Thinking about starting do it yourself lab....

[nasoj21]

I have been thinking about this for awhile, and have started to work on a business plan.
It would be a combination of three parts; a digital lab, a darkroom/wetlab, and studio space.
The digital lab would consist of 10 high end computers to start loaded with legal verions of leading software, and some highend printing equipment. I have gotten a lot of positive feedback on the idea, but it is costly to equip such a place. Also I was discussing this with a friend in the design industry, and he was thinking that it is likely that most people that I would appeal to would have there own equipment.
As he said and my own thoughts go, there will always be a market in students, but I don't think that is enough.

Do you all think that this is something worth pursuing? Would you use such a facilities? Hopefully I will have some time to shoot outside of that and bring in some additional income that way. Any other advice, or thoughts??

Jason

[FocusingOnFlorida]

Not sure about the lab part, because more and more people have a large format printer and can print at home. I even got tired of that and ended up printing at a few online places as, I think the cost came out to about the same and I could offer Glossy, Matte, or Metalic paper for different customers. I am pleased with the way it is working for now. You may improve your idea by offering shipping service as well. Many people get things printed, but don't have the materials to properly ship them.

Last, if you were to open a place with multiple labs, you may have something. You could use one for your full time lab, and have another one or two for rentals. Have them leave a deposit just incase of equipment damage. You could also have classes or offer training on the use of studion gear. This would appeal to up and coming photographers as well as retired photographers that still want to get into a studio every now and again to play. With this, a good printer might be nice if they wanted to print out a few of their resulting images to show off.

If you had a little room left, set up a few computers for post processing classes and training.

I hope this helps. Have a Karma.

[FocusingOnFlorida]

You could have one studio with no equipment for those of us that have our own. Just have it as rental space and have the equipment to stock it if they are missing something. You could rent out equipment as well for on location shoots now that I think about it. Some of your fellow pro photographers may not appreciate you too much for it though.

You would also want to make sure that your surrounding population is larger enough to support such a venue.

[grsphoto]

I do use such a place http://www.pikto.ca

They have 4 workstations, conntected to a agfa D-lab and a fuji Frontier, and high end scanning equipment.

Glenn

[Mr. Pickles]

You don't say where you are, so it is hard to say. If you are in a big city with no labs, you can make a go of it probably. If a small town with no labs, you'd probably do okay, but might need to branch out. You mentioned students, so I'd hope there was a school or college nearby, even better if they have photography courses.

From others comments, I'd say they believe you are "renting" the 10 computers and stuff. I'm not sure that is what you said, so I don't know. Renting a PC with PhotoShop on it might be a good idea, and might work.

There would be some market for a wet lab I'd think, but it all depends on the town or city your in. For this, you may need to advertise to a wider area, or even advertise on the internet. maybe post some reciprocal link on a forum like The Camel to offer these services? Maybe give a "code" in the link for those to get a "deal". If you do a wet lab, I'd look at getting a scanner of some sort to digitize the images.

[nasoj21]

Yeah, sorry I didn't think to include the location.
I am in Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota. There is a fairly large comercial industry here, but I do have more marketing research to do. Right now I am trying to decide weather or not the idea warants the time and energy of figuring out the local market.
Now with the posting of that Pikto link, I have heard of two similar places, so I do intend on trying to sit down with there owners.
The other one iswww.bethschiffer.com
Thanks for your input.