CEA Industry Insight : Painting a Positive Picture For Creative Photo Products

All of this challenges us to create new technology tools and new photo products. Photo books, cards and calendars may have been the beginning...but new offerings such as photo retrieval tools like Xoopit and social compass tools like Loopt are important. And very large-scale poster prints, collages, multi-dimensional cards and prints, timeline journals and keepsake products that are tied to their preferred social interaction sites may be just what this new customer craves.

There’s also good news ahead when we take a look at the characteristics of Boomer grandparents. Boomer moms were the first generation of mothers to work full-time outside of the home. They learned technology-productivity software on the job as it was invented. Now they are shifting to lifestyle technology. With more time available, they are embracing the fun of digital photography through photo and social-networking sites.  

This opens up more new product opportunities for photofinishers to reach the Boomer market, such as photo-restoration services, scanning services, software, photo books and more.

So, Fujifilm is optimistic. Yes, there still will be technology changes as the industry struggles with how to handle increasing demands for storage, image retrieval needs, new output products...but these changes are not as fundamental as the shift from analog to digital we experienced. The underlying demand for photo products will continue, and we are excited about the opportunities it brings.

*Sources: U.S. Census data; Iconoculture, an emerging cultural trends research service; The Center for Media Research; and industry sources including IDC, InfoTrends, Photofinishing News and PMA

Joellyn Gray is Director of Marketing at Fujifilm U.S.A., Inc. with responsibility for Customer Marketing and Market Research.