The consumer-focused approach of award-winning photo app, Popsa

Gary Pageau of the Dead Pixels Society talks with Liam Houghton, CEO, and Declan Mellett, chairman, of Popsa, the U.K.-based photo book app. Houghton and Mellett talked about the company's non-traditional beginnings, it's customer-focused design and strategy and the future role AI will play in the creation of personalized photo content.

Popsa launched in March 2016. The app is now available in 50 countries around the globe and has been translated into 10 different languages.

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Transcript

Gary Pageau  0:57  
Hello again and welcome to the Dead Pixels Society podcast. I'm your host, Gary Pageau. And today we're joined by the leadership of Popsa, a UK based photo printing app, we're joined by Liam Houghton, the CEO, and Declan Mellet, the chairman. Hello, gentlemen, how are you today?

Liam Houghton  1:35  
Okay, very good. Thank you. How are you?

Gary Pageau  1:37  
Great, great. Well, Popa's has been in the news a lot recently with being presented with several business industry awards and things like that. But first, how did the company start? What's the origin?

Liam Houghton  1:54  
Well, we've been going about four years now started in March 2016. And I guess I should tell you a bit about how we how we got to start.

Gary Pageau  2:07  
Yeah, exactly. That's what I want to know. How did you get to where you got?

Liam Houghton  2:12  
I suppose, well, um, I was 26. When I, when I started Popsa back in 2016. And before that, it wasn't the first company, I started together with my co founder in Popsa, Tom (Cohen), he's our CTO. And we've actually worked together many years before for that on on a variety of other projects. And back, when I was actually a teenager, I started making websites to sell tickets to tourist attractions and things like that. And I built up my skills in product design, and a bit of that web skills as well. And then, after going on to study architecture, at university, I went straight into technology, qualifying. And that's why we first met Tom and we started an agency back when the App Store first started, and we so we one of the first app developers in Europe, amongst the first in the world, I guess it was very, very new. Back then, in the new field of technology, and we quickly started making dozens of different apps for very big brands. We really learn how to, to build products that converts that resonate with users and, and in many different types of industry as well.

Gary Pageau  3:43  
So So what would be an example of some of those Can you share, like one or two that people may have heard of?

Liam Houghton  3:48  
Yeah, well, back in that time again, I but one example would be that we did a joint venture with Ferrari. Okay, then I'm doing one of it very early in the very early era of augmented reality. And we did an app that that allowed people to see Ferrari's in AR, by by converting a banknote into a Ferrari, we use the banker as the target. It's something that everyone would have in their pockets rather than something you had to print out. Right. That was the case, though. So as that was, that's kind of one example. And yeah, we work lots of big brands like that. But But very soon, we kind of realized that would be kind of nice to be our own clients, instead of working with other clients. And, and we, we we started then, building brand new companies from scratch, new brands, new ideas, all based on technology still, and so on for about five or six years. We ran an incubator of startups here in London,

And, and from that point, fascinating journey, we started more than a dozen new companies or many which are still going today. And we we had built up a core product and engineering from my days in the agency, and, and we'd really honed our skills in that area. And so what we did is we've started working with kind of commercial leads co founders in different industries around an idea that they'd have with wrap up product and engineering expertise and teams around them get idea, kick started off the ground as fast as possible. And, and after about a year, sometimes 18 months, that company will then graduate, so to speak, and stand on their own two feet with with the rains over and off they go and with with step out legally, from that point, absolutely fascinating time in our lives, we learned so much. And what was particularly interesting, I think, is that we got to see very quickly, across different companies in different sectors, things that were common, and typically missed common mistakes that were being made again and again, right by completely different people in different industries. And how to grow that grow these startups. You know, whether it's hiring too fast, or hiring the wrong people or focusing on the wrong things. You could see the same mistakes being made again and again. And so at that point, we decided that we wanted to actually go and do something for the long term ourselves and not hand over the reins to someone asked him and watch what happens as as a passive observer.

Gary Pageau  6:53  
Are there any of those incubator projects? Like you said, some of them are still around any that are generally well known?

Liam Houghton  7:02  
Yeah, there's there's several, One of them is Pollen is now moved to San Francisco in the States, as a fin tech that lends money to app developers to help them get going. Very good

Gary Pageau  7:20  
And another one people would have known some of those.

Liam Houghton  7:23  
Yeah, we have another one called Digipill, which is a in the same space as calm and headspace meditation space at the moment, yeah. Got got each of them to, you know, more than a million in revenue very quickly, in the first year. And that was our kind of map success. And, and yeah, the ones that we've managed to do that, then

Gary Pageau  7:47  
You decide we need to do this magic for ourselves. Exactly what industry is bad, better than any other than photo printing?

Declan Mellett  7:57  
That's, that's all. That's all.

Liam Houghton  8:02  
Yeah, I suppose then the question is, why did we Why did we choose this era to put all our eggs in?

Gary Pageau  8:10  
I mean, what what was that, like? So 2016? or so? probably wasn't the, the, the timeframe? Most people were thinking of that?

Liam Houghton  8:20  
yeah, it's an interesting time. Like, just on a personal note, we It was interesting, because I think by that point, we had developed more than 150 different apps. And the interesting thing is that a lot of them didn't have a legacy at that point, especially particularly the ones we did, you know, back in 2008 2009, they get replaced over time companies move on, the technology gets old. And that was that was a, an interesting kind of realization at that time, and actually quite nice to, to leave a tangible legacy from some of this technology in the real world. Yeah, it was kind of poignant for us, that some of these things might go on to outlive us, you know, people's phones and their locks. So that was kind of nice. But But, you know, these are kind of commercial hats on. We saw it, we saw an opportunity, I guess, to to do a classic disruption kind of story, as you said, into existing market, that's fairly mature number of very well known incumbents. And we saw the opportunity to use data and design to go and change how things work and actually potentially turn the industry model on its head of it is our expertise all weapons that point was was very much focused on user experience. Right? How do you had the spike customers to, to engage and convert and stay with you? Right, right right into industries and And, you know, we looked at the funnel, you know how you get people, customers fruit from from introduction to purchase in, in the sector and about terribly antiquated and still does today, in many ways and if you look at it from an outsider's perspective, like like we were at a time it's extremely passive. You know, if you're a company in the space, you have to wait for a customer to come along here has the right content, and importantly, has that, that spark that idea to go and make something, right. Yeah, you're very light on that. And so you have to wait, wait for that to come along. And then then often companies in this space, then send those customers or potential customers through a very, very complex creation process. And and we likened it at the time to not being too dissimilar to using Photoshop. Hundreds of buttons, options, very complex user journey. And we knew a few people in, in the space running small companies and saying how, how much abandonment there is particularly in closure? Yeah, in photobook, something like that.

Gary Pageau  11:16  
Yeah. It's always been very, very hot. And I think you hit on a great point that I think, for in a desktop or, or website application, you know, it's as high as 70%. People think so. I mean, I don't know if it's any, what the difference would be on a on a on a on a mobile app, but I imagine it's very similar.

Liam Houghton  11:40  
Yeah, and in many ways, you can lose more people along the way. And very, because of the App Store, well, you have to get people to download application can't just, you know, get people to give it give a go in passing like you can on the web. So there's even even more kind of headwinds in many ways. But But yeah, we saw, we saw you're almost universally across the sector companies doing the same thing, which is, there's just so many barriers to purchase. And that's because the philosophy is give the customers all the tools, and they will make nothing. And often the customers, they give it a good go. But they get to the end of that process. And it's tins with a bit of anxiety and disappointment, because for many people, they either have an eye for design, right? Some people are gifted like that. But although they might not have an eye for the design for design themselves, they know when something is beautiful or not, they just don't know how to fix it or get to

Gary Pageau  12:42  
know it when they see it. Right.

Declan Mellett  12:43  
Yeah,

Liam Houghton  12:44  
exactly that, and that leaves an awful lot of anxiety. And, and, and likewise, on the technology side. You know, most people these days are comfortable with apps and websites. But nonetheless, when you're presenting all these buttons and options and tools, which are very complicated to use, then there's a lot of anxiety there as well about, you know, we often we did some early customer interviews, and and anecdotally, the thing that was coming back was, I didn't want to do anything when I got into this process, because of course, I might mess it up. Right? By my great things.

Gary Pageau  13:21  
You know, it's funny, that's a, that's a very common feeling among people in photography. Even back in the analog days, Kodak did some research, which was people always felt that if their pictures didn't turn out, there was their fault.

Declan Mellett  13:38  
It's a competence thing. Yeah.

Gary Pageau  13:40  
So you've hit on a great point. Yeah,

Liam Houghton  13:42  
yeah. And if you keep having moments like that, throughout that creation process, then it's not not a surprise that not very many people get to the end of that. And of course, if you're a company, trying to sell it a product, then then you're relying heavily on your user to get to that place and feel very satisfied by the veteran.

Gary Pageau  14:03  
Yep, yep.

Liam Houghton  14:05  
And so so we thought, Well, you know, we're back in 2016. We're a junction where data science is starting to come into mainstream, you know, awareness, and AI and machine learning. And which we've seen before it kind of got to the hype really came in how there was an opportunity here because of where we were in a technology cycle with just getting to a stage now whereby you can do a lot of processing on the mobile device itself, right not to sync the entire photo library up to the cloud, to derive and, and find significance in the data. Yeah, and so yeah, let's combine some good UX practices that we had learned from all of our experiences in making products for different industries. Let's combine that with a relevant relentless focus. automation, and taking heavy lifting out of that complex process and doing a lot of the grunt work the cropping the layout and moving things around as much

Gary Pageau  15:13  
as some 3d pre visualization stuff to right where people can see, do they do an ornament, for example, they can see what it looks like, I think you've done some really interesting things with virtual photo books, correct?

Liam Houghton  15:27  
Yeah, yeah, exactly. And that's a more recent innovation that we've launched in the last year. And it's again, it's about about making that the all of the decisions along the way in that bundle, making them seem less easy to make, because again, there's a lot of anxiety. We're a new company, relatively new coming space, people using us for the first time that they have no idea what it's going to look like when it when it arrives on their doorstep. So how do you tackle that you make a good software experience that's reflective of the physical product experience. But then, let's let's let's use the latest technology to immerse people on how it's going to look and we built some really complicated but really realistic models of our products and get it the Christmas ornament. We have a acrylic and glass. Yeah. ornaments that that we use dye sublimation.

Gary Pageau  16:22  
That was the one I was thinking. Yeah,

Liam Houghton  16:24  
yeah. And, and we, you know, for months, this year, we're getting all the light the refraction writer, you know, as you twist, twist, twist this object in the app you can use, it just feels ultra realistic. And, and we've had our best year ever for that product is shot up, run out of stock on one of the options. so popular. And so this so

Gary Pageau  16:47  
Declan, how and  when did you become involved with the company? Because you have a more traditional photo industry background? Can you share that a little bit? And?

Declan Mellett  16:56  
Yes, very much so. And so. Yes, I joined the industry back in 93 and joined a company called standard photographic that basically has been the center in and tradition we cook color paper, we process these six films, a traditional photographic, we were a supplier to the industry work with 3am on that on their private label film, but I am. So I met Liam is actually five years ago, and this month, and when they how I came across, I'm sorry, how I came across. Last time they exhibited at Xerox event and the MVP of the Popsa app. And I was doing some consulting for a London printing company, a financial printer. And they were looking to try to get into it see that it was an MVP and startup and I met him and after the meeting, I didn't get the printing by the way.

I was working for a company and a London based financial printer, and they were looking to get into our markets. And I came across pops. And they were at a Xerox printing event exhibiting in Prague in the Czech Republic. And it was a very early stage, the MVP of the app. And I can't I reached out to Liam and said, Can I have a contact? Can we have a meeting? I was actually trying to get the printing.

Gary Pageau  18:44  
Right. Obviously, you're probably more of a traditional Yeah, yeah. Yeah,

Declan Mellett  18:46  
I was good. I can print this. But what what, but I did some research, and what because I class myself, as you as you call me, a traditional industry person. And what I really liked about the app, and it was still very early days, was that we, and that Popsa would come Oh, Liam, and Tom would come from a point of view of the customer user journey, rather than traditionally in the industry. We sold our business - Standard Photographc - we sold that to CEWE in Germany. Sure. So we always use technology to fill up our printing machines. We were factory lead. And this completely is different to what I've seen before. Right. And I had the meeting. I didn't get the printing, by the way because it stayed with the company. But I asked after meeting again my background said I'd really like to get involved. We had no money. We was booth there was bootstrapping the business. And and when that they obviously like me, I kept in touch and they got the app go and then we got involved in June 2016. So I bet No, mate, we had to raise some money and it was just as the UK voted for Brexit. It's a sort of that funny things happen when there's something that seismic changes going on in my outside of your control and that, and that's, that's, that's how we met. And that's how I got involved. And they invited me to come to get involved. And we got we. Yeah. And then eventually they invited me to become a director and also the chairman, which was,

Gary Pageau  20:20  
so you put an interesting point there kind of about the the industry viewpoint, because I've always thought that as well. You know, people used to always say, you know, why were transformed by six? sighs? Is that what the consumer wanted? No. That's how why Kodak made the papers at the machine? Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So it was very, like you said, it's factory driven. It was not consumer driven, even though Kodak and Fuji would always say, Oh, you know, all this. Big, you know, they always claim they were consumer driven. And obviously, they weren't. To the extent that is required in today's business.

Declan Mellett  21:00  
Yeah. And I think it's important part. And we've, we said we bootstrapped the business at first. And we've raised capital as we've gone throughout the four years. And but the interesting point I was trying to make too, because we, we get pigeonholed by investors and potential investors and the market as a photo printing app. And I think we're where we are, but we're not, we're very much a tech business. So in the business, I'm the only person that's actually got a printing background, and been involved in the industry. Everybody else in this, there's nearly 100 of us at the moment, they will call core numbers about 17. But we obviously with peak, but I'm the only one that's got that background, everybody else is either a computer scientist, active Android developer, iOS developer, and marketer, there's nobody from within the industry, that's gone to. And I was talking to some of the incumbents that the CEOs of newcomers in our market, I said, we are not a printing company, and we have nothing, nothing like it, we are a tech business. And we've driven up a tech business with detail about the tech business. And that's what suit that's, that's what made me get really excited about joining, getting involved on the way

Gary Pageau  22:20  
I've always, from what I've been able to see on you know, this side of the pond with what you've been doing is not only the technology side, which I would like to deal with it, you know, in a little bit, but the kind of the marketing promotion side, you've you've had a very high touch, I guess is the word I would the feel is very high touch, very personable approach, can you talk about how you develop that.

Liam Houghton  22:48  
And on the marketing side, it's, it's been very interesting, as we came into this market, again, having never sold one of these products. And so you do start from scratch. And I think that that was very, very valuable. And I, you know, ever since we got going and we've gone from success to success, I keep reminding new members of our team here that actually we're not selling photo books, or, or other printed objects, we're selling the experience of making them Hmm, that's, that's where, where we're different, ultimately, what we're getting out of the way and, and users are really enjoying that process where it was a hassle, but for that finding it fun is the other types of words that come back estimates. And so on the marketing side, we, we try and not make too many big claims. Just by telling people we try and show people, right. And we found that you know, in many ways, we just have to show some real people talking about our product. And and even the and when I say product, I mean the app, the software experience and show that software experience on screen. And when we do that, we get very, very high converting adverts, and she's very honest kind of marketing. Anyways.

Gary Pageau  24:25  
So so so along those lines, what is the because I'm not that familiar with what's happening to the EU with the UK market in terms of pricing. So how competitive is the pricing there? Have you had to to go discount or you more premium experience because of your great app? Yeah, it's

Declan Mellett  24:45  
an interesting point. And because we're across 12 markets, only 14% of our business is actually in the UK. And so a very international or us us racket but I think Because we vote, we don't look at the incumbents at all. We don't look at it for the technology, we don't look at their advertising either. So we therefore try to steer our own boat. And so we don't tend to get involved with the actual discounting that we see. You know, you see, so like, 70%

Gary Pageau  25:17  
all over the place here. Yeah,

Declan Mellett  25:19  
yeah. So we've, so far we've been able to avoid that. And by doing that, I think is focusing on the experience of, of how the customer is creating and being part of the journey, you know, through their lives. And that's when we have a high repeat rate. And then, and that that's where we tend tends to focus rather than this race to the bottom in the industry, which, you know, is a big concern, for those of us that have been in a long time. So it's a comprehensive, we've been here before. Yeah, yeah. And why do that. And I think that's, that's really important, why we don't get involved in anything. That's been our strategy so far.

Liam Houghton  25:57  
And our prices are not the lowest. Now I've been far from it as a result of that. But the reason why that that's the case, and probably will be more the case in the future, is that people are buying the experience of making it again, it's going to turn into more of a service, it's no longer just about the physical piece of paper, the thickness of it, that how many pages, that's that's, that that's one of the unnecessary things to have.

Gary Pageau  26:27  
So so so in other words, I'm just just trying to follow sort of the, the positioning here, by the time they've received the physical object, whether it's an ornament or book or whatnot, they've already had the experience, they've already gotten the quote unquote, product. Yeah.

Liam Houghton  26:46  
Yeah, yeah. As we say it. And that's not to say that the end, physical product isn't is not part of that, or it's actually a different additional experience, we see that as a, as an opening to creating a conversation amongst a family or with your neighbor, or it's the next experience along and too often seen as just the the early part of

Declan Mellett  27:10  
a very interesting fact is, a high percentage of our repeat rate actually happens within two days of the original purchase, which is when you think about that, it's quite, it's quite interesting. So the customer is coming back, coming back and repurchasing before they've even received the physical product.

Gary Pageau  27:27  
Yeah, they haven't even got there and haven't

Declan Mellett  27:28  
even got it. Sometimes I'll order two or three books, but 95% 90% of our volume is booked, but that they're coming back very quickly and and ordering again and again before the receipt is that that's it that shows us that that experience is in the product we call the app.

Gary Pageau  27:46  
Is that been consistent that that sort of passion for the customer experience? Or is that something that's developed over time? Or is that more or is this from day one where you wanted to go with it? Or is it something you've learned? I guess the question

Liam Houghton  28:00  
is, it's definitely got better every time but also is very apparent. Straight away. Actually.

Declan Mellett  28:07  
What I noticed goes goes obviously, I started doing photo books back in 2000 Jessops in the UK. And but what I noticed as well, because it was maybe doing from the mobile app that people were making, generally smaller amount of pages. But more frequently, right, which is totally opposite to when we were at CD and standard photographic work.

Gary Pageau  28:29  
Oh, yeah. You want to do the annual yearbook

Declan Mellett  28:33  
pages, and sebatu. And all that. Yeah, that's what I say it's a different behavior. And that shows the repeatability is quicker people cataloging. And you know, January, February, March weekend way stack parties and parties,

Liam Houghton  28:48  
that type of thing. And it's not by accident, either. We're trying to create an almost habitual, almost addictive behavior of once you've done your first one, you want to get back to the next set of important photos before that and do that one.

Gary Pageau  29:05  
Did you see the item I think it was in the independent in the UK they were reporting a survey that I think Fujifilm had commissioned about how the and I know we're talking about Britain, mostly, but I know you're worldwide. So I'm not Britain exclusive. But it was very interesting. I'm gonna mention in my newsletter about how because of COVID and the homebound nature of people's experience now there are people are rediscovering physical photos. Yeah.

Liam Houghton  29:39  
Yeah, it's very interesting. And I think that trend is is it's not going to go away. Right? I think so much of our lives. On a digital, right, everything you do, and and does, it really heightens the experience when when you not only have something physical You actually go back and do some curation, some some reliving over picking out the best bits of all this data we'll we'll generate every day now. Knowing how often do you go back over these things, even science, not just photo libraries, I think it's really important to say that now, so much value is being created in messenger apps and in communication between people. And and people use photos in different ways, as well as record different things. It's almost just note, as well, so, so pulling pulling the best of that out. So it's not currently lost in just ether. Yeah, I've

Declan Mellett  30:40  
seen again, a lot the digital version of the shoe box. Yeah, it's becoming more and more important. Yeah. Yeah. And I think, especially when companies like Facebook and focusing more on their WhatsApp, and that, that hidden communication is so important that you know that we are, you know, the other side of the fence, showing that you can play and don't forget about your memory. That's really, really Right.

Gary Pageau  31:03  
Right. Yeah, cuz I think that's, you know, we turn to in the in the photo industry, the traditional thinking, right, is your thinking camera app, you're thinking, yeah, those types of those types of communication, like you said, there may be something happening in a chat app that people may want to know, as well. Maybe not put on an ornament.

Declan Mellett  31:27  
Yeah. Oh, yeah. But yeah, I think that that's becoming them, you know, people are exchanging, we've noticed that with our customers that the collation a lot of the collation actually goes on between partlow friends via WhatsApp first, and then somebody actually creates the Yeah. So that that ecosystems happening before it's a concern. Let's look into it.

Gary Pageau  31:49  
So I promised we would talk a little bit about the technology. And now we're at that point. So you've got a nice part on your website, regarding your platform, can you talk? Can you talk a little bit about what your objectives are with the platform? Is it to, you know, license it or share it? Or have other people work with it? what's what's the objective with that? You can talk about it in a nutshell.

Liam Houghton  32:17  
Yeah, the, the, the platform we built is very much a bespoke of technology that we've we've, we've, we've built from first principles, is quite a deliberate thing not to use Shopify or another system. And that was so that we could rapidly iterate in as many areas as possible, test things out, challenge our own assumptions as to how to do things. And that's what phenomenally well, I mean, such as is, there's no kind of single piece of technology in there that that does the job. It's it's definitely almost like an ecosystem of different parts that right, cross reference each other. Right, very integrated into all the other parts of it.

Gary Pageau  33:11  
Well, that was kind of my point is I mean, you seem to be building this sort of ecosystem, you seem to be highlighting it as much, whereas, you know, I think that she's, you know, I mean, that's great, but kind of what do you do with in for the next space?

Liam Houghton  33:27  
I think us, it's important to us, it's really important to understand the reasons why people make these products. Sure. And, and so, if we're trying to build a platform, which responds to those kind of deep seated reasons, it could be, you know, subconscious bought, such as I want to impress my neighbor, I want to be a good parent, or I want to crystallize who is who I am as a person and the boundaries of my family. And when you start thinking, thinking about it on that level, rather than how do we design is Pageau voted right? Then might might be burning an awful lot of value that can be redeployed for for many different manifestations. Sure. That's not that's not content, and physical products are one of them. But we're not we're deliberately designing the platform to be have a much wider potential future than that. So that it could be really interesting digital products in the future, surely, can we build a beautiful web experience that improves the animations are reflected in the sound design and save your photos and towels? importantly, a big theme for us is narrative. So what we want to do is try and create artifacts of any time that are more than the sum of that parts? Okay? So it's not just a list of photos, you know, your photograph from your phone printed out? It's actually, how do we pull out the meaning of what's going on in a nice, bite sized territory of your holiday? Is

Gary Pageau  35:21  
Is this your own AI you've built?

Liam Houghton  35:24  
Oh, yeah,

Gary Pageau  35:27  
There's a lot of people working in that area. I mean, it seems like, you know, AI and photo working on context is one of the, you know, hotspots right now. I mean, it I mean, it will be a great innovation, I think when it can become more widely in use. I just think right now, it's a little, the technology's there, I'm not sure the adoption is there.

Liam Houghton  35:53  
I think we're still in the very early days as well, I think we're in a situation where, where, yeah, as you said, with the technology is there it's possible, but when we're not yet a situation where it's properly being applied to these problems in detail. And that's, that's what we're trying to do. That's what we've got a lot of prototypes in, in the works at the moment. And the aim of those is not to reinvent the wheel in terms of new types of AR, right, it's to use existing machine learning concepts in such a way that that, you know, the results of one process, which might be to detect significant events in your photo library, and that gets passed into another process, which might try and automatically generate the appropriate title that sums up, you know, those events and innovation. Mother's Day, or my two weeks in Florida, something, and then that you might have other other bits of information about the people in the photos and the relationships of those people, you know, between each other? Yes, my influence those other things as well. So it's about creating that that system that all works together, and then if you can get to that bar, then you've that you can actually produce something that has very high perceived value out of the other side. Instead of instead of just some some more information. There's a documents photo. That's not that's not useful by itself. 

Gary Pageau  37:30  
Right. So that's a dog, is it? And who is that? What is that dog's relationship to the other people? In that stream of images?

Liam Houghton  37:39  
Yeah. Is that your dog? Is there with you? Yeah. How often do they appear in has significant as this thing to you, we have to stop analyzing that, and coming to some conclusions?

Gary Pageau  37:51  
How do you do that in a non-creepy way? Right? Because they're certainly.

Liam Houghton  37:57  
I think, I think I think part of the answer of how you do that in a non-creepy ways, is that you don't do it in the cloud. Right? That you did that, that that data stays, you know, this is not our data, this is customer data, and it should stay on their devices. And, and, and the analysis, and, and, and any processing that's done needs to be connected to some value you're giving back. Right. And first, we're not we're not we don't sell, we don't make money on advertising. We've got a direct relationship there that if you opt into a service that recognizes faces, then we might be able to automatically generate an album of you and your mother for Mother's Day. So there's a very honest, direct relationship between those things. Which is, which allows the building to get depressed and rapport with our customers in that way.

Gary Pageau  38:52  
Yeah. Because I think people consumers are becoming more and more aware of how valuable their data is. And they may not be as purple. letting other companies monetize it, as you know.

Declan Mellett  39:06  
Yeah. To win, but at times of the business at the moment is by the books, that's for sure.

Gary Pageau  39:12  
But that's but that's a very transparent, as far as I know, very, very transparent, very open transaction. You give me your your bits and pixels, and we give you a book. 

Liam Houghton  39:24  
Yeah. Yeah,

Declan Mellett  39:25  
I think I think one of the I, we talked about it here is that, that this industry has always been in a very privileged position, because we've always, always dealt with the customer's images, right? You know that, you know, the grief of get up as a cross over a problem and easily worsen sort of highlight because you would lose, it would be gone. But so so there is always you know, that that honest relationship and if you are honest with the customer, in that respect, that there's respect from both sides, that's what we really try to hone in on how we deal with it and how we're bringing customers along on the journey.

Gary Pageau  39:59  
Yeah, oh, yeah. You've raised an interesting point where I think there is some value kind of to the traditional business approach of the photo industry. Because because there's always been that sort of trust that, you know, if you sent away a roll of film, or you uploaded some pictures to a to a website, they weren't going to do something else with them. Yeah, that's right. You were going to get your products back. And they weren't going to. And if they did, it was a violation of some sort. It wasn't, oh, well, you know, that's how that's what they got to do. So they can provide you the service. It was like, no, that's not at all what they should be doing.

It is it is interesting, how sort of digital marketing today is reliant almost on some sort of exploitation of the end users information to to make it possible. And I think that's actually going to evolve fairly quickly, over the next few years, as, as younger generations become more aware, because I think it's to some extent, older generations, like Oh, look, I get free email, that's great. You know, I'm getting a free service, right. But they're already seeing things in the marketplace where like, for example, Google is starting to charge for services, right? They're not, you're not giving you free, unlimited photos anymore. Unless you buy a car, but you pay for storage,

Liam Houghton  41:33  
you can see the direction it's going and I think that's a reaction to, to the awareness on it. And hopefully, that, that awareness in time, can have greater maturity and sophistication

Gary Pageau  41:46  
and a halo effect, actually, for all the people like yourself, right?

Liam Houghton  41:49  
Yeah, it's important that people understand what is and what is not happening as well. It can be can sound scary on more often than not, it's it's very innocent. Yeah. And there's isn't that there's no one looking at data and, and that and that, that's why ultimately, we decided, analysis can be done on the device, if it never leaves the device, then no one else can ever get to it.

Gary Pageau  42:16  
It's as secure as the devices secure. And that's right. Yeah.

Yeah. So and, you know, there's more some, some people, some device makers are more interested in security than others. But although I think overriding now, it's been a, it's been an issue that's been addressed. So, as we conclude, what do you see looking forward for to 2021 some of the opportunities that are coming there.

Liam Houghton  42:44  
And I suppose we've got we've we've got to a point already, whereby we we've, we've got the fundamentals of the business going very nicely in terms of the the infrastructure, the e commerce and accounts and security and, and a range of physical products as well, and, and the US next year, it's about really starting to pull away in terms of differentiation. We've had a lot going on behind the scenes for the last few years, which is going to going to start to emerge on the data science side. And some some very interesting, cool features, and all about, you know, reducing the effort and the hassle in each of these, each of these making experiences and in a way with where we're already thinking a few years beyond that, towards a post app economy, I describe that as whereby you can already see it starting to become mainstream, you're not always using a physical interface, like Alexa and Siri are good examples of where customers are starting to give commands Asprey to companies, a company such as squid would do some intelligence and work in the background very, very quickly, and then deliver a result as fast as possible. And I think we're going to start to see that in more and more areas of life. And so we're wanting to do that for this industry. Right. And that requires a lot, you know, a high degree of end to end automation, right? Because Because, you know, even historically into today, there's there's not been a very easy way of customers having impulse purchases in the sector, because you have to go make something you have to invest the time, just decide, Oh, that looks lovely, our buyer. And so if we can automate as much of that process and and, and detect what is significant in someone's life on their own device, and then create something in the background and and say, What do you think? Yeah, it looks like you've just been on vacation. with major, a lovely souvenir, you can change it on model Fight or you can order it in the click of a button. We're really kind of preparing the ground for that world. And it won't happen immediately. But you can see it coming right along is inevitable. Right?

Gary Pageau  45:16  
Well, great. Well, thank you so much for your time and your and your thoughtfulness and your input. We've been talking today with Liam Houghton, the CEO Popsa and Declan Mellett, the chairman of Popsa, and thank you much, gentlemen for and have a great holiday season in 21. Thank you.

Liam Houghton  45:37  
Thank you very much.