Today's Guest: Dave Pearson of Aperion INC. in Lake Forest, California
Today's Host: John Bentley
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Dave Pearson Expert PageANNOUNCER : This VTalk Radio Spotlight is brought to you by www.morephotos.com the online photo sales solution for professional photographers world wide. Welcome to the VTalk Radio Photographer Spotlight with your host, John Bentley.
JOHN: Today we are in the studio with Dave Pearson, he is the president of Aperion, Inc., and you are listening to VTalk Radio's Photography Spotlight. Thanks for joining us today, Dave.
DAVE: Well thank you for having me.
JOHN: Now you're out there in lovely Lake Forest California, is that correct? Yes, Orange County. Oh geez, we're very, very envious of you today here in Michigan it's very cold. It's only going to get to 70s here today. Well we've got a wind chill of 11 degrees today, here in Michigan. So, welcome to the program. Give us a little over view of the service that you're providing.
DAVE: Aperion is a provider of digital photo greeting templates to the photo marketing space. We sell our products nationally to photo labs who then turn around and re-sell our products along with a customer's pictures back to the consumers. So we're an add-on product to generate additional prints for the photo lab.
JOHN: You actually servicing labs then?
DAVE: Yeah we actually sell our products into labs and the labs place our software...our templates into their software to use.
JOHN: Now from what I understand, Aperion is one of the largest providers of digital photo templates and the largest manufacturer and distributor of printer balancing negatives in the photo industry. Is that correct?
DAVE: Yeah, we are. We started out doing the balancing negatives and have made a transition now almost fully to digital at this point so we are one of the success stories in the industry.
JOHN: So how long have you been in business?
DAVE: Aperion has been in business for 22 years now.
JOHN: Wow.
DAVE: It has a long history.
JOHN: And what about you working for Aperion, Dave?
DAVE: We bought Aperion about 3 years ago actually. So we've been involved with Aperion for the last three years which was really when we moved into the digital templates.
JOHN: Now you also media test kit and blind test rules. Can you tell me a little bit about those?
DAVE: Yeah, the media kits are used by a lab to initially set up equipment or as a kind of sanity check if a consumer comes in and says hey your flash reader isn't working or your CD-ROM is working. This is a known good sample that they can then place into the equipment to be able to, like I said do an initial setup on the equipment or to validate that it is not an issue with the equipment, but an issue potentially with the consumer and then the redirect back to a consumer at a lab level and say, you know, how do you save those to the CD, you know it appears to be a problem more with your media not with our equipment kind of a situation. And then we have a blind test rules which are in general amateur type pictures. We put some gray spots in there to be able to allow for some testing at the lab level. Generally, for like a secret shopper type program or something if the lab wants to see how their personnel are handling film or how the chemistry's balanced and how prints are coming back from standard good, known set of prints.
JOHN: So labs can order and this kind of equipment from you to basically test their equipment and their process?
DAVE: Yeah. Absolutely to kind of check out their process to make sure everything is up to snuff when they initially set it up and then gives them a way to be able to do some checking throughout the process to make sure things are still where they expecting them to be.
JOHN: Now, the labs provide quite a service to the professional photographer and amateurs in some cases too. You supply them with products and services to help them sell directly to the photographer. I see a number of templates that you provide are some very common and some kind of unique templates for the labs, like the, for instance, the sports cards templates and even event ticket templates. I thought those were pretty interesting products.
DAVE: Yeah, one of the things...everyone's busy right now this time of the year as we head into the holiday season printing cards or rather holiday cards, but one of the things that we work very hard to do with our customers and with our focus groups and how our designers working on constantly is trying to figure out ways of giving the consumer giving the photographer a reason to be able to present something new; a template perhaps to their customer, the actual consumer, so that they have something to print the rest of the through out the year. So you don't have to hear, gosh I wish I could make the same money that, you know, the other 11 months out of the year that I make between Thanksgiving and Christmas for templates I'd be doing great. So a lot of our focus now is spent trying to figure out ways of assisting the photographer or the lab owner in getting additional prints the rest of the year.
JOHN: Ok, before we take a little break here would you kindly share your website and contact information with our audience with our audience.
DAVE: Yes, our website is at www.aperioninc.com, and inquiries can be sent to info@aperioninc.com.
JOHN: Excellent. We are in the studio with the president of Aperion, Inc., Dave Pearson, of Lake Forest, California. You're listening to VTalk Radio's Photography Spotlight. We'll be right back after these important messages.
ANNOUNCER: This VTalk Radio Spotlight is sponsored by www.morephotos.com the online photo sales solution for professional photographers world wide.
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JOHN: We're in the studio with Dave Pearson, president of Aperion, Inc. Aperion is one of the largest providers of digital photo templates and the largest manufacturer and distributor of printer balancing negatives in the photo industry, and you are listening to VTalk Radio's Photography Spotlight. Welcome back to the program, Dave.
DAVE: Thank you for having me back.
JOHN: Now we've been talking about the service that you provide labs and the products that labs are buying from you, they are offering to photographers. So you're kind of like right at the very base of this whole industry, and you provide services for these labs and products for these labs to sell, and I see a lot of stuff on your website. A couple of things that struck me were, not only the basic products that all labs and photographers want to offer to their clients, but a couple of other unusual things. Tell us some of the more unusual products that you're selling to labs.
DAVE: Some of the newer things that we are finding are great upsells for labs and digital photographers, special photographers are magazine covers which are an automatic hit. We sell them a lot often with some scrap book pages. Obviously artistic edge borders are great. The event tickets that we spoke of earlier are a great cut up parts. And the event tickets are both great for the consumer, because they actually see that they think they get four components for one sheet of paper which obviously sells really well. Anything...any time you can put a baby's picture in there or a child's picture in there and have an excuse to give it away, you've got an automatic hit with the consumer. Things like certificates are becoming bigger. Calendars are a great way to get a consumer hooked. Obviously our two image designs now which are available and are used by many photographers becoming more and more available on the lab equipment as well.
JOHN: Now you mentioned magazine covers. You mean I could have my face placed on a studio magazine cover for my own pleasure I guess?
DAVE: Absolutely. Absolutely. Right there, you know, frameable if you wanted to.
JOHN: You know I've always wanted to be on the cover of the Rolling Stone...
DAVE: Well.
JOHN: Very good. What about you guys have something called Digital Photo Greetings. Tell me a little bit about that.
DAVE: The actual photo greetings themselves are kind of what you would expect to receive more around the Christmas season, the slimline a 4x8 sizes or 6x8 is becoming a little more popular at this point 5x7s. 4x6s can be printed on just about any paper and cut down if need be. So those are popular. We also now work around the rest of the year with these; Halloween, and other baby announcements, special events. We're doing a good job at trying to capture the events of trying to bring annual life cycle if you will so everything from new babies to graduations to Valentine's Day to Halloween and of course Christmas, the holiday season.
JOHN: Now what kind of paper are you guys using? Do you have specialized paper for different things?
DAVE: We actually provide the templates to the lab so it's up to the lab to outsource that or to actually they will print it themselves or to outsource it through a print source. We're actually...
JOHN: So it's all digital now that you're dealing with pretty much.
DAVE: Yeah, it's all digital. It's all the actual files are graphic files that we deliver.
JOHN: And why did you decide to get into this line of work in the first place, Dave?
DAVE: Well you know, we've always had a passion for photography, and we've always had a passion for technology so it was a great blending of both of those to be able to kind of extend opportunities for photographers and labs by generating some new really revenue streams for them through the use of the digital templates.
JOHN: What do you consider to be your niche, or what makes your company different from other companies out there, Dave?
DAVE: Well, obviously, since we've just started moving into this in a big way in the last four years or so, we're young and fresh and eager. We do come from a technology background so obviously things have moved more digital. We've adjusted quite quickly to many formats and actually can provide our templates for any equipment out there at this point. When something new comes online, we actually work with the manufacturers right from the get go to be able to make sure that our content is going to be compatible with their file structures and their requirements. So that's a big plus. We work with a large selection of in-house as well as outsource graphic design artists and do a lot of customer feedback and surveys to find out what it is that the photographers and labs are finding themselves so that we can make sure we hit those marks for them. We hit trade shows throughout the year and actually take feedback directly from consumers at those as well as from the labs and photographers to try and make sure that our products what ever niche they need to be in for them.
JOHN: Well, Dave, I want to thank you for joining us today on VTalk Radio's Photography Spotlight.
DAVE: I appreciate you having me on.
JOHN: Before I do let you go, why don't you throw your website and contact information again at our listening audience.
DAVE: Absolutely. It's www.aperioninc.com. And you can email us at info@aperioninc.com. Or you can always call us toll free (800) 727-6347.
JOHN: We've been in the studio with Dave Pearson, president of Aperion, Inc., of Lake Forest, California, and you've been listening to VTalk Radio's Photography Spotlight. Have a great afternoon.
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