Costco Connection

Digitization made it possible to deliver film photos on CDs for the first time. Even if you didn’t have a digital camera, you had the option of getting digital images from the lab because of this process.

The upgrade to digital print engines was accompanied by the first digital photo kiosks, allowing members to easily perform electronic order entry for prints, uploading the photos from their camera memory card or a CD.

The way Costco members used 1-Hour Photo services expanded at this point. It was still fairly common for roll film to be dropped off at the lab and a print order picked up after shopping, as a member exited the store. Now there was the added option of submitting a digital print order with pickup in the same time frame.

Creative fun: Photo books are just one of the options at the Photo Center at costco.com (click on the “store” tab).

Revolution spurs evolution

Nineteen ninety-eight was a pivotal year for photography in general, not just for how images were captured, but for how they played a key supporting role in emerging technologies—the Internet and e-mail.

The dot.com boom was fully ramped up by then, and e-commerce was a new buzz-word. Selling products and services via online transactions was becoming a reality. Brick-and-mortar companies and online-only companies alike were capitalizing on Web sites that needed the graphic content supplied by digital images. After all, a picture is indeed worth a thousand words.

The digital camera was in its toddler years in 1998. Some early adopters—mostly hobbyists—were exploring its potential. You could have spent $400 for a 1-megapixel camera that had few features, and came with a 16 MB m emory card—very l imited specifications by t oday”s standards. But development of the d igital camera was on the verge of an explosion o f feature sets, accessories and applications.

Digital photo milestones

• 2003 was the first year in the
camera industry that digital
cameras outsold film cameras.

• In 2007, the number of digital
cameras and camera phones
in the world surpassed
1 billion, and fewer than 10
percent of all still images
were captured on film.

F ilm to filmless
Costco member acceptance of
d igital cameras was rapid, and it was
i ncreasingly obvious that film was
becoming a dinosaur. A major industry
m ilestone was hit in 2003—the first year
t hat digital cameras outsold film cameras—
a nd there’s been no turning back.
Anticipating the ultimate transition to
d igital, 1-Hour Photo labs made a giant leap
by advancing the way photo prints are made.
All locations converted to digital print engines,

a change started in 2001 and completed by change started in 2001 and completed by 2003. That meant that even photos from roll fi lm were digitized after processing, and were th en printed digitally.

“Digital quality is so much easier to con- Digital quality is so much easier to con- t rol than film quality,” says Glen Hutchinson, C ostco’s operations manager for all of the U.S. 1 -Hour Photo labs. “Our quality from the new breed of digital printers had a big impact on a ttracting the business of professional photog- r aphers who recognize the value of Costco’s p ricing compared to what they would pay the p ro labs.” (More than 47,000 Costco members a re professional photographers.)

FRANCE FREEMAN

The online leap

The next evolutionary step was an online presence for 1-Hour Photo. In 2005, costco.com started hosting the online Photo

Center, which introduced members to a whole new level of convenience. For the first time, photos could be uploaded from a home computer to place a print order that could be picked up in an hour at any designated 1-Hour Photo location.

In addition, the Photo Center provided storage of the member’s uploaded photos, some editing functions such as cropping and red-eye reduction, the ability to organize photos into online albums and a way to share access to the photos with family and friends via e-mail invitations.

The sharing aspect also expanded print orders for 1-Hour Photo labs. A grandmother across the country could look at a shared album of family photos and order prints for pickup from her local Costco.

Today a mix of digital kiosk orders and Photo Center uploads makes up 85 percent of the print output of 1-Hour Photo labs.

The power of digital

“We can offer members so many more options because of the evolution to digital images,” Glen points out. “Members are having fun discovering how easy we’ve made ordering digital prints and all the features that are a byproduct of digital convenience.”