Brief

HP set to exploit Retail Imaging

The company’s retail printing initiative combines retail outlets and Snapfish’s India-centric Web site

L to R : V Krishnan, GM- Consumer Sales, Imaging and Printing Group (IPG), HP India; Mandira Bedi; V Narayanan, Director –Retail Photo Solutions, IPG, HP APAC and Japan; and Bala Parthasarthy, VP - Online Imaging, IPG, HP APAC and Japan

When the world is taking the zeros and ones path for all activities, IT giants look to capture small opportunities and turn them into big businesses. This is what HP is doing with the world of digital photography. Recently, the company made a foray into the retail photo market with the launch of ‘HP retail photo solution.’ It will provide consumers its wide range of expertise in this space. From home-based printing to retail printing outlets to Internet printing retail, it has covered various aspects to attract customers.

Talking about the printing solutions and focus on customer comfort, V Krishnan, GM- Consumer Sales, Imaging and Printing Group (IPG), HP India said, “We have printing solutions for home, online and retail.”

About nine percent of the 45 trillion pages printed worldwide are from digital media and that’s expected to rise. Apart from its home printing solutions, HP is coming up with retail photo solutions consisting of Photosmart Studio and the Photosmart pm 1000 Microlab Printer, and plans to set up about 3,000 retail photo outlets offering these solutions by 2010. It will offer end-to-end digital photography printing services with high quality photos which last five times longer than traditional ones (Wilhelm Imaging Research).

Consumers can get their photos onto key chains, mugs, T-shirts, mouse pads, greeting card, posters, calendars and coasters at a HP retail photo outlet. The company will even setup photo kiosks. These retail outlets and kiosks will be rolled out at a wide variety of locations including supermarkets, photo specialty stores, electronics stores, office product stores and traditional photo service stores, photo specialty stores, electronics stores, office product stores and traditional photo service stores.

“In India, three billion images are being printed but there is a huge gap in the number of printing outlets. The cost of getting into this business is now fraction of what it used to be earlier so we are exploiting this opportunity,” said V Narayanan, Director –Retail Photo Solutions, IPG, HP APAC and Japan.

The company has also announced its Web-based retail printing initiative in the form of its recent acquisition—Snapfish. This site will provide image printing and sharing to its users. Snapfish will provide printing at the rate of Rs. 2.95 (4x6 inches). The images will be delivered at the customers doorsteps in two to five days. “Our ultimate goal is to make www.snapfish.co.in, the site of choice for Indian consumers which will help them preserve memories. Apart from this we even provide free album and image storage space with sharing on purchase from the site,” explained Bala Parthasarthy, VP - Online Imaging, IPG, HP APAC and Japan. Snapfish will work in tandem with retail outlets that will be launched soon.