Seven years ago, PhotobookShop started off in a tiny warehouse in Melbourne’s Docklands.
In spite of seeing “a huge decline in printing 4x6 prints and other sorts of single photo prints,” Mr Thomas decided to start a business printing photo books.
“Seeing companies overseas doing something similar it made sense to do something in Australia,” Mr Thomas said.
Photobooks are like old-fashioned photo albums, but instead of physically inserting individual photographs, digital photos and decorations are designed online then printed as a completed hardcover book.
“[Customers] download the software, they install it on the computer and then from there they can they can select which product they want to make, select the template, upload their photos and then personalise it with nice little captions, frames and masks,” Mr Thomas explained.
The company's factory in Melbourne then prints and posts back a bespoke photo book to customers.
The books are mostly used for collating family holidays, weddings and special events.
Beating the competition
“Before we launched, there were a number of players in Australia that made photo books,” Mr Thomas said.
However, most customised photobooks on the market were quite expensive and are often upwards of $100.
Seeing an opportunity, Mr Thomas jumped in head first and created a more cost-effective product.
“We thought that's not fair, that's not good value for money and that's where we came in.”
Mr Thomas designed software in-house, speeding up manufacturing processes and keeping his costs low.
As a result, he quickly became a major producer of photo books in Australia and started expanding overseas and into different product ranges.
“Last year we probably produced over 200,000 orders, so we've seen a consistent 20 to 30 percent growth each year.”
“We've just launched a range of Christmas gifts, stockings and sacks and Christmas ornaments, we do wood prints, calendars, jigsaw puzzles.”
Challenges of the net
Despite the company's cost-effectiveness, internet businesses still face cost challenges.
“Being online is just as expensive these days as having a shop front,” Mr Thomas said.
“You know rent, server space and bandwidth is expensive so it's not a home operation where you can simply run it from home.”
As a former web programmer, Mr Thomas said user-friendly software and efficient computer programs are crucial.
He and his team design their software in-house to save on cost.
“All that software is ours, we've developed that so that's sort of our edge on how we've grown so quickly because we have made efficient software.”
Mr Thomas also said keeping up with new technology has kept PhotobookShop ahead of the game.
“We want to be able to offer customers a mobile app, where they can just simply upload the pictures and order a product very quickly.”
Expanding the business
Mr Thomas said reaching out to new customers is vital.
“We're finding our customer base is generally female, 40 plus, so we need to start attracting the younger customers.”
“That's where our focus is now, going towards that younger generation where they have plenty of photos and rarely print them because they're time poor.”
Today PhotobookShop's website offers multiple language services and is expanding globally.
“Australia is quite a small captive market. There's 20 odd million people in Australia - Europe is 300 million people.”
Despite the online push, Mr Thomas is positive about continuing to enlarge his market share.
“The more smartphones out there, the more photos taken, the more chances people will make one of our products out of it.”
Mr Thomas has built a business by defying the online push, and says people still treasure hard-copy photos.
“Today everyone takes lots of digital photos on their smartphones … this allows customers to then put those back in reality where they can share those moments, those memories, the most important things in life with their family and their friends.”
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