Photos online. It sounds unreal, but it’s not. Consumers can now have their photos processed and available online. The service provider? A hi-technology Queensland company, EXTRAFILM, which is breaking new ground in photo finishing. 

The company’s revolutionary digital service enables customers to see their photos through the Internet. It simply requires consumers to mail their completed film to EXTRAFILM’s central lab for processing. On arrival at the lab, the film is processed, scanned and posted to a secure section on the EXTRAFILM website. 

Within 12 hours of the arrival of the film at the company’s custom built, Southport (Gold Coast) plant, photographers are emailed their secure link to their photos. The link can be shared with friends. Once the photos are online, they can be viewed from anywhere globally or directly e-mailed to family, friends or business associates.

EXTRAFILM, with 21 staff, is a joint venture between its Australian owners and Spector Photo Group, one of Europe’s largest photo industry corporations. It is headed by Rob Tolmie, broadly considered to be the founder of large-scale mail-order photo finishing in Australia. Tolmie has 36 years experience in the industry (Kodak acquired his company, National Photo Marketing, in 1998) and is a past winner of the prestigious Direct Marketer of the Year award. "Our new technology not only provides fast, reliable and inexpensive photos but also provides all Australians with the ability to email their photos," Tolmie says. It also offers the opportunity to use the home PC for a host of projects involving photos, and provides a permanent archive for them.

Internet delivery of photos is an optional extra that has already been taken up by 40 per cent of EXTRAFILM’s customers. But all customers still receive a choice of matt or glossy set of conventional 6 x 4 inch photos through the mail from $6.95. EXTRAFILM also includes a handy index print that shows each photo on a roll in one neat print Rather like a contents page for photos, it is proving a way popular way to view holiday snap shots.
The company’s marketing director, Lisa Tinetti, says that mail will continue to play a critical role for EXTRAFILM. "People send us their film via the mail - usually in the special, easily recognisable envelopes that we supply. Then when we send back their completed photos in hard copy, we always use Australia Post."

The company’s local Australia Post representative, Michelle Doonan, even attends EXTRAFILM’s management meetings. "By having Michelle intimately involved in our business, she is equipped to offer us cost saving suggestions while also alerting us to postal innovations as they occur," says Tinetti. To help build customer relationships, EXTRAFILM has a quarterly member mailing that alerts all customers to current special offers and contains handy hints for the home photographer.  

Planned marketing initiatives include distributing 5 million free envelopes for new customers to test. "We find that the most effective form of customer acquisition is to get our distinctive envelopes in peoples’ hands. Then once they try us, we mostly find they keep coming back for more," Tinetti says.

 

Published in THE AGE June 2000 - IT News Marketing Pages
Web pics take off The family photo album goes online. By Jeremy Torr	Digi-cam scanman: Rob Tolmie, the founder of EXTRAFILM, operates his scanning machine.  Photo courtesy of The Age Photo Sales Photographer: Angela Wylie

It would be hard to describe Rob Tolmie as a run-of-the-mill marketer. The man behind the highly successful sick-bag film developing initiative - highly visible coupons attached to those receptacles common to air travellers - has a new scheme and is now using the web as his preferred tool.

"Sharing photographic images is one of the most important things, and the internet gives us the opportunity to do that really easily" he says.

Consequently, Tolmie's new company, extrafilm.com.au, is not just offering to develop and print films by return of post, but is also scanning every image and storing it in a massive 1.5-terabyte server. Users of the EXTRAFILM service then receive an email with an individual identity and access code to enable them to browse the images online.

The digital images are stored  for up to nine months, says Tolmie, and can be accessed by anyone with the correct passwords. The print-and-store service costs $7.95 per film and regular customers can build up their own online album of up to 100 pictures as long as they buy repeat services.

Selected shots also can be tagged as p-cards and sent to friends and relatives anywhere on the internet, or marked for copying in high resolution on to CDs for use on the customer's home computer. Customers not connected to the Net are sent the passwords by post, along with the developed photos.

Tolmie says the considerable investment (which required up to $500,000 on scanners alone, plus high-capacity RAID arrays, robotic CD burners and custom developed software) is all part of the value proposition the company offers its customers.

"We plan to scan over 50,000 films per month by October this year and we are on target for that," he said. 

"The website itself is already generating enormous traffic among connected users." He expects the service to convince many customers to sign up with an ISP.