Stampix

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Stampix

Photography

Cooperative Company with Limited Liability

Belgium

www.stampix.com

nostalgia, convenience, privacy

Simon Tavernier

Anthony De Clerck

Anton Mussche, Simon

Tavernier

Summary

Stampix is an application that enables users to print the photographs on their smartphones, free of charge. Stampix approaches other companies and offers them an opportunity to sponsor the cost of the prints, in exchange for a mentioning on the back of the photograph. In this way, the user will relate an emotional value to the mentioned company. This startup is growing steadily while exploring the market for opportunities.

Background

After graduating in 2012, three young creative minds had an innovative idea that would make it possible to make postcards more mobile. The group of the initial starters consisted out of two engineers and one IT- developer. Stampix was founded and initially it offered the possibility to users to print photographs from their smartphone on postcards that could be sent to a desired address, the service was delivered free of charge. After making some fatal errors (getting a bank loan, group malfunction, financing, assuming instead of measuring,…) the team decided to stop the co-operation and go their separate ways. A couple of years later, one of these three founders, Simon Tavernier, wanted to continue the startup and with the help of his cousin, Anton Mussche, the new Stampix was created. This second, renewed version of the application made it possible for the subscriber to print photo’s instead of postcards and the service was still free of charge. The creative minds want to offer this service because they share the idea that nowadays there are a lot of pictures that just stay on the smartphone. They wanted to create an application that releases all barriers to pint these pictures.

A second incentive to startup this company was the family history. The two Stampix owners are the grandsons of the founder of the company Spector. This used to be the biggest developer of analog photography. The foundation of Stampix thus wasn’t only the product of rational thinking and development, it also has some emotional value attached to it.

The first version of Stampix was founded with the financial resources that the founders got through a bank loan. This was a first mistake according to Mr. Tavernier, because they had ‘no skin in the game’ and the founders experienced a lot of pressure during the first phase of the startup. After learning some valuable lessons, the second version of Stampix, founded by Mr. Mussche and Tavernier was financed by investing their own money and consulting FFF (friends, fools and family). Now the company wants to focus on crowdfunding. The reason for this is partly to receive more financial resources but mainly to reach a lot a potential subscribers.

Mission

Stampix wants to remove all barriers for the consumer to print their pictures, located on their smartphone. They want the consumer to rediscover the value of a printed photograph. For the companies, Stampix wants to make it possible to advertise in a way that comes with emotional value.

Vision

In the future, the company mainly wants to focus on the market of young mothers. After conducting field research through questionnaires, the owners noticed that these young mothers have a lot of pictures of their babies on their cellphone that never get printed. Stampix want to enable these mothers to print these photographs without having to pay for them.

Values

Due to the fact that Stampix focusses on both the B2C market and B2B market, the company has a wide range of values that are carried out while conduction their business activities. On the B2C market they attach value too: Convenience, Speed and Privacy. On the B2B market they want to assure durability, meaning that they want to make sure that the company that pays for the photographs, remain in the sight of the consumer. The fact that the selected pictures often have an emotional value attached, the company gets associated with good emotions. “Sent ads people care about”.

Business Model

The initial idea of Stampix, being the mobile postcards was a non- existing concept. The idea to enable users to create a postcard through sending an order on their smartphone was later copied by Bpost. After this first version of Stampix failed, one of the three original founders had the drive to continue working on this project and with the help of this cousin, the renewed Stampix was created. Stampix now lets users print their selected photographs through the usage of an account on the company’s application. This service is free of charge for the customers, the cost is mainly financed by other companies that are mentioned by logo on the back of the photograph. The client will look at the backhand side of the photograph, because there the client will find his own profile picture and a quote that could be added to the order. Naturally, Stampix also makes use of this channel to create brand awareness. For this reason, one of the printed photos that is sent to the users, is sponsored by Stampix.

The company lets the user print a number of photograph by spreading new user codes if new companies approach Stampix. The user will receive a code if he matches the targeted audience of the sponsor. The service gives the customer a clear advantage, being the convenience of having the selected photograph delivered at home, without paying. For the sponsors, the advantage lays in the fact that the consumer will keep the photograph for a long period of time, in contrast to other sorts of printed publicity. Next to this, the user will most likely select photographs that share an emotional value. When the company is mentioned on the back of these pictures, the client will relate this mentioned company to a similar emotion.

The company has four different revenue model, namely for the baby prints, offering their services in companies, events and premium products. The first form of income comes from the companies that sponsor the printed services too young mothers, like previously mentioned. The second form of revenue model is one where Stampix offers their service to big companies that want to give an original present to (loyal) customers. For example, Lotus Bakeries can give its clients the opportunity to print pictures for free with the user code: ‘Lotus Bakeries’. The third form of income is the opportunity at events. There, Stampix can have booth where pictures are taken from attendants of the event. The companies that sponsor the prints are those that sponsor the events. In this way, the user gets reminded of the event each time he looks at the photograph while the sponsoring companies are on it. The fourth and last revenue model is the one of premium products, Stampix sells products like Iphone cases, photo books, … to the customer. These products are not free of charge so the customer pays for the purchase.

The founders of Stampix consulted their own network in order to get feedback on their concept and ideas. In this way they processed the information and adopted changes to the businessmodel.

Naturally, social media is the most used channel for publicity for Stampix. Their communication and user codes get shared on Facebook and Instagram. Next to this, the user also receives a confirmation e-mail after the order is placed. And at last, like previously mentioned, Stampix also sponsors one of the photographs that is sent to the client, so they are also mentioned on the back of the pictures.

Customers

Stampix focusses both on the B2C market and B2B market. The B2B market consist out of the businesses that finance the printing of the picture in exchange for a mentioning on the background of the photograph. On the B2C market, Stampix mainly targets the younger generation, especially young mothers. These mothers have an enormous amount of pictures of their babies on their smartphone, but they lack the urge to print these pictures.

The older generation is more familiar with concept and that’s because back in the days, people had to develop their pictures in order to see them. Nowadays, all your photographs are just one small button away to be seen in high quality on a smartphone. The main barrier however remains the price tag for printed photographs, Stampix wants to overcome this barrier by offering the pictures for free.

Competition

“De Roze Doos”, This is a box that’s given too new mothers, the box contains all sorts of test products, samples and coupons related to new born babies. This can be seen as a sort of competitor because this company also tries to include companies that work with baby- related goods, just like Stampix.

Furthermore, Stampix doesn’t have real competitors because there’s no other organization that offers this printing service free of charge. However, there is one company in the United States that is working on a project to offer a similar service to a larger public, this company hasn’t launched yet because it’s still exploring the market.

Conclusion

Stampix is steadily growing but still sees various opportunities to encourage this growth. The biggest advantage Stampix has is that the cameras on smartphones get better day by day. That’s good news for the company because then the potential client will make more use of their cellphones to take pictures. The urge to print these photographs thus get bigger when the quality of the cameras improves. Mr. Tavernier also shared some pieces of advice for new starters, namely:

Specify your goals and targeted segments throughout the start up. Don’t expect everything to remain as planned.
Consult other parties to evaluate your concept and use their feedback.
Make a minimum viable product to test the market.
Put skin in the game, take a risk and don’t be scared to fail.

Posted on 23/05/2016