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Introduction The amount of new revenue opportunities within the photo printing market is decreasing, but one of the new opportunities on the horizon is photo merchandise, a broad category that includes items such as photo greeting cards, photo books, photo calendars, enlargements, and photo mugs. These items have caught the attention of consumers and retailers. Consumers like them because they make good gifts, and retailers like them because they are high margin products. InfoTrends’ new study, Photo Merchandise- Opportunities Beyond Prints, provides companies that are interested in the North American photo merchandise market with critical business planning information. The study segments and profiles customers for photo merchandise and gifts, examines individual merchandise products, explores opportunities for different types of content, forecasts the market by key product category and sales channel, and identifies opportunities and strategies for retailers, service providers, and technology vendors. Research for this study included an extensive end-user survey of nearly 1,200 photo merchandise buyers in the U.S. and Canada Market Size The study projects the North American Photo Merchandise market to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 24.5% through 2010, with revenues surpassing $800 million by the end of the forecast period. Figure 1: Total Photo Merchandise Photo cards are the most common type of photo merchandise followed by specialty photo prints (enlargements, framed photos, collage prints, and canvas prints). Photo books and calendars have emerged as popular items with high growth potential. In 2006 in-store photo merchandise revenue was larger than the combined Internet-based channels, but that online channels are growing much more rapidly and are expected to quickly surpass in-store. This is still a largely untapped market, as only 3.5 million US households made a net-to-mail or net-to-retail online purchase of personalized photo merchandise in 2006. Consumer Behaviors With over 5,000 consumers participating in the survey, 23% said that they had purchased some type of photo merchandise in the last 12 months. Annual spending for photo merchandise ranges from a high of $68.30 for canvas prints and $68.20 for photo books to a low of $18.10 for mouse pads. InfoTrends estimates that given the relatively high penetration of photo books, combined with the high average order size, that photo books are one of the largest segments of the photo merchandise market. Figure 2: Spending on Photo Merchandise Over Last 12 Months
Many photo merchandise buyers indicate that they are likely to purchase additional photo merchandise in the future, especially people that have bought a specific type of merchandise. For example, 50.5% of consumers that have bought a photo calendar in the last 12 months indicated that they are likely to buy another calendar in the next 12 months. The data suggests a high degree of satisfaction and value. The key inhibitors to buying more photo merchandise are lack of interest in the product category, price, awareness, and design options and process. While retailers may not be able to change consumers’ lack of interest, they have the ability to address the other issues. Mass retail participation and increased consumer awareness are believed to be the keys to success in this market. If large retailers begin to embrace photo merchandise as a high-margin product category, there will almost certainly be some downward movement in pricing, but there will also be a boost in volume throughout the industry to the benefit of all involved. The preceding is an excerpt from InfoTrends’ study entitled “Photo Merchandise- Opportunities Beyond Prints.” The complete document is available immediately. To learn more about the report or to make a purchase, visit our online store or contact Nicole Shown at +1 , ext. 207 or . Copyright © 2007 InfoTrends. All rights reserved. Reproduction or reuse of InfoTrends materials is strictly prohibited without prior written consent. If you are interested in referencing InfoTrends’ content, please submit your request to . |
