Accurate anticipation is often the earmark of an excellent athlete, bur it was also crucial in converting PPI Inc., Mobile, Ala., a vertically integrated, film-based photographic portrait program company into PPI Lab (www.ppilab.com), an all-digital sports wholesale fulfillment business.
That PPI was able to correctly anticipate future digital trends in the sports photography industry is one reason PPI Lab is able to successfully offer its photographer clients cutting-edge sports products of the highest quality, while also maintaining its reputation for outstanding service, says Pete Taylor, CEO, PPI Lab.
Service mentality
'There are two definitions for the word 'service' in this business,' he explains. 'Typically, 'service' is defined within the context of a lab that makes its clients do the bulk of the work, and then prints their team and individual photographs as fast as possible,' says Taylor, a business development engineer by trade, as well as a longtime photographer.
''Service,' as defined by PPI Lab,' Taylor continues, 'is providing the specialized labor needed to handle consistently the complete digital workflow process for our clients, leading ultimately to the accurate, on-time fulfillment of the most customized and personalized graphically enhanced sports products in America.'
PPI Lab handles the workflow considerations for its client base, to allow them to concentrate solely on booking, shooting, and managing their businesses.
This is why PPI Lab clients not only see consistent growth in their businesses every year, but also why Taylor views a 20 percent to 30 percent annual growth range as being a realistic goal, despite some non-PPI photographers who offer many kinds of incentives to leagues and athletic programs in exchange for the contract.
'Incentives aren't always required for our photographers to book more leagues,' says Taylor, adding PPI Lab photographers enjoy an average 85 percent conversion rate as well. 'We want our photographer clients to maximize their market penetration in the shortest time possible. Being able to use our products for sales presentations is one way to achieve this, as league officials can easily note the difference.'
Photographer clients of the lab are granted exclusive rights to PPI Lab sports products for their areas. This minimizes conflicts with offering the same products as the competition, according to Taylor. No PPI Lab client requires a Global Positioning System to determine the boundaries of a territory, and each photographer can make it as large as he wishes without fear of overlapping another PPI Lab customer.
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'We help oversee territories, while fostering the development of positive working relationships between our clients in a given region,' says Taylor. 'We encourage our photographers to take on as many accounts as they can land. So far, there have been no real problems between our clients.'
PPI beginnings
Founded in 1958 by John J. Arata St., PPI Inc. was a sizable film-based, long-roll lab with a strong regional retail presence, servicing numerous professional market channels, including schools, churches, glamour, family, and sepia-toned photographic opportunities. The company decided in 2002 to sell its substantial retail businesses and concentrate its efforts exclusively on sports.
Hurricane Katrina proved to be an unwanted ally, partially taking the roof off the 36,000-square-foot, multiple-floor PPI Lab location. The company is now located in a single-story, 10,000-square-foot facility. Its in-house proprietary digital systems also streamline the workflow, creating an effective labor-reduction environment. This gave the management team the financial means to be proactive, while also permitting months of brainstorming to identify and implement a complete, fully digital turnkey solution that would not impede current workflow capacity or speed, much less quality.
'Our intention was to design sports products we would want--and couldn't do without--for our own children, who were active in several sports,' says Johnny Arata, president, cofounder, and business partner of Taylor and Arata's dad, John Arata Sr.
'We really have to love a product before we offer it to the public,' Taylor notes.
According to Taylor, few workflow solutions were available to digital labs when PPI Lab completed its digital conversion in 2002, and scaling the process to deliver to large sports programs nationally required the development of a very robust and sophisticated workflow fulfillment system. Copyright infringement is a concern to a company that created its own operating software--but not a major one as long as the competition continues to use template technology to increase product quality.
'Comparing the quality and complexity of our products to that of our competition is akin to comparing a two-dimensional chess game with a 3-D chess game. We offer photographic products that can't be duplicated using template technology.'
Though text and graphics management is a strong point for PPI Lab, the company has also invested much labor and money in image quality and management, developing a color profile solution that ensures matching output color profiles for all its products, regardless of the output device.
PPI Lab photographers can offer their athletic communities more than 250 different products, divided into 14 distinct product groupings delivered through three highly targeted product lines, with 35 different design lines that keep the products flesh and exciting for consumers. The product groupings range from color, black-and-white, and sepia prints, to an assortment of graphically enhanced print products, to traditional novelty gifts such as pennants and photo statuettes, to custom specialty gifts such as clip boards, coffee mugs, hooded sweatshirts, and photo blankets.
One of the most complex processes PPI Lab has implemented with great success is a dye-sublimation system called Sublimentatio, which doesn't attach an image to a mug or a fabric using a transfer process. Instead, it uses a gaseous pressure system that heats pigments to 400 degrees Fahrenheit, and actually impresses the colors into the product. It's similar in concept to a true fresco mural, in which the paints are an actual part of the wall, versus graffiti, which is spray painted on a wall and can be easily removed by city street and sanitation crews using high-pressure canon hoses.
Flexibility
With all it affords as a competitive edge to its clients, PPI doesn't demand exclusivity, even from those photographers it has trained extensively and given a protective territory. PPI Lab photographer clients mostly process posed team and individual athlete jobs through the lab, the type of work that doesn't necessarily lend itself to on-site printing and selling.
Should a PPI Lab client want to sell prints at tournaments, however, it doesn't bother Taylor. Nor do parents taking their own action shots from the stands using their DSLRs, to later make prints at home or from a nearby kiosk. More important, many labs--not to mention professional photographers and parents--attempt to make their own graphically enhanced prints and other products using nearly identical, inexpensive systems offering templates and borders.
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'Because of the unique nature of our products, coupled with the depth of our reproduced images and graphics being so difficult to match, and then the super character of the clients we work with, we are confident in our business-to-business relationships,' states Taylor.
'Posed sports photographic opportunities are seasonal, and we understand our clients need to offset that with additional services, particularly action and event coverage. These services represent market opportunities we may choose to move into sometime in the future. There are many solutions for on-site printing or posting to the Web already available.
'Our focus is to be the best at exactly what we are providing. We are growing with our clients, collaborating with them in an effective sort of 'partnership,' and are very grateful for their input and views. They have helped us tremendously in staying competitive and keeping our finger on the pulse of the industry.'
This sort of thoughtful character, uncommon in today's business world, is the standard at PPI Lab. For example, its benchmark for service is being the greatest quality sports products delivered on time, if not early. PPI will not decrease fulfillment time to be more attractive at the expense of athletes.
Most photographers send PPI Lab their work on a CD or DVD, rather than an FTP or Web-based interface, though the lab has developed both. 'This adds an extra layer of privacy protection, which is still necessary, considering the potential risks to images of children,' says Taylor, adding he has confidence in technology to address and overcome this concern.
'We plan to roll out our new Built Kidsafe opportunities by PMA 08,' says Arata. 'They are currently being beta tested and will be available to both our clients and consumers through the Sports Network Connection, our newest exclusive business opportunity. What really makes us different is how passionately we care.'
