Business and the recession

Whenever I see someone I haven’t spoken to in a while, one of the first questions that they ask is “how is Pixmonix doing in this downturn?”. Like my friend Jim Harrington, who runs a slide scanning business out of his house in MA (I linked his blog in my blogroll), things have been growing pretty substantially for us during the last 12 months, even through the downturn.

Why?

Economics. The cost of scanning larger collections of slides/negatives/photos has gone down over the last couple of years. This has opened up the market for many consumers and businesses to digitize their collections. Technologies have improved to allow us to be more efficient and the market has changed to force us to be more cost effective. These are good things. For the former, we have employed a number of new software technologies, hammered out a more efficient and responsive workflow, and put a strong focus on getting great results with less time commitment. For the changes in the marketplace we can “thank” a couple of our competitors that are outsourcing labor to India and central America.

Perceived need. Now that digital cameras have strongly outpaced film, most people are seeing the benefits of digital images compared to film. This makes them want to have all the old photos in digital form. Every day I see our customers embracing and loving the things that they do with their newly digitized images. In my personal life, I have seen great joy from my own relatives as a result of the scanning of old photos. A digital photo frame with scanned images makes a great gift, especially for older relatives.

Comfort spending. It think that preservation of photos is an area that gives people great joy and comfort, especially when the economy is doing so poorly.

What have your experiences been like during the downturn?