Eastman Kodak Co. has a new trick for its retailer kiosks: a hassle-free way to create photo collages that fit various frames with precut cardboard mats.
The picture-taking pioneer has been scrambling to counter eroding profits from photo processing over the last decade by reeling in custom-photo customers via retail channels. In typical fashion, its PYNK Smart Print system will try to catch the eye of the hustling masses.
“We’re opening up a whole new print-to-fit category,” said Rowan Lawson, a marketing director in Kodak’s consumer digital group. “It goes back to Kodak’s DNA: ‘You press the button, we do the rest.’
“With the advent of digital photography, nobody has properly solved putting multiple photos together at the press of one button. If you don’t make it that simple, it’s not going to happen.”
Kodak unveiled the new kiosk software Monday on the eve of Photokina, the world’s largest photo-products trade show held annually in Cologne, Germany. The company has installed 100,000 self-service kiosks at retail businesses worldwide since 1993 and will roll out the collage option beginning Dec. 1 at 5,000 CVS/pharmacy stores nationwide.
The patented technology automatically enlarges, shrinks, crops, aligns and arranges as many as 13 images on one print.
The catch? The system is packaged to pull in a tidy profit. Aside from the collage, customers must also purchase a mat with anywhere from two to 13 slots for photos of various sizes, or a frame with a mat. A 6-by-8-inch print plus an 8-by-10 frame will retail for $17; an 8-by-10-inch print and mat will cost $11.
“I would not balk at the price,” said Barbara Koff, a cosmetics sales consultant in White Plains, N.Y., who bought a framed collage as a surprise gift for her niece during a three-month Kodak trial run this summer at 32 drugstores in Westchester County, near…