Developing and Printing Sector Expands Portfolio to Capture Younger Market

Developing and Printing has been a key part of photo and imaging retailers since the dawn of the sector. In fact, for many retailers it is the core part of their business, and for many others it is the key contributor to profitability.

However in recent years this sector has dropped markedly. This is mainly due to the fact that whilst image capture devices have grown to nearly 116 million devices in August 2009, the number of people actually printing their images has dropped. The reason for this is clear – whilst previously you had to develop a film to see an image, now you can view on the camera or PC where you have stored it.

Photo sharing online has also had an impact. Even home printing frequency has fallen as a result of photo sharing – our results from 8 European countries show a drop from 4 billion home prints in 2006 to only 2.5 billion in the current year. Overall, our research shows that whilst younger people take the highest number of pictures, they have the lowest printing rate. In addition, the European digital camera user takes 110 pictures per month yet prints less than a third of them.

Moving forwards, the Developing and Printing industry and retail channel has reacted to these trends to broaden their appeal outside of traditional 6x4 prints, with personlised merchandising such as Mugs, Calendars, Photo Books, Clothing, Canvas Prints, keyrings – the list goes on. With the commoditisation of standard prints, it is crucial that these higher value products become more popular with consumers.

Early results from our retail audit for developing and printing show that we will see a stabilisation of this sector followed by value growth in the near future, fuelled by store fits designed to increase the potential sales of higher value printed products. The ability of stores to produce a greater range of products instore and within a short timespan will also help this growth.