Polaroid Thinks Faster Digital Photo Printing Kiosks Are The Answer
from the trying-to-bring-back-old-glory dept
Polaroid has been in quite a bit of trouble for some time. They were looking like one hit wonders, with their instant photo thing that never really found an adequate sequel. Although they've restructured, cut their costs down drastically, and are actually making some money on film again, they know it's not a long term proposition. So, to try to bring themselves back into the modern photographic world, they're focusing on digital photo printing kiosks. Kiosks? Isn't that exactly the same thing that plenty of others are already doing? Yes, but, the Polaroid kiosks are different because they're... faster. No, I'm not sure which executive at Polaroid thinks that the reason people aren't rushing around to photo printing kiosks is that they're too slow. The other part of Polaroid's strategy is to put the kiosks just about everywhere, so that as soon as you take that photo, you'll be able to get a printout (just like an old Polaroid camera, minus the going to find a kiosk and putting in your credit card part). I could see this being useful every once in a long while, but not something to base an entire business around. The cost of setting up and maintaining these kiosks seems likely to outweigh the revenue they bring in.
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Words you don't want to see as a stockholder...
"It has to be their future," thinks Ulysses Yannas, an industry analyst at Buckman, Buckman & Reid. "They don't have a choice."
Yeah, I'm going to up my 401K plan and have them transfer all of my money into Polaroid shares, right now...
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fast counts
I'm not saying it will work, but we all have seen dumber ideas take off.
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Right Idea, Wrong Implementation
I use the Kodak 4x6 photo-printing kiosk at the CVS drugstore. It does a nice job and I find it quite useful.
Compared with the cost of ink and photo paper at home, it seems to make sense to use the Kodak kiosk. However Polaroid appears to be missing this point. The Kodak kiosk costs 29 cents per print, but Polaroid charges 59 cents each, more than the cost to print at home.
One of the beauties of taking digital photos is being able to crop and edit your own photos before printing. For one thing, you can make a better photo. For another thing, a digital photo is not in a 4x6 ratio, so it is nice to be able to crop the photo to 4x6 dimensions yourself rather than letting the machine decide where to crop. The Kodak kiosk allows the user to crop and edit the photo, but the Polariod kiosk does not.
I prefer to do the cropping at home, so I prepare all of the photos at home and then put the files onto a CD that can be loaded into the machine. It isn't clear whether or not the Polariod kiosk can accept images on a CD, or only from a memory card.
So if I can't edit the photos, and if it costs more than printing the photos myself, the Polaroid machine doesn't really seem useful. It really isn't any different than printing photos from film, but it costs more than printing a roll of film.
The only advantage of the Polaroid machine is the speed. The Kodak machine prints about three photos a minute, so I have to go browse magazines for 15 minutes while the photos print. It would be great to print 20 or 30 photos per minute as noted for the Polaroid machine.
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Re: Right Idea, Wrong Implementation
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Re: Right Idea, Wrong Implementation
Velocitimage Group Pty Ltd,has just completed 5 weeks of retail testing in Sydney-to involve-listen,watch,and talk to customers, during this process, some 500 customers interacted with our pxidigital® digital kiosk hub enjoying “instant gratification”® with the world’s fastest kiosk printing better than minilab quality in 4 secs per 6”x4” digital print.
With more than 50% of customers claiming, we are so far in front of Kodak Kiosk print quality and speed, and ease of use.
We now plan to roll-out into the retail space globally, with the support of a strong banking alliance to fully fund major retailers/wireless Telco’s-to date we have $A90m of fully funded proposals in the Australian market, during the trial with a pending international rights deal for 35,000 pxidigital® kiosks to be roll-out over next 5 years.
Our customer turn around time is 2 times if not 3 times faster than our competition; it is a combination of our very clean GUI, easy to use appealing to non-PC savvy customers and new high-speed engine technology.
We can print in express mode some 40 6”x4” prints in 3 mins-or over 700 per hr-this from a stand-alone kiosk that requires no out side assistance, operates out in busy mall spaces, just like an ATM.
We are network connected, payment via all bank-credit cards, prepaid, or loyalty cards.
Velocitimage, pxidigital,”instant gratification” are trademarks of Velocitimage Group Pty Ltd.
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Right Idea, Wrong Implementation
With more than 50% of customers claiming, we are so far in front of Kodak Kiosk print quality and speed, and ease of use, see image of customers using pxidigital® kiosk at our first major mall installation www.westfield.com Penrith ,Sydney.
Barrie Harrop said “We are planning to franchise pxidigital® kiosks, across the global market, with first country rights deal for China already in place”.
Barrie Harrop said “Our customer turn around time is up 2 times if not 3 times faster than our competition; it is a combination of our very clean GUI, easy to use appealing to non-PC savvy customers and new high-speed engine technology”.
Barrie Harrop said “We will be able in production models to print in “print all” mode do up to 50 6”x4” prints in 3 mins-or over 900 per hr-this from a stand-alone kiosk that requires no out side assistance, operates out in busy mall spaces, just like an ATM”.
We will be network connected, payment via all bank-credit cards, prepaid, or loyalty cards.
Velocitimage, pxidigital,”instant gratification” are trademarks of Velocitimage Group Pty Ltd.
About Velocitimage Group Pty Ltd, founded in 2004, has created a global branded high-speed digital kiosk venture-that offers better than lab quality instant digital prints, assembly capability up 500 kiosks per week, in UK/EU, Asia/Pacific, with attractive vendor financing options for major rollouts.(subject to approval process)
Media Contact Barrie Harrop, CEO Velocitimage Group Pty Ltd,level 6/165 Walker Street,Nth Sydney,NSW, Australia,tel+61418818423,bharrop@ozemail.com.au
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HP Kiosk down well worn path
Mr. Joshi lead the last mess with a HP/Kodak kiosk venture, they spent millions of dollars, built a new plant-went to market with poor response to these kiosks then shut it down before they where delivered to handful of customers, saying they where in the “wrong space”-and home printing was where they should be--expect this is panic move to shore up sliding home printing.
Ink jet in the public space just is not good enough quality at a retail level--it has lots of problems with getting the right mix of colors on prints-and with paper having to absorbed the ink at high speed-there will be issues and un happy customers, let alone archival quality of about 20-30yrs these prints begin to fade within 2yrs, our 100yrs archival values at pxidigital®, we offer customers “instant gratification”® expect our customer turn around time will be 2-3 times faster than the HP kiosk, with superior quality digital prints, just spent 14mths retail testing with fantastic customer responses most say we are way in front of the Kodak on demand kiosk quality.
The above are registered trademarks of Velocitimage Group Pty Ltd.
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move over Kodak on-demand kiosks
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Digital on-demand kiosks
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