Today's Guest: James Lee of White Wedding Album in Oakland, CA
Today's Host: Damien Allen
October 2007
Listen to this Show
Publish this Show on Your Website
Show Sponsor www.MorePhotos.com
whiteweddingalbum.com
James Lee Transcript Page
James Lee Expert PageANNOUNCER: Welcome to the VTalk Radio's Photography Spotlight with your host, Damien Allen.
DAMIEN: Welcome to the VTalk Radio's Photographer's Spotlight. My name is Damien Allen, and today in the studio via phone we are speaking with Mr. James Lee. James is the co-owner of White Wedding Album in Oakland, California. Good afternoon and welcome to the program, James.
JAMES: Thank you very much.
DAMIEN: Well, we've been looking at your website, and would you like to tell our listening audience what exactly you do there at White Wedding Album.
JAMES: Basically we offer two types of service. First we offer a design service which enables our photographers to submit their photos and we design them and upon their approval, we go ahead and print albums for them. And second we also offer just a print and bind service which photographers will submit their work, and we go ahead print them and bind them and ship them to their clients.
DAMIEN: How many different levels of products do you have as far as a wedding album?
JAMES: Actually, we offer four distinct types of products. First we offer guest books. Guest books are printed on our ink jet printer and bound like a book so the brides can go ahead and put in their engagement sessions photos on it which enables them to take that book to their reception site and they can actually have their guests sign it and it's really nicely bound and many of the brides like that feature. Second for our photogRaphers we also offer proof books which enables them to send us all the pictures they took that day, and we offer it in either photographic paper or offset prints, and we bound them like a magazine style, and we offer them as an option for photographers to give proof books to their brides and grooms. Third we offer flesh album which the paper, the photos, are actually printed on photographic paper, they have a choice to do either metallic or luster print, and they're bound on heavy weight matt board and once their glued on, the pages are a lot thicker and there are also various options as far as leather photographic lettering and stuff like that. And fourth we offer coffee table books which are similar to the flesh album, but actually the coffee table books the photos are glued to each other so it gives little more of a coffee table book feel to it so a little bit lighter, thinner, and that's the four options we offer for our clients.
DAMIEN: What types of paper do you use?
JAMES: We offer three different types of paper, one for ink jet print which is printed on Epson printer and binding so that the pages have a lot more matt paper feel to it, and secondly we use Kodak metallic paper, and third we use luster Kodak paper as well.
DAMIEN: Do you use stitch binding or glue binding.
JAMES: We do not offer stitch binding; we offer glue binding. It's a special technique we use to glue pages together. So we just offer a glue binding.
DAMIEN: You said that White Wedding Album has a design service. If I was to have my photos compiled and I would like you to design them, do I have to send my proofs through the mail, or can I do it on the internet?
JAMES: We actually offer very easy drag and drop web-based activity at the site where once our client registers with us and purchases the order online, they'll receive an email instantly of a link where they simply click on the link and all their photos that they want us to design will be in that particular folder and you just drag that folder into this little dialog box and then press uploading. And once we get the photos uploaded to us it goes directly to our server, it takes us about a week to design them and once the design is complete, we actually email back our clients weblink where they can actually proof their design. And one of the unique features what we do is we actually use a third party service to upload our images for that bride so they don't actually find out where they get their books and how much they paid for them so another interesting feature that we have is that once the link is emailed to our clients, the client simply emails that same link, and the clients, themselves, their brides and grooms can leave comments on their site that they are given to and that comment will be sent directly to us and our team will in one or two days go ahead and revise it and say, "Hey your client has made some change requests, here are the change requests, here's the second revision of the design." So, we try to really get in there where our clients are less involved as far as trying to get the comments to us and feed back and most of our designs are approved within a week.
DAMIEN: Do you do third party FTP, I'm able to send my design up, or send my raw files up on the web, and I can proof it on the web. They can approve everything on the web. Will you drop ship to my client once that's done?
JAMES: Yeah, we don't use third party FTP, we use our own FTP site.
DAMIEN: Oh, I'm sorry.
JAMES: We use third party web hosts to host the images so that they don't find out who they get their albums from, but yes, definitely some of our clients actually we do that right now. As you check out, you could just put a comment saying, "I want this drop shipped to our clients." And basically, we label it coming from the client so that it doesn't say White Wedding Album.
DAMIEN: Now, is there a minimum order that has to be placed? Will you do one piece, will you do 100 pieces; is there a bulk rate discount?
JAMES: Yeah, there is no minimum order required. All our albums are hand made, and we've had clients who asked us to make specific size, specific requests. One of the most interesting one we had is one of the clients actually sent us Louie Raton cover and asked us if we could cover it with that material. So, we were glad to provide any kind of service as far as custom design, custom covers. So there's no minimum, but if you do order more than 3 or 4 we definitely give discount and offer opportunity to save you extra money.
DAMIEN: We are speaking with Mr. James Lee co-owner of White Wedding Album of Oakland, CA. James could you give the listeners your website and contact information please?
JAMES: You can reach us at White Wedding Album. Our website is www.whiteweddingalbum.com. Our email is info@whiteweddingalbum.com, and our telephone number is (800) 886-1707. When you call us, you can ask for me or anybody here who can help you and we open to work with some of your photographers out there and offer them quality, excellent customer service and product.
DAMIEN: Thank you very much for joining us today on the VTalk Radio Photography Spotlight, James. It's been a pleasure speaking with you.
JAMES: Thank you very much.
DAMIEN: My name is Damien Allen. You've been listening to the VTalk Radio Photography Spotlight. Have a great afternoon.
ANNOUNCER: This VTalk Radio Spotlight is sponsored by morephotos.com. The online photo sales solution for professional photographers worldwide.
ANNOUNCER: Looking for a bridal show in your area? Visit www.weddingdetails.com for a list of upcoming bridal shows in your area. Visit www.weddingdetails.com tonight.
ANNOUNCER: You have been listening to the VTalk Radio Spotlight; only on www.vtalkradio.com. Radio for the 21st Century.
go to top of the page
