I have been printing people’s photos and artwork on canvas for about a decade now. It led me to develop one of the first online print on demand services devoted to printing on canvas, primarily for professional artists and photographers. Because of the timing and uniqueness it was as close to overnight successes as I could ask and keep up with.
One of the things you do whenever you launch a new business venture is make a lot of mistakes especially when you do not have anything to model it after. Jim Landers, a successful photographer friend of mine who runs Landers Photo School in San Antonio, Texas calls it a “Stupid Taxes”.
Within a few years I started to see other companies spring up also devoted to online canvas printing, but most of them consumer oriented. Now the competition is fierce and what could once be promoted on a shoestring budget costs substantially more and requires full time marketing people at a minimum. And if you are not careful you will find yourself closing your doors permanently. I have seen several competitors which look like they are about to do so. On the surface they look like they are going everything right but in all likelihood behind the scenes they are not. Two things that have kept us successful and above this fray is a solid customer base, superior quality with lower prices and automated technology to keep staff at a minimum.
Looking back I am sure the competition took away from some of our business but I never have dwelt too much on that. Instead I have looked at what they are doing differently that might work. Ironically some of them copied word for word certain things we have had in place which I find flattering but I also saw certain trends within the competition which we were not doing. When you see this you ask yourself are these things we need to implement as well. My approach was this: rather than jump in and implement certain policies and practices the competition was doing I decided to take note and see if the competitors continue to use these strategies.
After spending a few years doing this I made a decision that it was time we either implement some dramatic changes or we start all over again. You might think the obvious answer is to make the changes but really, starting all over again for us was a better option.
Fortunately I had the overall infrastructure in place so actual development and launch took weeks versus years. Apart from new site development and servers I just needed to come up with a different set of policies and practices and label them under a different name. Well that was what I did and it worked. My marketing staff got to work and we launched a consumer oriented version called “EZ Canvas, LLC”, also referred to as “EZCanvas.com”. In addition to more mainstream targeting it focuses implementing solutions which in a way the other company does not. I won’t say it did not have it’s own substantial costs but, but from feedback and ROI, I think we are doing something right. I suspect there will still be plenty of bumps in the road and the stupid tax agents will continue calling but at least this seems to have worked for me. I hope it can work for you too.
