Saturday, October 4, 2008

Business Models in Online Photo Gift Products business

Online photo gift product business is slowly gaining momentum in Indian market place. The key market players are this space include picsquare, iTasveer, snapfish, snapgalaxy, photohugs, zoomin, merasnap, printcamp and gkvale. A closer look at the background of these online shops brings out the nature of business models which are in play in this space. Broadly, you can see the following models:
A) e-commerce: Most of the players in this space largely generate revenue by selling photo based products online. Mainly, these involve taking online orders for printing of digital images uploaded on the portals and selling personalized photo based products. However, many of these portals do not have their own photo labs and have partnered with various local or regional photo studios that print and deliver these photos on behalf of these portals. The key cost centers for these portals include:
- Procurement of products like mugs, key chains, mouse key pad, T-Shirts etc. which are used for building personalized photo products.
- Printing of photos on these products
- Printing of photos by a third party studio
- Distribution cost
- Web site management cost
B) e-Stores: Some of the web sites also provide its users to set up online stores for uploading and selling its designs which the customers can use for personalizing their products. Companies like Pringoo.com are providing users with the capability to set up their online stores and earn commissions on sale of every product which goes out to customers with their designs.
C) Brick and Mortal model: The existing photo studio labs are the next emerging players in the online personalized photo product business. Regional companies like G K Vale, Bangalore have emerged as one of the strongest players that have cost advantages due to its age old photo printing business.

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