We're excited to announce our newest offering - photo slide scanning!  After some doing quite a bit of homework on the best methods for slide scanning we're ready to roll out this new service to all our customers here in Utah.  Our first successful project was completed last week with our newest friends in Farmington, Utah.  We were able to digitize over 1800 photo slides of some priceless family memories dating back to the 60s and 70s.

Just like our photo scanning process, the Shoebox Memories Photo Scan Technician does all the work in your home.  Slide scanning is not as fast of a process as photo scanning - we're currently scanning at a rate of 300 slides per hour.  However, due to the high image quality of 35mm slides we are able to preserve those images at a resolution of 1800 dpi.  Once the images are digitized, Shoebox Memories burns you a DVD disk of all your images. Additionally, we can back up those photos to our servers so you can begin creating elegant photo books, calendars, canvans prints, etc. with your newly digitized images.

Give us a call today to schedule an in-home slide scanning session!  

801-948-0902.

We're really excited about how our photo scanning party model is really starting to take off.  Tonight we were out in Saratoga Springs scanning hundreds of photos for a group of friends and family.  We love to see the light come on in people's heads when they see the quality and the speed in which we can scan their photos.  The discussion quickly turns from not just "my photos", but "my mom's photos" as well.

One idea that we loved from tonight's interactions was a customer who was talking about all the digital photos they are able to display on their TV through their Apple TV - now they will be able to watch their old photos with their kids through their Apple TV.  Love that idea!

The Shoebox Memories marketing team recently launched our new Google Local page and, so far, we've been very happy with the results.  Here's a news flash - people are actually searching the web for a service like ours!  Shortly after launching our campaign the phones started to ring with customers calling from Syracuse, Farmington, South Jordan and as far south as Payson, Utah.  We've met some wonderful people who proactively call or email us to rave about our service.  Happy customers results in more customers and we're excited that word of mouth is starting to happen.

To see our Google Local ad simply search for "photo scanning utah" or some other related search term and click on the Shoebox Memories local listing.  Here's a peak of what the page looks like:

We'd love to hear from you!  If you'd like to review our service and help spread the love click HERE to link to our Google Places page.

Over the holiday's I've been busy not only with customer's photos, but with a personal project to preserve my Grandmother's photo history.  I've involved my kids in the project and it has been a wonderful experience to better connect them with their Great Grandmother.  As we've gone through the albums and boxes of photos I've found glimpses of my past that perhaps define who I am and who my children are.  For example, right around the age of 2, both of my youngest two boys have developed a passion for trains. Perhaps there is something genetic about trains at that age - I found a photo of me on my first Christmas sitting next to my first Christmas present....a circus train!

I find the photos from the periods of my life prior to my conscious memory to be the most fascinating.  What a privilege to be involved in an effort to help others connect with their past and preserve their family history.  I found this photo to a great keepsake as a demonstration of the love that has been passed down from Grandparents, to Parents, to Children and Great Grandchildren.  What a valuable lesson for my children to learn.

These past few weeks Shoebox Memories has been involved in several projects with significant meaning for the families using our services.  It's a very satisfying feeling to observe family heritage being preserved as the images flash across the laptop screen during a scanning session.  

One gentleman, a widower now well into his 80s, is preparing his life history with the desire to pass along his life's stories and adventures to his children and grandchildren.  Not only is he preparing a book of his life, but will be passing along a Shoebox Memories DVD to each of his children of all his photos.  Just think of the personal value this image will have to his family long after he is gone:

Another customer is preparing for the wedding of their first child. In an effort to pull together a slide show life sketch of their daughter, they sought out our services.  We ended up scanning their entire photo history for all their kids which amounted to over 2500 photos.  We were able to accomplish all of the scanning and burn the family a DVD in under two hours.

We're ready to come preserve your family history.  Call us today to schedule an appointment for our Scan Technician to visit you in your home.

 On Thursday night we held our first ever Photo Scanning Event at the home of a Shoebox Memories enthusiast.  The night was a complete success and we found all kinds of ways to improve for our next event.  Nine different neighbors and friends gathered together to see see our Photo Scanner in action.  By coming to the Event each person was able to have 100 photos scanned for free and burned to Shoebox Memories DVD.  It's true that we did have some skeptics come to see if what we claimed was true for the speed and quality of scanning that we offer.  To quote our Scan Tech, "what they saw made their jaws drop!"  We were able to schedule several in-home appointments with our new friends to get the rest of their photos scanned. 

Our next Photo Scanning Event will be held next week at the home of another Shoebox Memories enthusiast in Alpine, Utah.  We're looking forward to meeting new friends, wowing them with our service while getting to implement our newest ideas to make the event a total success.

If you're located in our Pilot area of Salt Lake City or Utah County please contact us via the Contact Form on the site to schedule a date.  Hosts receive 500 free photo scans and their friends can receive up to 20% off their photo scanning service if they can fill one of our neighborhood timeslots.

After a successful month of "figuring it out", Shoebox Memories is set for it's official launch - beginning October 9, 2011.  Over the past few weeks we've been able to test, tweak and optimize the sales and scanning processes.  We feel we've zeroed in on the right sales approach in peaking people's interest early and getting the right types of customers without much effort.  

Beginning in October we will be hiring a limited sales crew to begin selling the service door to door in the Salt Lake City and Utah County areas.  The biggest take away from the door to door sales pilot was how many photos people actually have.  Our forecasts were built on the bulk of sales coming off of our Photo Saver 250 and Photo Saver 500 packages - I've yet to find anyone who only has 250 photos.  Shifting our focus to the 1000+ photo scanning packages has allowed us to simplify our sales and billing processes and given us a better understanding of how to schedule out our scanning techs.

We've also learned that, since most customer in need of our service have 1000s of photos, our scanning appointment blocks are now two hour blocks.  This gives us time to setup, clean the scanner, review each photo as it is scanned, reclean if necessary, and then run the auto-rotate and color retouch software.  Burning the DVD generally only takes about 5 minutes.  We certainly don't want to rush through the appointment and quality is our number one goal.  

In addition to the door to door sales approach we're also going to be introducing a photos scanning party type of opportunity - we're calling them Photo Scanning Events.  Friends of Shoebox Memories will have the opportunity to invite their neighbors and friends over to their home for some free photo scanning.  More details on these events will be available in the next couple of weeks.

We're now in the process of building out the Shoebox Studio photo product creation software.  With a focused effort through the month of October we should be on track to launch the application by the beginning of November - just in time for the holiday gifting season.  More updates to come as that date approaches.

The first week of our sales testing is underway, and we're off to a great start! The purpose of the door to door sales pilot is to test our pricing model, sales pitch and any customer concerns or barriers that may arise.  Our official sales team (of one) is equiped with a branded Shoebox Memories polo, fliers, order forms and sample Shoebox Memories branded DVDs to help with the sales process.  

On our first evening out on the doors we were able to refine the sales pitch to quickly get our message across as efficiently as possible in under 10 seconds.  After only a couple hours of working the doors we were able to close one $800 sale, set up another sale to close on Wednesday and generated a bunch of call backs that all look promising....not bad!  My favorite moment (other than the first sale!) was when our sales associate was explaining to a customer how the service worked and a neighbor came over and exclaimed "I want a this!"  Lots of work to do and lots of sales to come!

The past few days we've been piloting the photo scanning process - so far so good!  This morning we scanned over 600 photos, scrapbook pages and odd shaped photos with out too many issues.  Photos that have been stored on sticky back photo album pages tend to clump together when running through the scanning process - those photos were fed into the scanner one at a time.  We also successfully scanned full scrap book pages with the photos glued on the page - no issues to report.

Later in the afternoon we scanned over 2,700 photos for a neighbor who has probably another 4,000 still to be scanned. Total scanning time for 2,700 photos; 1hour and 40 minutes.  Once the photos were scanned we ran the automatic color enhancement on all the photos which made our visit a total of about 2 hours.  

We excited about the response we're getting.  As soon as we start scanning our customers are telling us of all the people they know who would love to have this service done in their homes.  The idea of in-home photo scanning parties came up as an option to introduce people to the concept.

Next week we'll begin piloting the sales side to test out our sales approach and pricing model.  Stay tuned...

I'm sure you've had the experience of "you'll know it when you see it."  After several iterations of the Shoebox Memories logo we landed on a logo that was "it" as soon as we saw it.  We played around with an image of a shoebox, but the shoebox graphic and the name in the logo seemed to be overkill and we wanted to communicate bringing photos back to life.  

Can you tell what those colorful boxes are? The brightly colored Poloriods are abstract enough to get the mind working but with a little thought the message comes clear - bringing those old photos (think 1980's Poloroids) back to life.  From fading images in dusty shoeboxes to vibrant new photo products that bring your photos back to life, this brightly colored logo says it all.

Here's a sneak peak!

Exciting news! The first Shoebox Memories photo scanner arrived from the manufacturer today and I've spent the morning testing the software and the scanning. I can honestly say I'm totally impressed. The process is super easy and the scanner is extremely fast. The picture quality looks great, even before I run the color enhancement option.

I've been playing with the settings and have configured it now for optimal use for in-home scanning.  Within the next week we'll begin piloting the service by doing free scanning for some fortunate friends and family.