The Digital Decision

If distributors are looking for the next big thing to help them with their business, it just might be the easy-to-use and increasingly popular digital camera.

The 2001 Christmas season was witness to a boom in the consumer buying of digital cameras, but what about the role they are starting to have in business?

Digital cameras now come in all shapes and sizes, and they can range in price from $200 consumer brands to $10,000 models for professional photographers.

Once shunned for being too complicated and too expensive, this advance in technology provides resources for advertising, private labeling, product demonstrations, making personalized sales proposals and much more. What was once part of the “techie” culture has now become mainstream and looks to have a significant impact on the everyday operations of small businesses nationwide.

“Of course they’re really useful, but I still don’t think many people realize just how valuable a digital camera can be, especially for a small business,” says Stephen Lehnhoff of Reliable Industries Ltd., a distributor and contractor in George Town, Grand Cayman, Cayman Islands. Lehnhoff’s company has just finished extensively researching the digital camera market and has narrowed down the list of favorites. Reliable Industries will be using its new purchase for everything from advertising to training. “It’s going to be an incredible tool for bettering our business,” says Lehnhoff.

But even with such enthusiastic promoters, many jan/san distributors still wonder if a digital camera is really that much better than traditional and dependable film cameras. A review of digital cameras in Macworld magazine presents a strong argument for investing in the new technology:

“Viewed from the perspective of film photography, digital cameras can seem downright miraculous,” writes Deke McClelland. “More computer than camera, they let you not only take pictures but also preview them on the spot, delete your flubs, and even capture short movies.”

Pictures Say A Thousand Pixels
One of the biggest reservations prospective buyers have is that digital camera technology may be advancing too quickly, rendering them obsolete almost immediately.

But Fritz Gast, president of P.B. Gast & Sons Inc., Grand Rapids, Mich., had his company invest in a Sony Mavica digital camera — one of the earliest models on the market — and has not had a problem with it.

“The Mavica was one of the first ones to come out,” says Gast. “It uses a small floppy disk rather than the newer models that use memory sticks. But all of our computers have disk drives that work with the camera’s disk, so it’s very easy for us to use. We just take pictures and load them onto our computers.”

The best way to measure the picture quality of a digital camera is to find out how many pixels (a combination of the words “picture” and “element”) the digital camera is able to process. A digital image is made up of thousands of pixels, so the more pixels, the better the quality of the photograph — and the higher the price of the camera.

Gast’s Sony Mavica camera has two-megapixel capability. Consumer digital cameras typically range in quality between one and three megapixels, although professional photographers currently use cameras with up to 40 megapixels. Two-megapixel models are the most popular type, combining the ability for sharper images with a lower price. In Gast’s opinion, however, getting too caught up in the number of pixels a camera can produce isn’t worth agonizing over.

“Digital is digital. Most of the cameras that come out now have sharper images or more memory, but to me it’s not a huge difference,” he says. “We’re still able to use our camera for so many of our daily operations.”
In addition to being a distributor of jan/san cleaning supplies, P.B. Gast & Sons also serves as a private label house. Gast says that since buying the digital camera, private labeling has become cheaper and more efficient because everything can now be done in-house.

“You look at what your printing costs are, and you can see right away how much money you’ll save. We used to have to purchase our labels in bulk; if there was a mistake or a drop in orders, then we’re stuck with the cost,” he explains. “Now that we have a digital camera to go with our color laser printer, we can take pictures and make prints as needed.”

Improve Your Customer’s Image
Digital cameras are good for more than just in-house operations. According to Jon Scoles, president of Scoles Floorshine Industries, Farmingdale, N.J., his company has increased the quality of sales presentations and customer brochures since it started using a digital camera.

“We just started about a month and a half ago, but so far the pieces that are being produced have come out looking very nice,” says Scoles. “Now, if people want to do a washroom presentation for a certain facility or a certain town, we can do that for them. We can put everything together in a one-piece, professional presentation. When we visit a possible customer, now we take the digital camera so we can personalize the proposal for the company and show them exactly what we plan to do.”

The advantage of making sales proposals for customers, as well as product demonstrations, is what has led Lehnhoff to seek out digital cameras with video capability. “It’s still small enough to fit in your hand, but it requires more memory. Now we’ll be able to show our clients a demonstration of exactly what we can offer,” he says.

With the digital camera market being so hot, major brands like Sony, Nikon, Canon, Olympus and Kodak are jostling for position and continue to offer buyers new advancements at reasonable prices. Digital cameras can provide new avenues for distributors to personalize their marketing, make sales proposals, advertise and even demonstrate the effectiveness of products. After all, your business certainly deserves a Christmas present, too.