Helping Customers Take Better Pictures

This is great.  I'm thinking about printing this for display in the store

Cameo Style Mentioned in Drug Store News

Drug Store News Recently included us in an important article-thank you.

First Holiday Card Order, In July

It's official, we just printed 75 holiday cards for a regular customer.

It was our first holiday order for the season.

"She likes to get an early start" she said.

Why not.

We used Adobe Elements to customize aspects of the card, using a picture the customer herself had captured during a blizzard earlier this winter.

Start the finish the project was finished and paid for in about 30 minutes.

Highest Order Generating Retail Music

We play XM Radio Station 51, " The Coffee House." 

This station has nearly universal appeal, across gender and age. We keep it loud enough to be in the foreground, soft enough to allow conversation.

Customers love placing orders to this music.

Ravid

Father's Day Post Mortum

Hi Cameo Style Retailers,

I am really impressed with the results we had for Father's Day. 

Sales were strong, with Friday and Saturday showing a high stroller index in the store (that's my term for when the store is full of moms with strollers, I wish I thought to snap a picture). The store met soooo many first time customers who found us by referral, or just walked by our window.   Repeat users also were plentiful, with many familiar faces, from Mother's day and  the 2009 holidays season, who now make Cameo Style their destination for personalized gifts.

New customers received our usual friendly introduction to what's possible to create, (sounds like: "all the products around us can be previewed on the workstations so you can see how your pictures would look in them, and then if you like the way it looks we can print and bind it ...should we try it?"). We suggested Tag Along books and Table Frames as good gifts for guys. 

Every order included a free personalized card.

We sold:

5 Easel Frames
9 Peanut Books
7 Tag Along 5x7 Books
1 set of coaster
3 9x12 books with about 10 extra pages each
2 12x12 books with a total of 35 extra pages

Ancillary sales includes light picture restoration, Shoebox scanning, and some orders that also led to stretched canvas wraps (Eight sold-show me a more complimentary product, really).

The store sold a total of 32 total "grab and go" frames, of which a number were Cameo Style frames with no printing service (same price).

As usual, comments from customers were extremely positive.  Customers found the software easy, were satisfied with the features, felt excited  to complete projects quickly while babies were napping, and amazed at the turnaround and product design.

Saturday orders were printed and finished while customers were in the store, often just minutes after they were done on the kiosk.

This week the store was still taking late Father's day gifts...

How did you do?  What sold best in your store?

Dry Cleaning Gets a Personality

There was a time when  film labs and dry cleaners seemed very similar: smelly, devoid of retail experience, defined by pounds of wash and roll counts; customer satisfaction was only as good as your last stain free shirt or well developed print.

In those days customers were acquired, or lost,  when their commute intersected with your front door. 

I often make this comparison to illustrate just how far the business of pictures has come; the toolkit required for success today is so vastly different and contains customer experience,  merchandising, marketing (beyond coupons), and customer coaching.

Alas, it seems dry cleaners are about to enter a new era that will change their business for ever.  Read this story in the NY Times.  If you're an evolved retailer you know what's ahead for dry cleaners!

-Ravid

Tag Along Sale

Is it wise to run a sale on best selling products?  Such is the on-going debate within Cameo Style.

To promote a best selling product is to leave money on the table, so say some.

Yet, to others the practice of discounting strong sellers is a sure way to generate sales during slower periods.

We've decided to split the difference and go for a "little sale" on Tag Along books, just 15%.  And we're going to keep this sale very short, a week at most.

(by the way, we've been running a "private sale."  If a customer is excited about the Cameo products but isn't ready to place an order just yet, we send them off with the folded Cameo Menu stamped with a special 10 day savings voucher.)


Now is a good time for a little sale because:

• The weather in the northeast has impacted store traffic
• Mother's Day is a bit distant still, and Earth Day traditionally does not impact picture taking and memory keeping

Please review the pictures below for the ingredients: a chalk board; your entire inventory of books out as filler (we also really like the idea of "blank" book covers and frames out in the open because it seems to make the process more familiar for the customers); samples (always available from our sample library), and the Cameo Style product menu hand-out we created recently, (just ask us for the file and print on 8.5x11 on your laser printer).

 Good luck, and please share.