Today's Guest: Michael Smith of West Michigan Photoworks in Holland, Michigan
Today's Host: John Bentley
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West Michigan Photoworks
Michael Smith Transcript Page
Michael Smith Expert PageANNOUNCER: Welcome to the VTalk Radio's Photography Spotlight with your host, John Bentley.
JOHN: Today's program is sponsored by morephotos.com the online photo sales solution to professional photographers worldwide.
JOHN: Today we are in the Studio with Michael Smith, co-owner and general manager of West Michigan Photo Works of Holland, MI. Welcome to VTalk Radio's Photographer's Spotlight, Michael.
MICHAEL: Thank you.
JOHN: Now tell us a little bit about your photo lab down there in Holland.
MICHAEL: Well West Michigan Photo Works is a full service, professional photo lab. And what that means in a nutshell is that we offer the highest level of services and the highest level of products available. We happen to be a Kodak lab and that's not saying anything bad about Fuji or anybody else, but we've chosen Kodak to partner with us in this and we offer all of the services from photographic printing from digital files, we still accept film - both color and black and white - for processing and printing. Actually we're one of the few labs left in the country that do that on a professional basis. We do Geclay printing for artists and we all tie that together with what we think is an extremely high level of customer service based on us knowing who are customers are and hopefully over the years alot of our customers have become really good friends of ours.
JOHN: So, who are your customers then, Michael?
MICHAEL: Our customers range from full-time professional photographic studios that have multiple locations to the person who's got a day job or a night job that gets paid an hourly wage or a salary and yet they shoot photographs on the side. Maybe they do it for money, maybe they do it for their own personal gratification, but they're looking for something more than their going to get at the local Walgrens. We also work with a lot of artists who are doing limited edition reproductions. We produce their artwork for them. They then sell it at galleries, art shows, and the like, and again, they're looking for a really high level, high quality product to sell.
JOHN: Ok, let's talk about some of those products. Catering to an artist, per se, what kind of...obviously you're using Kodak paper, but are there other products that you cater towards the artist or maybe the professional photographer?
MICHAEL: Well if we talk about the artist, John, we would have products that would actually fall into the Geclay printing category. So we're using a wide format ink-jet printer. We happen to use the Epson brand of product line so our lead printers are the current series, the Epson 9800 series. We're using their ink set, their ultra-chrome ink sets. We're using their branded materials along with products like Hanon Mule, Crain and the like. The very high end stuff. And we're doing prints on canvas, we're doing prints on watercolor stocks and other stocks that are going to give them extremely archival truly museum quality reproductions. Some of those same products are used by photographers. Photographers that want a real unique look for their work and want to print on like a water color stock, we'll do photographic output onto that same stock. Canvas prints are becoming extremely popular. A lot of customers are using black & white on canvas for a unique look and it's a real high end, clean, contemporary look. Very popular and we're doing a lot prints onto Geclay for photographers. And for photographers, of course, the bread and butter is going to be the photo print. We're using old time technology in that we're using, you know, lazer printers, we're using LED printers so it's light, but it's exposing true photo paper so it's the old time photo paper. Still wet process, RE4, and then completed and finished for the photographer so you've got a real nice marriage of technology there to get to the best print.
JOHN: Ok, let's talk about custom design services. What kind of services in that area do you offer?
MICHAEL: We'll design products for photographers that they want to offer. A lot of that has to do with sizes that photographers want to offer. You know, one of our photographers recently started offering a 7" x 7" little proof book for engagements so we threw a 7" x 7" product together, offered it to him on our remote order entry system. We do a lot of proof books for our customers where we've designed dozens and dozens of templates that they can just drop their images in pre-defined templates and then put a real classy proof book product together for weddings, for seniors, for families, and what have you. We'll mount them and bind them together so they've got a completed product. You know, and we offer things like calendars that are pre-defined. Templates for sports and event photographers are a big thing these days so we've done memory mates where you've got a team image along with a personal image along with text saying who the child is, what the team is, what event it is and what have you. We've got all these pre-defined that people can just drag and drop images into and order through our online order system. And really we like to tell our customers that if there's something that you can dream up, that you think there's a market for, you know, give us an idea of what you want, and we'll do our best to get it available to you. And if in the end we can offer that to a broader range of our customers, we'll probably do that, of course, if our customers want to pay for the design service, then we'll allow them to use that product exclusively.
JOHN: What about photo restoration? Do you do any kind of service like that? I've got some old photographs of my grand parents that are starting to deteriorate. Can I take something like that to your lab?
MICHAEL: Yeah, absolutely. And as time goes on, and as people kind of look back and want to capture some of the old traditions, that's becoming a more and more important part of what we do. So it certainly, from time to time, will get people who will actually have old photographs that will bring in sometimes the old black & whites have started to silver and they're getting that deterioration. You know sometimes things just get beat up over time because of bad storage or bad handling, and we're able to scan those images in and do a complete digital restoration of that and then either give folks a CD or a DVD with the image on if they want to take care of printing it, or we'll actually do the prints for them and give them a product back that they can distribute to the family which is what happens most often. We see this a lot with reunions. We've got a big reunion coming up, you know, and we've got this turn of the century picture and the current ones we see a lot of are these huge panoramic. They're 8" high and 32" wide, and I've never seen one yet that wasn't rolled up into a little tube. So you can understand the problems that come along with that. We flatten them out, scan them, restore them if necessary, alot of them are in good shape because they've been rolled up in a tube, and then we'll do these prints, and then the prints will be handed out to the family. And they're a really neat memento of something that ties the current family back into the past. So it's an important part of life today and an important part of our business.
JOHN: Michael will you share the West Michigan Photo Works' lab website and contact information for our listeners today.
MICHAEL: Sure. We're on the worldwide web at wm.photoworks.com. The other way you can get in touch with us is by calling our toll free number and that toll free number works in the US and Canada, and that's (800) 365-2376 or if you want to email us you can email me directly at mike@wmphotoworks.com. We answer our phones from 8 until 5, Monday through Friday. If you do call us on off hours, we'll catch your message, and then we'll get back to you the next day. And, of course, we respond to email pretty much all the time.
JOHN: We are in the studio with Michael Smith, co-owner and general manager of West Michigan Photo Works of Holland, MI. You are listening to VTalk Radio's Photographer Spotlight. We're going to step aside for these important messages, we'll be right back.
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VTALK RADIO: VTalk Radio.ANNOUNCER: This VTalk Radio Photographer's Spotlight is sponsored by morephotos.com, the online photo sales solution to professional photographers worldwide.
ANNOUNCER: We now return you to VTalk Radio's Photographer Spotlight with your host, John Bentley.
JOHN: We are back in the studio
with Michael Smith, co-owner and general manager of West Michigan Photo Works of
Holland, MI. You are listening to VTalk Radio's Photographer
Spotlight. Welcome back to the program, Michael.
MICHAEL:
Well thanks, John.
JOHN: Now, we're talking about your photo lab down there in Holland, Michigan. A couple of things I wanted to ask you about. Being a photographer, an amateur really, but if I was to use your lab, can I send my photo files through the web to you guys?
MICHAEL: Absolutely, of course, today with the development of technology, that's really been the salvation to all labs. Back ten years ago, all of our work walked into our front door or into the back door via film. And so labs really were limited regionally. There were a few national labs, but by and large they were regional labs or even local labs, because people didn't really want to send their film through the mail. Understandably. But today with the internet, we get information in via the internet from customers from Canada, from all of the United States, and into Europe. Even from Great Britain we have a large customer there where they send us image files that their customers in the US and Canada want, we print them and distribute them out directly to the customers. So we have an online ordering system. We've adopted the system is generally is referred to as the Roe System. It's an online ordering system that's used by all of the leading labs in the country. I think they've got close to 300 customers right now so many of the professional photographers are already going to be familiar with the software. It's very intuitive. It offers all of our products and options and it's very easy to use. And that's available right from the start page of our website. That's the third option on our start page. It's called direct to lab software interestingly enough. And people can go to that. There's no cost to use it. We pick up all of the costs associated with that so it's something somebody can download, they can play with, they can make sample orders, and of course, if they'd like to, they can order products from us through there.
JOHN: Now, Michael, does your company offer online proofing and how exactly does that work?
MICHAEL: We do order online proofing. We've partnered with another Michigan based company called More Photos. They're out of Traverse City, Michigan. We've been partnering with them now for 6 years, and they do a great job at offering an online proofing system that has a real advantage over alot of the other online proofing systems in that they are strictly an online proofing company. They do not do anything in the way of taking percentages of sales or rebranding your products like some of the other ones do. So, when we partnered with them this was their philosophy and they've maintained that philosophy. So we integrate with them. Our customers can use their proofing service, or they can go directly with More Photos and use their proofing service. They do a great job. We did not need to reinvent the wheel so we look to those folks for their support.
JOHN: Ok, what about a photographer having you drop ship directly to their customers. Is that something that you do?
MICHAEL: Absolutely. It's an important part of our business, John. Many of our customers, like we talked before, they've got a day job or maybe their day job is shooting a lot of pictures. We do work for dozens and dozens probably even hundreds of sports and event photographers where they're at this time of year, they're going to be at football games or football practices, baseball is just finishing up, but volleyballs starting, cross country and track and that, and they're just shooting pictures. And when they get home at night, or if they've shot at night when they get back, typically they're uploading their pictures to a web hosting service, they're collecting orders, they're collecting money, but now what do they do. And what they do with us is that they just send us the order, either in conjunction with their webhosting service or they use our online ordering system, they send us the order, they send us their customer's name, and we print the order, we package it up, we send it directly to their customer. And in doing that, we use only the customer's name and information. So it looks as though the finished package is coming from the photographer, not from us. So we don't include ever any marketing materials, the return address, the information on the packaging is all from the photographer. Our photographers really like this program. It's been a real growth area for us as well. And one of the big things that I think is attractive to photographers is that we're very fair on the shipping and handling. It's not a profit center for us. I'm not going to tell you we lose money on it, because we don't. We certainly cover our costs, but for example, our minimum is only $2.50 and that covers probably 90% of the orders that go out simply get charged $2.50 shipping and handling and that does include the shipping postage. We will also do expedited handling if they want us to. And again, we'll just charge the upcharge that we get cost by our shipping folks.
JOHN: Let's talk about some of the cities and communities that you service down there in Holland. Now, obviously, you know dealing with photographers all over the nation, all over the world, that certainly makes your business a broader business, but what about the local area?
MICHAEL: The local area is really known as an arts community. We are very close to the Lake Michigan lakeshore, in fact, Holland, the city that we're in, is right on the Lake Michigan lakeshore. About a third of the way up between Chicago and Mackinac so there's a lot of lakeshore communities. And just like almost anywhere in the country, when you're by a big body of water, you attract artists and other people that have a little bit of money which artists follow people with money, of course, and so we've got a real nice arts community. We've also got a real good professional community of photographers. I know there's a lot of professional photographers everywhere in the country and everybody always says, "Wow my area is saturated." But our area really is saturated. Many, many fine quality professional photographers here, and we do service the majority of those which is good for our business. But being on the lake shore and being in Holland, I mean if anybody's ever heard of Holland, Michigan, the first thing that comes into their mind is tulips. So in the spring time we literally have hundreds and hundreds of thousands of people that come to our little 20,000 people community to look at tulips. So we're flooded with people in the spring looking at tulips. It's a great thing. It's great for the local economy, and of course, there's lighthouses on the Lake Michigan coast that people look at and take pictures of and you hate to see another picture of our famous lighthouse which is called Big Red, but yet that's what our customers sell that are selling photographic art. So, we're a vibrant arts community, we're a real good professional photographer's community. We've got a great number, actually there's 4 or 5 real active vibrant camera clubs for the amateurs and the serious amateurs and those are great things for teaching and they're kind enough to ask me to talk and critique images from time to time which I love to do. I love to get out and meet people and help them in their photography. It's a good business climate even though we're in Michigan, and we're suffering because the automotive climate on this side of the state we're more involved in officer furniture so we're a little more insulated and stable, but our arts community and our photographic community is really vibrant here.
JOHN: Michael will you kindly share your lab's website and contact information for our listeners today.
MICHAEL: I would be thrilled to, John. Our lab is West Michigan Photo Works our website on the world wide web is wm.photoworks.com. Our toll free number anywhere in the US and Canada is (800) 365-2376, and we're also available by email and I'd love for folks to email me directly and that's available at mike@wmphotoworks.com.
JOHN: Well I want to thank you for joining us today on VTalk Radio's Photographer Spotlight, Michael.
MICHAEL: Well thank you very much it's been a pleasure.
JOHN: We have been in the studio with Michael Smith, co-owner and general manager of West Michigan Photo Works of Holland, MI, and you have been listening to VTalk Radio's Photographer Spotlight with your host, John Bentley. Thanks for joining us today. Have a great day.
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