Archive for September, 2006

Don’t print at home.

September 20, 2006 at 1:27 pm · Filed under Articles

I found this excellent article on Ray Shaw’s website.  Ray Shaw is a computer expert based in Brisbane.  His site can be found at http://www.rayshaw.com.au/

Don’t print photos at home

Created: 09-Jun-2006
Last Modified: 09-Jun-2006

I defer to the PC Authority May 2006 magazine and it’s in depth test of inkjet printers. I highly recommend you buy this excellent magazine.They tested a range of popular inkjet printers for quality of print, ink usage efficiency, cost of a 6” x 4” photo print and cost of an A4 photo print. The costs include paper and ink and ignore the purchase price or replacement head costs (unless the head is part of the ink cartridge).

There are some very real shocks about the cost of using inkjet printers in real life (versus controlled testing in a laboratory).

Perhaps the most shocking outcome is that using inkjet printers sporadically really increases the cost enormously as most have to clean the heads (using your precious ink) each time you turn them on. I immediately went into my printer’s driver and disabled auto power off – the cost of electricity is far lower than ink. In some printers around half the ink is used to flush the heads (my favourite Canon is one but Epson did not fair well either).

Print costs were also well above manufactures claims (used sporadically instead of printing continuously until the ink runs out).

Printer Efficiency 6 x 4 A4
Canon iP2200 76% $0.97 $2.87
Canon iP5200R 52% $1.49 $5.05
Canon iP8500 58% $1.61 $5.52
Epson R250 50% $0.95 $3.99
Epson R350 63% $0.91 $3.84
Epson R800 55% $1.11 $4.67
Lexmark P915 95% $1.77 $6..63
Lexmark Z734 89% $0.91 $3.00
HP 8230 $1.24
HP 8450 95% $1.06 $3.79

Bottom line is that store based photo printing at anywhere from 20 cents to 50 cents is well below the real cost.

Please note that these photo printing exercises don’t equate to normal black and spot colour printing but the ink wastage from turning on or off a printer will have a major effect

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Market Research – Who is your customer?

September 19, 2006 at 1:23 pm · Filed under Business Optimiser

Do you know who your customers are?  Identifying your target market can be a time consuming and tricky process.  While organisations like PMA give us great figures on the state of our industry, we can learn more by looking at our surrounding area and determining our target market.

 Have a chat to your shopping centre manager. They should be able to give you figures on the demographics of your centre.

Ask the following questions:

What are the centre’s demographics? What suburbs do shoppers come from? How old are they?  What is their income?

What are the centre’s door counts? What is the busiest time of day? Which is the busiest day of the week?

THEN be ruthless and ask similar questions about YOUR store:

Who shops in your store? Mainly young teenagers, Mum with kids or older retirees?

What do people buy? What is your number one selling product (eg 10 x 8 frames) and  service(eg 6x 4 prints)?

What are some services that customers ask for that you currently DON’T sell?

All this information can be distilled to get an accurate picture of YOUR customer. You can then begin to target advertising, displays and special offers based on what your particular customers NEED, rather on just what you need to sell.

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Welcome!!

September 19, 2006 at 1:19 am · Filed under General

Welcome to the Australian Photographic Engineering weblog.  We will regularly add interesting articles and tips relating to the photographic industry in Australia.

Check our “Business Optimiser” blog for heaps of tips on making YOUR business the best it can be.

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