We print, frame and deliver photos from your smartphone, desktop or Instagram.
Business overview
| Location | London, United Kingdom |
|---|---|
| Social media | |
| Website | www.frameagain.com |
| Sectors | Home & Personal Mixed Digital/Non-Digital B2C |
| Company number | 08170949 |
| Incorporation date | 7 Aug 2012 |
Idea
Introduction
Frame again prints, frames and delivers photos next day in a single online service - our customers will never queue again.
We have designed the frames to fit easily into the home or office of our target demographic of young smartphone users. A key part of our business value is that the magnetised frames look better the more you have.
Frame Again is a London based startup working to get people printing and displaying photos again. We believe in bringing printed photos back into the home and with your help, we hope we can really take the business to the next level. We want to put the permanence back into photography.
Our interactive framing process allows users to customise frames in order to curate their photos. Our modern frames are modular so they can be displayed in groups and our service is what smartphone photographers are looking for - allowing them to make an order that we print, frame and deliver the next day straight from their computer, phone or tablet.
Please note that the first £35,000 invested in this campaign will be eligible for SEIS tax relief. If you invest after the campaign has hit this target, then your investment will be eligible for EIS tax relief.
Intended impact
At the moment people are frustrated - it's so easy to take a photo and yet the process of getting them printed in one shop and framed in another is too much hassle.
The quality of frames and design are more suited to your nan's mantelpiece than the wall, desk or sideboard of the people actually taking photos. The printing and framing industries have not kept pace with the younger generation.
As a result we have a massive loss - millions of people who wish they had more framed photos on display but they aren't doing it because the marketplace is not providing them with the products or services they want. We're changing that. We're making it cool, quick and easy to get photos printed and framed again and looking to disrupt an industry while we're at it.
Substantial accomplishments to date
We've already got the business going with our first few hundred sales out the door. Our website for receiving and processing orders is live and our social media marketing operations have been building momentum.
When we launched a pop up shop in Camden the local press came down and we ended up selling out of many of our frames. It was the most fun we've ever had and we learned a lot from the direct customer feedback. We anticipate running more of these popup shops in the future to help drive word of mouth in our key target markets.
Monetisation strategy
Our main ‘cost of goods sold’ are frames, printing and delivery. The frames need to be purchased in batches whereas printing and delivery are a purely variable cost. Our online retail model provides for a decent margin that scales well.
Our main ‘overheads’ include modest staff salaries (we believe in paying our interns), office expenses, internet expenses and marketing expenses. We will be investing in growth using the investment raised.
The long term monetisation options for the business include partnerships in the printing and framing industries. We believe this business can be profitable in and of itself. It is also disruptive to a number of stale industries, which makes it a potential acquisition target.
Use of proceeds
The capital raised will be allocated to marketing to grow the business.
Planned marketing activities include more pop-up shops, pay-per-click online advertising campaigns, media, PR and brand partnerships.
Our frames lend themselves well to social media, are a great tool to attract PR and celebrity attention and can take a roll in the personalised gifting market if we can invest in the outreach necessary to make this happen.
Market
Target market
Frame Again was launched by two young (-ish) entrepreneurs from Camden. We are our own target market: young, modern smartphone users.
Our customers are generally 16 - 35 year olds who traditional printing and framing businesses have simply not succeeded in connecting with.
The main market is people who use their phones as their primary tool for photography. We are focusing on heavy Instagram users as a core demographic.
We have done polling and found that people in this demographic, across the country are interested in both our product and our service and could be a major customer base for us.
Our frames have also sold particularly well with young families and people with pets!
Characteristics of target market
Our starting target marketing is young people using Instagram in the UK and our broader market is general smartphone users who take photos with their phones.
Our broad target market represents about 5-10 million people, with approximately 2.5 million in our key target market: young people with smart phones using Instagram in the UK. Since Facebook purchased Instagram, the market reach of Instagram in the UK has increased.
Our price point is competitive with other comparative products and we know that our target market like to shop online, particularly in the evenings, particularly using tablets.
Marketing strategy
Achieving scale quickly is a key part of building the value in the company. Our marketing strategy is five-fold:
1. Online advertising - we intend to focus on pay per click advertising as well as improving our organic SEO.
2. PR - engaging with celebrities, journalists and bloggers who use Instagram and appreciate our product.
3. Pop ups - we had a great success with our Camden Market pop up shop and want to do a number more to help get frames in customers' hands.
4. Events - Focusing on sponsoring sports and charity events where we can sell multiple frames in colours that match the event sponsors.
5. Social media and direct communications - we have a strong social media presence through Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and Pinterest and we are also building up our direct mail mailing list of customers and future customers.
Competition strategy
Frame Again's offering is different from our competitors on a number of levels.
A small starting point of difference is that most traditional photo frames are portrait or landscape whereas most modern photo applications (such as Instagram) crop the photos to square. This seems like a small difference, but is an example of how out of touch some of our competitors are with our core target market.
More substantial points of difference include:
1. Our frames are held together by magnets that also make them modular so they can sit side by side or together on a wall.
2. Our design is modern, unlike most high-street frame designs.
3. Our frames are easily customisable by mixing and matching the colours (it's like Nike ID for photo frames).
4. Our price point is competitive and when we bring production to the UK with our new frame, it should be even better.
We need to stay ahead of our competitors in terms of our marketing, products and services - making sure to get our customers what they need ahead of anyone else and for a better price. We're confident that we can remain an innovative business that does this.
Most of our high street competitors can't offer the service we do. Most of our online competition simply don't speak to our market - they want to sell you family photos on mousemats. Our customers don't use mousemats.
