2022 Recap

As the world returned to normality, business began again as usual… but we didn’t. Committed to pushing forward through innovation, our 2022 was a year like no other. As our team grew, we churned out new features, upped our marketing presence, and finessed our support model. Our commitment to being thought leaders in the industry also came to fruition this year with our School Photography Industry Report. This year was full of new beginnings, from new conferences to illuminating webinars. So let’s take a look at Fotomerchant’s 2022.

Team Expansion

Our relatively small team grew exponentially this year. After two company acquisitions (in 2021) and many hires later, we have over doubled in size. The more, the merrier, we say! With a more significant presence and more products than ever before, we are looking to expand further to keep up. The two companies we acquired were Simplephoto and Elementice. Many of the original teams from these companies are still with us, so this year the main focus was pulling together to build one united Fotomerchant team. We are pretty chuffed with how it has gone. As 2022 comes to a close, I can confidently say that we are all working towards the same goal, and it feels amazing.

We have all bonded over our love for pranks. We especially love pranks that make the CEO confused as to why everyone else is upside down. :wink:

Leadership Summit

2022 marked a year of putting plans into action for us. We have always had big dreams, and this year many came to fruition mainly because of our team size expansion. More hands on deck always make a difference.

The first-ever leadership summit occurred this year. Leaders from all departments: sales, development, customer support, marketing, etc., gathered in sunny Byron Bay. We had some of our US team leaders fly over as well, which was exciting. Each team leader presented past achievements, past failures (we’re all human, after all), and future direction plans. This was hugely successful as many new connections between problems were found through inter-departmental solutions. After the leadership summit, the rest of the team was presented with the findings of the summit and the new direction that developed. This meeting of minds kick-started our current approach, which we feel super clear in.

New Features That Excite Us

Choosing just a handful of features to highlight in this recap was more challenging than expected. Why? There were so many dang good ones! The developers sure were busy this year. Below I’ve linked a few crowd favorites. Click the header to view our knowledge base documentation on the feature.

Bulk Subject Editing

This is a new feature in Studio that packs a punch. All your data correction dreams have come true with this release. You can now edit all the subject data for a session in bulk; no more individual subject editing. Say hello to a streamlined workflow. While bulk editing, you can perform various actions to update or manipulate the data.

Auto Cropping Orders to Direct Fulfillment Labs

For those using a direct fulfillment lab, you can turn on auto-cropping. This allows Studios to opt-in for images to be automatically cropped by the system to match the aspect ratio of the ordered product. Automation is the way of the future, so jump on board and optimize your workflow.

Paper Order Imports

Need a solution for fulfilling paper orders? We heard you. You can now upload a data file to Studio and have it send the orders directly to your integrated lab with your online orders. There is a small wholesale charge for using this feature, so contact your support team on Slack for more information.

Conferences We Attended

With our team size growing this year, we had more opportunities to spread our wings and attend new conferences.

SPAC 2022

The usual suspect, SPAC 2022, was a great success. With our presence being the largest yet, we made a splash. We had a new look this year, our marketing team had been hard at work, and it sure paid off. We looked amazing!

Our end-to-end workflow solution was our main talking point this year. We wanted to demonstrate how you can use us in an end-to-end capacity or slot us into the missing parts of your workflow.

Here are some of the highlights:

  • Backgrounds Masterclass with 36Pix

  • School Photography Industry Report 2022 – Interim Results

  • Growing as a Volume Studio with Strawbridge

  • Live Case Study with Prime Sports

  • Australia Day Party

Oh, and how could I forget! The winner of our trip to Australia competition. Congratulations, Greg Chatmon. We can’t wait to see you down under in 2023!

SPOA 2022

This was a new conference for us, and boy oh boy, was it great! SPOA, aka School Photographers of America, was held in Houston, Texas. A small but mighty team attended this conference. This was a successful trip for us, and we can’t wait to see how the same event turns out next year.

As you can see from the images below, our out-of-this-world space party was a smashing success.

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School Photography Industry Report

We’re all self-proclaimed data nerds, so the School Photography Industry Report was a significant achievement for us this year. This report was a joint initiative between Fotomerchant and School Photographers of America (SPOA). We believe that if we can progress the industry with knowledge, we all grow together. Our big focus is providing studios with data they can use to make educated decisions. Why don’t you take a look for yourself? Download the report and prepare to have your mind blown.

Want some more information about the report? Read this blog to learn more.

Webinars

We rolled out our webinars with full force this year. Providing content for the industry of value is paramount to us; you also got to see some of our very handsome/beautiful faces. Now that’s what I call a win-win. Here are some of your favorite webinars:

Our very own Christian Perry gave us a wonderful webinar this year. Filled with Texan charm and illuminating industry knowledge, we recommend you give this one a listen. On-ground knowledge is something we take very seriously here at Fotomerchant. Christian allows us to keep our finger on the pulse of what matters and the pressing issues in the industry. By knowing what works and what needs improvement, we can streamline your workflow with precision and evidence.

After partnering with the good folk at 36Pix, we celebrated with a webinar. Some people celebrate with champagne, while others opt for an invigorating webinar, know your poison, I guess? Our industry report results illuminated the importance of backgrounds. Your customers want good, premium backgrounds! The people at 36 Pix understand this, so we decided to chat about it. We caught up with Robert Ste-Marie, founder & president of 36Pix, to discuss some of the challenges studios have faced when using backgrounds and how we can alleviate some of these issues. Give this webinar a listen to peep into the future of background use in shopping carts.

We are committed to providing an end-to-end solution that you can easily slot into your workflow. Preorder automation was a missing piece of the puzzle we are delighted to have resolved. No more preorder handling via other systems if you use one of our direct fulfillment labs. Preorders can now utilize subject matching for smart-automated image populations and direct fulfillment to our integrated labs. This webinar will run you through the advanced auto-order population system. We have you covered, from automated identification of pose selections to tag rules like sibling or buddy photos.

Blogs

We ramped up our blog post-production on our mission to provide great value content. Here are some of our popular 2022 blogs, go on, take a look!

This was one of our most outstanding achievements this year for our business and the industry in general. We see data worth much of its weight in gold, and we think you should too. Our industry report provided brilliant data that both surprised and reaffirmed our guesses. This blog introduced some results we pulled out of the survey, but I recommend you also take a look at the final report I linked above.

Make marketing pain-free with templated session templates. Rest easy with our new capabilities to trigger marketing campaigns via stages in your sessions. Take a look at this blog to learn how to set up marketing at the start of the season and alleviate promotional stress.

This feature made a splash in 2022. Allowing customers to opt into your marketing so you don’t need to rely on clients to provide emails is essential. Our opt-in feature collects information in a user-friendly form that will help you match your images to customers and, in turn, collect those sweet customer emails. Sound interesting? Read through this blog and reach out to your friendly Fotomerchant human to learn how to implement this feature.

Awww

We want to end on a sentimental note. Thank you to everyone who has supported us throughout the past year; you know who you are. We hold all the industry relationships we have established close to our hearts and love the space we work in. Y’all are a good bunch. Speaking of good eggs, I’d like to express how lovely this team is to be a part of. We work in an amazing community that becomes strengthened by the day.

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SPAC: Looking Back

As SPAC 2023 looms, we are feeling nostalgic. Let’s take a stroll down memory lane and look at SPAC times gone by.

SPAC History Lesson

SPAC? If you haven’t had the privilege of attending this event, let me run you through it. SPAC, otherwise known as School and Sports Photographers Association of California, is a nonprofit volunteer organization that annually holds a conference in Las Vegas. I’m not just telling you this information for trivia night points; SPAC and Fotomerchant have an intertwined past. We honestly would not be where we are without SPAC.

In 1956, SPAC began with a small group of photographers from California meeting in Vegas to network and socialize. Since these humble beginnings, SPAC now welcomes photographers, studios, eCommerce providers, printing labs, and many more. SPAC currently serves as the acronym for School Photographers Annual Conference. This shows that SPAC now serves the needs of all school photographers in the US, not just California. Traveling from all corners of the country to gather, SPAC has genuinely become something with intangible value.

Fotomerchant & SPAC’s History

2016

We go way back. It all started in January 2016. We were doing some market research and became interested in the high-volume industry. On a reconnaissance mission, we tried to gather as much information as possible from this event. Turning up to this event as attendees, our CTO Derek Clapham and lead developer Gabriel Moreira had their eyes opened to the potential for innovation and growth in the school photography industry. 

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It was truly illuminating. That’s not all that happened this year; more importantly, new friendships were forged that laid the foundation for many SPACs to come.

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2017

Fast forward to 2017, and we were rocking up with our very first booth. Well, almost a booth. More like a trestle table. We all have to start somewhere. A small yet successful affair, we learned a lot from this year. You would have seen an early version of commerce if you had caught us at SPAC during this time. We also picked up our first large customer, so it was a successful mission all around.

This year also marked the first of Derek’s talks. The room was packed with around 220 people.

2018

This was the year things began to pick up for us. We had our very own booth with a snazzy backdrop to match. Four of us attended, pumped to show off our commerce solution with new expanded functionality.

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2019

In 2019 we were given the opportunity to occupy a double booth set up. Our presence was growing, and with this, our Australia day party was born. With almost double the team members from 2018 now here to help out, we got to work providing a fantastic party in one of the hotel suites.

2020

This year marked a turning point for us. Our team had gained in size and had an impressive new booth set up. With a large-scale backdrop, we were making a statement, and it worked. Attracting many new faces, we spent most of our conference giving demo, after demo, after demo.

Derek gave a presentation to a room packed like sardines. The buzz generated in this room was electric as people stood outside the door to get a glimpse of our new capture device. We were making some serious innovative movements with a new hardware workflow solution.

This was the second Australia day party we hosted. In the suite, the party was a raging success. Party-goers posed for photos and had their backgrounds knocked out.

2021

You might be thinking 2021? I don’t remember that SPAC. Well, there is a good reason for that. This was the first ever virtual SPAC conference, meaning two things for us. One, we saved a lot of money on airfares, and two, very late nights. We transformed our Sydney office space into a demo recording studio and got to work.

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Our usual Australia day party also became virtual. Hosted in our CEO’s house, we gathered for a day of BBQ’ing, pie making, and poorly timed jokes due to zoom lags.

We also held our first-ever competition this year. The mission? Provide us with the most creative use of our background knockout feature. The prize? Win a trip down under! We had some amazing entries come through, and then we had a challenging task ahead of choosing a winner.

The winner ended up being Dennis Vargas! Enjoy his entry. We know we did.

2022

Our presence this year was the largest yet. Joining forces with the Simplephoto team, we had quite a large crew. Last year we also rocked up to SPAC with our new branding. Our booth has never looked better, thanks to the hard efforts of the new marketing team. We have come a long way since our 2017 setup of a trestle table and two laptops!

We presented our end-to-end workflow solution this year. We wanted to show attendees we have you covered, right from snapping the photograph to a customer placing their order. This mission remains unchanged; use us in an end-to-end capacity or slot us into the missing parts of your workflow. We work the way you work!

We had some invigorating conversations during our presentations in 2022. Here are some of the highlights:

  • Backgrounds Masterclass with 36Pix

  • School Photography Industry Report 2022 – Interim Results

  • Growing as a Volume Studio with Strawbridge

  • Live Case Study with Prime Sports

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Our Australia day party was also a smashing success. With a bunch of new team members, this was an excellent way to get to know each other.

As we did the preceding year, we hosted our Win a Trip to Australia competition again. This year’s competition involved attendees creating their boarding passes and answering a simple question; how would you make a kangaroo better and faster? A simple but complex question, we received some very interesting answers.

Greg Chatmon from Southern Images reigned supreme in 2022 as he won the trip. Here was his entry…Looking forward to seeing you soon, Greg!

Bring On 2023

We can’t wait to see what this upcoming SPAC brings us. As usual, we suspect long nights and lots of amazing new friendships.

We want to round up this blog with a message to SPAC.  Thank you.

Thank you for all you have done for us over these years. Since our first 2016 SPAC experience, we have felt immensely supported by the great people who make up the SPAC committee. As we strive to innovate the industry, problem-solving with the newest technology available, SPAC has been there. Always providing fantastic feedback and support, we couldn’t imagine this industry without you guys and gals!

Now that we have felt all the feels, I have a message for you, reader. 2023. SPAC. Be there or be square. 

Our team will attempt to get all the shut-eye we can on our flights in preparation for any burning questions you have. So come ready. We know we are. 

See you real soon!