At FotoTechnika Fine Art Imaging we never rest on our laurels (we prefer to rest on cushioned furniture and mattresses). A couple of decades ago when I was a graphics consultant in the offset printing industry my employer drove home two very important points. First, always buy “The Cadillac” — more accurately, purchase the best equipment available. His other point was to specialize in variety. In other words, purchase varied equipment and hire a diverse staff so that you can offer more services under one roof than your competitors. At FotoTechnika we live by those two points (as well as several others we have picked up along the way).
Commentary on my Commentary: You will find that my writing tends to be very stream-of-consciousness. I’m not intentionally imitating James Joyce and I do try to tie it together by the end of the entry. But alas, this is who I am – my daughter is the novelist in the family – if you get tired of me I’ll see if she will put a couple of chapters of one of her children’s novels in this spot someday. Now back to the Journal.
As we were transitioning from the 20th to the 21st century we made the conscious decision to specialize in fine art and historic reproductions, but with that specialization we wanted to maintain as many of our current photographic processes as possible. Concurrently we wanted to develop other “unusual” niche specialties for our customers who are artists, photographers and historical preservationists. We figured optical processes like copying images to transparency film (slides) and the ability to process the film in-house were services worth keeping, especially since the majority of our competitors were relegating their optical equipment to the trash bin. We also felt that we should hold on to our B&W lab, mainly because we like to tinker in the darkroom ourselves, but every so often someone is willing to pay us to tinker. We made a commitment to keep silver halide (true photographic) printers as primary production tools even as we were purchasing large format inkjet printers.
We also purchased high quality, small format inkjet printers so we could produce smaller versions of our large format pieces to sell as complementary products. Some might call these items “value-added” products because they squeeze more profit out of limited edition images. Many of our customer’s customers can’t necessarily afford full size, limited edition prints, but maybe they might be able to afford merchandising products such as note cards or coffee table books.
With the help of the good folks at Crane & Co. we were able to find museum quality note card stock that we could print via our small format Epson printers. We have sold a variety of different sizes – we’ve even printed wedding invitations on these papers. Several of our customers have had great success marketing their art on these lovely cards. They expose their images to an even larger buying public when their customers send these “suitable for framing” cards to their friends and family. Producing these cards started our creative juices flowing. We thought, wouldn’t it be nice to create a larger collection of artists’ work in a smaller format — something like the great coffee table books of Ansel Adams or Edward Weston — but entirely custom, one-of-a-kind books?
Then last Fall we had an unusual opportunity. A beloved great aunt on my mother’s side of the family passed away. One of my favorite cousins from South Carolina came down for the funeral and with her she brought a scrapbook of my great aunt’s family, her mother’s family and my grandmother’s family (three siblings and their extended families). The scrapbook was a treasure of letters, newspaper clippings and photos, most of which I had never seen before. I asked her if we could keep it and make a few copies. Of course, as usual, we went overboard. We scanned all of the images arranged them artistically using PhotoShop and printed them on our Noritsu digital minilab and Epson 4000 printer. We then put the images back to back in 8 ½ x 11 PrintFile pages to create an 84 page memory book, to be more accurate, sixteen copies of an 84 page memory book in three ring binders (I told you we went overboard). When we gave the books as Christmas gifts they were a big hit. Saundra (my wife, and FotoTechnika’s president) and I decided that we wanted to do more of this kind of project.
After Christmas we started researching how we could make more “professional” memory books and coffee table books. We contacted the folks at Crane’s to see if they had scored and drilled pages that could fit into a Chicago Post style album, similar to what is used in the scrapbooking industry. They referred us to ArtZ, a small company up in Bozeman, Montana. ArtZ has some really beautiful products and their pre-scored, pre-drilled pages are on Crane’s Museo II fine art paper which can be printed on both sides. Their products are ideal for us to print coffee table books of our Fine Art Giclées and Fotogiclées using our Epson 4000 and 4800 printers.
We also wanted to find a source to bind our silver halide prints into a coffee table book. In the back of my mind I remembered an Italian system that was used for wedding albums. Recently I called a representative of the binding system and talked to him at length. The system is really nice and of very high quality, but limited in that it has specific sizes that can be produced and the binding system itself is the size of a small car and the price of a luxury car. I’ve never shied away from spending money on equipment (see tip #1 above), but I’ve never really been one for all-in-one machines. I’d much rather purchase components so we can change out individual pieces as technology improves. In an email the representative inquired if I had ever heard of a company called ExactBind. I said no, to which he said “That’s funny, their home office is in your city and they might provide a unique alternative.”
To make a long journal entry a little bit longer, Saundra and I visited Frank and Charlene Millis at ExactBind and fell in love with their equipment, their ingenuity, and their dedication to provide innovative products to the photo and graphic industries. We found that we have very similar goals in our respective fields – that is to be the best and to always think outside of the box. In the near future we will detail some of the products that we plan to offer using ExactBind systems. For the time being we are in a “product development” mode. BUT....... I’m fond of saying “If you’ve got the money, honey we’ve got the time” — if you are game to try something new, so are we. So come up with some custom projects with regard to coffee table or memory books and we’ll see what we can do to make it happen.
We are “bound” and determined to make high quality bookbinding one of our more unusual services to expand the variety of products you can purvey to your customers.
Until next time…..
John
