previous incarnation, even though I was interested in principle) is the fact that you still have to do the curation - a step that in practice I would forget. I would be interested to know from somebody who has signed up whether the service can be configured to remind you to send it some pictures).

[edit: grandparents might be online, but they seem to have a perverse need to stick pictures of their gene pool on the fridge anyway. Hell, mine have an Internet updatable LCD frame which sucks new pictures over all the time and still they print out for the fridge, handbag etc. ]

My kids grandparents are on Twitter and Facebook, as a data point. They are not especially technical (I'm the only one of their 4 kids to have a career in technology).

They should have an optional curation step whereby the recipients choose their 15 (or more; upsell time!) themselves.

The first product launched by a company is sometimes intended mostly a way to gain initial traction and a loyal group of users to learn from, before launching the "real" product(s). That may be the idea here (if it's not, I would agree at least in my case - my mum doesn't want prints of her granddaughter, she wants the files).

This is indeed just the first step.

My mom wants prints. lots of them. And I'm sure she's not alone. She actually sent me a massive email about what photo prints mean to her and wanted me to post it somewhere. So I did:

http://blog.picplum.com/post/8818368168/what-photos-mean-to-...

The spaces that lead from this user base are pretty crowded though, personal photo sharing/storing wise.

I guess they could go further down the print path and look at high quality mail outs like wedding invites. I'm not expert in the area but I haven't seen anyone really using a fully online service to do those kind of invites.

I don't disagree with the macro trend, however there will be some market for printed photos for at least a generation. For those of us that grew up with printed photos, we will always appreciate a printed photo a touch more than an electronic one, especially in small doses. This is doubly so for my parents, and grandparents. The digital generation may also appreciate it as a novelty.

So, even though the macro demand will continue to shrink, there is still a market for printed images. I would be curious to know from the founders if they have any real numbers as to the market size. That'd be the first question I'd ask them to see if there is any real play here. I would guess there are around 50m printed images still made every year in the US alone.

At a profit of 25c / image it might be possible to get revenues of several million dollars per year. Sure, it's no Twitter but it's a an easy business to build and test. With around $50k or so they can find out within 6-12 months if there is a path to significant returns.

That's a decent business risk IMO.

This is not directly correlated to PicPlum, which sounds like a really cool idea by the way, but from my perspective and what I'm seeing in terms of internet privacy--It wouldn't surprise me if people started taking a step back in terms of what they share on the internet and that includes photos. If that does happen I could see print copies coming back and speaking as a person who really doesn't have any prints of my own, there's something truly amazing about sitting around a home and passing around old pictures--you don't get that with facebook.

Seems like there are a lot of directions these guys could go if the original direction doesn't take off. Might try downloadable-auto updated scrape books. Also know of a few companies making a living off of renting and selling copies of photos/artwork to businesses, could go in that direction.

Did mainframes die when PCs arrived?

Did stone tablets die after the invention of paper?

Did coins die after the invention of paper currency?

Did propeller planes die after the invention of the jet engine?

Did rowboats die after motorboats were created?

An entire technology tree doesn't die out just because a new one starts to sprout. The branches themselves may get pruned from time to time, but knowledge and knowhow tend to be valuable and sooner or later a new application is found. The tree just gets pruned, and spouts branches every now and then, as the new one takes root.

So, no photo printing itself won't die out. I have no doubt that the current paradigms we use this technology under will fade away, but I'm also certain that a new one will take its place.

Did mainframes die when PCs [arrived?]?

Of course not. But by the time the trend was obvious, I don't believe anyone was launching mainframe startups anymore either.

Sorry, I'm tired.

>>> I don't believe anyone was launching mainframe startups anymore either. <<<

But they do still launch mainframe startups! In fact it's all the rage today, and everyone is doing it these days.

Exactly. Paul & Co aren't building an enterprise that needs to last decades. There just needs to be enough consumer interest in prints left in the next 2-5 years, until they move on to something else.

Totally right, prints are just as obsolete as desktops from other today's front page thread. Especially now when you have iPads and other tablets with outstanding picture quality.

>> Everyone simply ask "Can I have the files on a disc?"

Unless you work for a big consumer printing service, how do you know "everyone" is not printing the files out themselves to bypass the "professional" printing cost?

I don't. In fact, I'm sure that's part of the reason.

But the people that do that are getting their prints done at Costco where a 5x7 is $0.39 and an 8x10 is $1.49. They care about price more than convenience or quality. (or they wouldn't take the time to copy the disc to their PC, upload it to a printing service and navigate a clunky UI to order prints).

I don't think PicPlum's aim is to compete with large printers on price.

Also, don't forget that you (or a family member) can pick-up prints next time you're in Costco. And you can order prints of your Facebook photos and pick them up at Target.

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