4 ms·

There are tons of competitors with much lower prices. They will need a lot of luck.

• dot 15y ago
  This is one of the major strengths of YC. They can build a small, profitable company with customers that read HN and TC. This gives them time to build a good product. Once they have that down they can go out and raise some money to help them compete more aggressively. And with a solid product.
• lyime 15y ago
  There are tons of competitors in every market. We are not competing on price. We are a premium product and we offer a much better experience and a higher quality product than most of our competitors.
  • rorrr 15y ago
    I doubt your "higher quality" product claim. Most photo printers today use pretty much the same machines, give you many paper options. "Much better experience" is just a speculation. You are a premium product indeed, price-wise.
    • lyime 15y ago
      Well why don't you try us and our competitors and let us know what you think.
      • jordanlev 15y ago
        Hmm... I'd like to try you, and don't have time to try a bunch of other people as well. Would you mind explaining in your own words what is better about the quality of your prints (or service in general) than the others?
        • lyime 15y ago
          @jordanlev So we have tried ordering prints from a few other big digital photo printing sites. First thing that you will notice is that everyone uses much thinner quality paper then we use. We use heavy Luster Fujifilm photo paper, much thicker than many others. Our photo process is lightjet chemical process, most other companies use either a digital or inject process which is not as good as chemical photographic process. We are also putting in a lot of effort in package design and are going to be experimenting with designs over the coming few months.
          • twidlit 15y ago
            Whats stopping competitors from using heavy Luster Fujifilm photo paper and a lightjet chemical process? Is using them both sustainable for business? There must be a reason why "others" dont use these...
          • rorrr 15y ago
            Our photo process is lightjet chemical process, most other companies use either a digital or inject process which is not as good as chemical photographic process. I bet 99.9% of customers cannot tell the difference between prints made by a 1) lightjet 2) Fuji Frontier 3) Noritsu 4) $500 inkjet printer According to your FAQ, you are using "Fuji Crystal Archive" paper, which many of your competitors use (Snapfish, for instance). It looks like you are targeting yourself to a high end market, while your print sizes are 4x6", which is very strange. Don't get me wrong, I don't want you to fail, I'm just surprised with your business model, it's really confusing.
            • PStamatiou 15y ago
              I need to update the FAQ but we have since switched to lustre paper which is not crystal archive (that is only glossy). One customer told us: "Shutterfly was really disappointing: pixelated, poor colors, and just a cheap feel - we'll never use them again." I quoted him in my post. Feel free to reach out to him to confirm. As I mentioned in the post, 4x6 is just the start. We've only been working on this for 2.5 months :)
      • deleted 15y ago
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