How Photo Labs Can Win With Direct-To-Consumer Marketing, with Rocky Bowles

Kodak didn’t “miss digital.” What really happened is more interesting and a lot more useful if you work in photo printing, photo labs, or photo software. Gary Pageau of The Dead Pixels Society sits down with longtime marketing leader Rocky Bowles to trace the real arc from the film era to early online ordering, and then into the current moment where AI content, social commerce, and collapsing attention spans are rewriting how people buy photo products.

Bowles shares what it took to earn consumer trust when the idea of mailing your film to a lab felt risky, and how ProShots tried to connect photographers, labs, and customers online before Facebook normalized sharing. From there, we unpack why startup innovation can die inside corporate structures, even when the technology is strong, and why the “legacy business” problem is different from having no vision at all.

Then Bowles gets practical: what marketing actually means in 2026 for the photo imaging industry. She talks audience segmentation, content budgets, and the uncomfortable truth that real campaigns need time, often 90 days, before you can judge results. She also digs into direct-to-consumer strategy, “orphan brides,” and why reducing friction matters more than perfect product pages, especially on mobile and platforms like TikTok and Instagram.

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Transcript

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Sponsor And Show Welcome

Erin Manning 0:10

The Dead Pixels Society Podcast is brought to you by Media clip, Advertek Printing, and Independent Photo Imagers. Welcome to The Dead Pixels Society Podcast, the photoimaging industry's leading news source. Here's your host, Gary Pageau.

Rocky’s Imaging Origin Story

Gary Pageau 0:30

Hello again, and welcome to The Dead Pixels Society Podcast. I'm your host, Gary Pageau. And today we're joined by Rocky Bowles, who is a marketing expert of longstanding in the photo imaging space and other places. So before we get into it, Rocky, how are you today?

Rocky Bowles 0:50

Great, Gary. Thanks for including me. And I appreciate the introduction.

Gary Pageau 0:55

So, Rocky, you've been in the industry a long time, kind of in certain niches, but where did you get started in the imaging space specifically before we go through the what 15 companies you've been through?

Rocky Bowles 1:08

So I would say for me overall, I've always been in software.

Gary Pageau 1:12

Okay.

Rocky Bowles 1:13

What I've always done is work incredibly hard to try to connect consumers to their images. Right. So, you know, it was I was never a photographer, I wasn't a landowner, I was just somebody who loved photos and looking at family and seeing what families look like. And it was great to see weddings and receptions and babies and all this stuff. So I it was so important to me because as digital was coming, there wasn't anyone connecting there, except for what we were working on in a tiny little town called Flint, Michigan.

Mailing Film And Early Digital Trust

Gary Pageau 1:51

So let's talk a little bit about kind of that era because looking back to the analog to digital transition that people went through, there were several stages of it, right? There was pure analog capture where people would process film and then they would maybe scan the negs, some of the nags, but not all of the nags. I remember going to I think it was a Dean Collins seminar and shooting for the scan, right? That was all but it but but but it was a it was a film first sort of environment, right? And then it kind of evolved over that to a hybrid environment where you had photo CD and different things like that, and pro photo CD and all those kind of things.

Rocky Bowles 2:35

Uh like your audience will some of your audience will love this, and they'll smile a little bit. So I was on the tail end, the film piece of it.

Gary Pageau 2:42

Yeah, right.

Rocky Bowles 2:43

But I still had to transition people into the digital piece. And I remember having to say to people, okay, now you're gonna put your film in the mail. And people were like, That's what you do at York, Raquel. That is what you do when you're a consumer. And I was like, You have to trust me that it will make trust me. Yeah, so that's how big that piece was. It was just getting people to understand that we were gonna take your film and not harm it. And that was something that was new to them because they know if they opened that camera wrong, if the lab took the film out of the package wrong, I'm like, hey, and by the way, there's two labs that do this. I need you to put it in the mail. You know, that transition part that I really was in. I had to get people to understand where that new wave was coming. And for me personally, I was working with labs and photographers and then their consumers because to me, it was the quickest way to get everybody connected in a way they hadn't been. Right. Because I could see as marriages were changing and families were changing and schools were changing, you were not going to be able to get families in the room again. The cry and they buy the day's Dave Seiser thing, right? That was amazing back then. If you can get them in the room, if you make them cry, they'll buy. So I was trying to be able to take that and put that in a digital environment. So my long story, friends, that's the arc of my career, whether it's directly working with photographers, album companies, people with new ideas on, you know, like filter pit soul and you know, milk books, and you know, that conversation that we've had before about them coming in and not even understanding there's a pro album division of any album.

Gary Pageau 4:27

Right, right.

Rocky Bowles 4:28

No, so that's where I've been always just trying to connect people. I wasn't a camera person at Codec. They acquired meaning through that future thinking. Oh, saw what the future was in such a place before Facebook. So then that's what I always laugh about. I'm like, we were all sitting on something we could not communicate, and a lot of us like kids, we did right kids as a kid. I you know, I'm a strong Michigan accent trying to tell people I was an outsider.

ProShots And The Closed Loop Model

Gary Pageau 5:00

I was brought but to start with that little company in Flint, Michigan that you were talking about that had to roll out that whole pro shots experience because most people probably don't remember what it was, and if they do, you know, they don't remember maybe that Kodak eventually bought that.

Rocky Bowles 5:18

Yeah, I mean, we were basically trying to get images online so in a way that people could purchase them, not look at them in line again before Facebook. This was how can we help photographers? So all the people behind it, if it's okay to name names, make people don't know these people. But Ray Hibs was one of the first people behind this, whatever you're because of the guy's fantastic, but he is so smart, yeah. You know, very interesting man to work with, incredibly smart, doing still incredibly smart things. Yeah, and he had a psychography background and background, but it was separated. I mean family members that were doing this. And I remember Ray ever saying he was a photographer, but he knew that we needed to connect people to their images, right? And in order for this whole ecosystem, not the CVS, the the lab guides, the millers, the Larry Anatols, right? Like those people who were employing lots of people and lots of prices, and then all these photographers that were building all these amazing businesses as well. He wanted to be able to keep that everybody's boats floating, right?

Gary Pageau 6:30

And he was let's talk a little bit about the process back then, right? So it was uh it was a male two process, but they were selling the service, is really what they were selling, right?

Rocky Bowles 6:42

ProShots was selling, so I had two markets. I was selling software to photographers to get you hooked to go to a lab to say I need this, right? And then I was working with labs in between to connect those two machines with TP2, done TP2 all my life, how to connect rows and tp2 together and connect the software together and make that work. So that's really you know what we were trying to do. But we were also two labs selling you know half a million dollar printers to scanners. Yeah, they weren't kind of Kodak branded Pro Shots logo on it. Those printers, they were not Kodak branded, they were pro so you had to buy, we had a closed that's the other thing we had we had a closed system. Software used our labs, it was a very close system, and then we started stealing Kodak trying to make a software because they wanted it to run through their systems and be a VP2-based product, and Fuji wanted it for their future, and right we just wanted to see where this was gonna go because we were having a blast, but we just kept building and building, and we kicked their butt, right?

Gary Pageau 7:52

We have this little tiny company and we built we become well, and then eventually you became part of Kodak, and that's like the next evolution, right? It's Kodak eventually checked book and bought it out, and uh and so what was that transition like going from you know the the small hustle company of a startup type environment in and going now to the established player who was trying their best to be nimble, you know, to

When Startups Hit Corporate Gravity

Gary Pageau 8:21

be generous, right?

Rocky Bowles 8:22

They were they they were trying to make changes, but there was probably some some some insights there that are yeah, it was an awful time for anybody that was involved in any kind of software because right what that was the bust, right? So here I am involved in some software company and all these other software companies have busted, and Kodak in the transition kept having me involved in all these mark marketing, right? Because I was doing the marketing, everything set up so that it's software and all of that. And finally I just said to them, hey guys, I don't have time for that. I gotta go find another job, right? You guys involved this, I gotta go.

Gary Pageau 8:56

Right.

Rocky Bowles 8:57

Call me right called me a couple hours later, and then I became an obsolete coding for a very short period of time until that division, those decisions around pro shots were closed out. So I was there for a very short period of time, but it was enough to learn about how a startup can't exist in a corporate environment unless the people at the top can are visionaries.

Gary Pageau 9:25

Right.

Rocky Bowles 9:25

Yeah, when I think if you look at my LinkedIn profile and you look at the four companies that I've worked with, you can pinpoint the people I've worked with a lot of money in this industry because they were the people who were risk takers and could see the future.

Gary Pageau 9:39

Sure, absolutely to make those changes.

Rocky Bowles 9:41

But yeah, so it was everything that your panel said, everything that Ben says in the substand, all of those things are true. It was just incredibly hard on our side, because as you see today, it still stands. And we could have had a Facebook first and we could have had a TikTok shop first, right? I can show you the documentation that's true.

Gary Pageau 10:04

So but it's very difficult for any company to when they've got a core company like Eastman Kodak did, which was one of the world's best coding companies on the planet, right? I mean, that's really where they made their money was coding, is then to realize, oh my gosh, we're gonna become a company that where you share photos and you may or may not be able to print them. I can certainly see where from a public from a public company standpoint, that's a hard sell.

Rocky Bowles 10:31

And then, you know, there's also the part of being able to try to draw something. Sure, there wasn't any for us, it shouldn't right. So you can't try to go, and I'm sure there's people on the development team that know me very well. Yeah, yeah, that would come to me and say, You're asking for an any key, Raquel. Please, there's no any key, right? And I'm like, I know, but I what we need you guys to see this, and I'll bring Guy Smith in. He was another person, and Guy would try to explain, and other people would come in, and and they were from these multifunctional teams that they were trying to build so that we could all try to communicate with each other. But it was really hard. I mean, it was hard for Ray to get everybody to understand what he had. I mean, I a lot of times I felt in those meetings we were doing charades with people, and I was like, Look, either come along or you're gonna die. And and we'll live long enough to see, you know, really what's happened with that. So yeah, I mean, it is, it's interesting, you know, just looking at it and just being trying to try to communicate. I'm sure it happened, you know, when TikTok comes along and they're like, hey, we're gonna build these really simple shops and they're gonna bypass Squarespace and they're gonna bypass all of this. And I need you, TikTok CEO, to trust me that this is the way to go when there are numerous e-commerce platforms that people can get on that we could just plug into. It's that same kind of thing. You just have to have people, and I've met them and boy, if we nailed it, right? I met those people who listen and let me go do what they let me take their product and with it what I can because they've got the idea, and then I just had the fire behind it because I have so much passion in connecting consumers to their and then also I have photographers, right? They're my friends, labs are my friends, you're my friends, all these people. It's like my family. So, you know, I can come up with something that helps all my friends that are photographers, and just helps all my friends who are lads. So keep going,

The Kodak Missed Digital Myth

Rocky Bowles 12:31

right?

Gary Pageau 12:32

So, one of the things that we kind of reconnected over was sort of the resurgence of these very terrible AI slop posts on LinkedIn about how Kodak missed the boat, how they didn't see digital and all the other stuff. And you know, I've been responding to those, and so have been a few other people in the industry saying, Oh my gosh, you have no idea what you're talking about. Kodak was probably one of the most digital companies of that era, it just may not have been where they could make a good business, right? I mean, that's a whole other thing. There's a whole discussion whether they see digital, yes. Did they have a crazy amount of digital technology? Yes. Could they keep a multi-billion dollar company afloat in a digital environment? Not so much, right? I mean, that I mean those are completely different things.

Rocky Bowles 13:24

Sorry, Taj.

Gary Pageau 13:25

Right.

Rocky Bowles 13:25

That's why it works for FilterPixel. That's why these other companies, smut mug, right, right. That's how it worked for all of them, life through 65, just because they were able to create a lot of people.

Gary Pageau 13:37

Well, and they didn't have the legacy piece, right? I mean, that's that's part of the challenge is you know, there's still factories, there's still 38,000 people in Rochester working, you know, and all these things that you gotta deal with as a big company. And you know, that's one of the challenges is for a company to make a transition, you know, they have to, in some ways, have to be able to say, you know what, you know, we're you know, we gotta we either reduce headcount, we have to change the business model, we have to do a bunch of hard decisions, which as you and I both know from living working at companies that have had to make those decisions, it's not very pleasant sometimes.

Rocky Bowles 14:14

I mean, this is how this ecosystem works, and I feel very comfortable in somebody who has seen, and I think a lot of people with this podcast know me. They know I've seen a behind the scenes.

Gary Pageau 14:26

Absolutely.

Rocky Bowles 14:27

Marketing returns money, but to the industry in which you and I have been tied to, it's a cost to minimize. So you get beyond that, and you know, there are people I've talked to just recently that I've had that exact discussion with. I know you've got the printers paid off, and I know you've done this before, done why before, and but I'm still preaching the same message. You have got to market, and now that you know, like that's the other part. I can go through budgets of every company and not one of them have a content. But to create content, right? You're creating content and going back to the AI piece of this. Everything you know have known in marketing, which was already wrong, which is marketing isn't a cost to minimize marketing returns money. Using AI in the wrong way can really hurt you as well as thinking it's a way to save money when it might not be if you don't know how to use it right going through another again, another technology change with this group of people. This happens to be yet again in marketing.

Gary Pageau 15:36

Yeah, I I I see that too, because you know, when I interact with labs and things, it it's very interesting because it's almost like you know, they're like, Well, if only we could get photographers to sell more. And it's like, you know, you could go direct, right? That's really where you know the photographer at some point is important, and they do, you know, obviously sell a lot of prints and things, you know, the smart ones do, but there's a lot of photographers right now who don't really care about output.

Selling To Brides Without Photographers

Gary Pageau 16:08

So who is reaching those brides or family portraits or all those kinds to get those professional images printed, right? Why aren't the labs you know appealing to them directly?

Rocky Bowles 16:19

I think I have a really good story for you that we talked about with Milkbooks.

Gary Pageau 16:23

Right.

Rocky Bowles 16:23

Um came to me a while back and said, Hey, you know, we looked through all of our images and we keep seeing all these pro images. And, you know, can you connect us into photographers? And do they want to sell them? They were beautiful books. I told you they competed with a real top brand. I had their influencers in my booth going, oh my god, this could save me money. What I was learning from the photographers today, who are the photographers, the grown, matured photographers in the industry, is that they're gonna make their money on paying for the sheep. So, hey, we're make a widget I can put on my website that sells everything you want to sell and you sell to them. Give me five percent. I mean, they weren't even asking you for 20.

Gary Pageau 17:06

Right.

Rocky Bowles 17:06

Like traditional photographers always they were like, hey, give me five because five percent is gonna increase my business so much because I'm happy with the money I made. And now they're not the $100,000 your photographers, but 10 of them make a hundred thousand dollars, and I can talk to them quicker, faster, better, and easier. And I can also go to their customers directly, which right? I can't get so there's there's just a there's more markets for labs, right? You had a client, I said just tell them go direct, right? Like stop trying to sell this between everybody, just sell it to their customers, and that's what exactly happened to Milk Books. They just said, Well, you know what? It's easier for me to sell to a bride. And we used to have, I think it was the pictureless. We always talked, this is how we sold it to Kobe Lams. The you've been photographers, you've got pictureless brides. We cannot have pictures brides, and whoever sticks to the pictureless bride, and there are so many companies again when people say it's dying, and oh, please look at the app store, there's album companies and everything else. Yeah, they're not only are they speaking to the bride, but they're speaking to the consumer.

Gary Pageau 18:13

Well, and then the you know, that's called the phrase I've heard used in the industry is orphan brides, right? That's the phrase that I use for the people brides who just get a thumb drive with a ton of images and don't know what to do with them. And there are people out there who have started businesses who just reach out to them. I don't know if they're scouring the Reddit forms or where they're finding the your Facebook, where they're finding, and they say, Hey, bride, give me your images, I'll make you a photo.

Rocky Bowles 18:38

So milk doesn't milk doesn't do that, they don't speak to brides, they just speak to the variety of the consumer, right? And I am sure that there are many people who remember me having a big long conversation. Cody put me out in front of all of the labs, and I did this big video and this big presentation, and I was like, You guys are missing this peak where professional photographers and consumers are gonna meet, and you have got to stop talking to them separately and start talking in the same way and advertising to them in the same way, which yes is very expensive. And guess what? Because you let these other people into the market, well, you gotta pay more, right? That's not my fault. You let other people into the market when we've talked to you about how you close, we could walk close that loop and make even more money than we ever dreamed of, right? So yeah, I mean, it's that piece of it that I think people meant that some of the labs quote unquote go direct, right?

Gary Pageau 19:34

Bay Photo is pretty much a go-direct company now. Miller's with MPix is generally speaking that way, but a lot of the labs aren't in a lot of ways, especially on the pro side, right? What's funny is from my viewpoint is the disappearance of the quote unquote amateur labs, right? The amateur online. Well, you mentioned York Photo, right? You know, there is no real York photo online anymore.

Rocky Bowles 19:59

Oh, Gary, no, I'm sorry. There are hundreds of those. They are on TikTok and they sell direct. They are.

Gary Pageau 20:07

I mean, are they just selling like the equivalent of the four-dollar overnight roll of film, or is it more of a custom or is it more of a I'm I'm thinking of in terms of the value cheap sort of in the same way milk books, like so.

Rocky Bowles 20:21

What I would say to you is this go into TikTok, go into your Instagram feed. You and I are so connected to the photo industry, all I see are ads for photo labs and photo businesses. Right. And tell me where you see anybody that I mean there, I I know of I'll have to be honest, I know of one I can't see who they are that are talking, like we are like what I'm saying, but the rest of them are using other photographers' imagery on their stuff. They don't have TikTok stores or Instagram stores, they are not selling prints, brides, or consumers, they're still kind of holding that model, and I'm not beating anybody up. That's not my point. My point is just to help people with marketing, right? And that's why you don't see those people, but I can tell you, you know, they're out there. A lot, I see milk in my feet, I see notebooks, I see so many film labs, I see a lot of print, but they're not selling four by six and a canvas and a 20 by 30 and a metal print. They go directly and sell a metal print, and they set up a TikTok shop for that. And you call that metal prints.com because if they don't care about their brand, because all they care about is making revenue. The old-fashioned brand, that's gone.

What Marketing Really Means

Gary Pageau 21:36

Yeah. So let's talk a little bit about if you can, when you say marketing, right? People really struggle with that in the sense where everyone's definition is different, right? What is the Rocky Bowl's definition of marketing?

Rocky Bowles 22:17

So I would say it's the infrastructure, whether that's technology, whatever, copy, the ads you use, right? It's your infrastructure that speaks directly to clients, protects it, doesn't generate revenue. It's just the different tools that you do use, right? Salespeople go out and they talk and they use my PowerPoints or you know, they use my PDFs that I make, right? I work closely with them and we get the messages out and we do all of that. That's part of marketing as well. Discount. It is, hey, we have to hold our breaths for 90, 90 days at a minimum. It's when you start any kind of campaign new, it's 90 days before AI or Google even picks up what you're doing. Doesn't matter how big your brand is, doesn't matter whether you're Starbucks or not. And it's waiting that 90 days. And then it's also saying, okay, does this work? Can we tweak it? Can we keep trying?

Gary Pageau 23:20

Right.

Rocky Bowles 23:21

Everybody, and I understand this. Everybody wants the money because they're in a situation just like Cod was where they can't take the breath back and take the risk. And I get that, but all businesses are in that position. It's not just photo businesses. Every client I have gives me the exact same pushback.

Gary Pageau 23:44

You know, I don't have time for this. And you know, it's interesting, is that because that's one of the things that I think people they think marketing is a total center problem. It's really part of the component, but it's also the one that takes as long time to build as putting in a new printer, in the sense, right? You don't just install a new printer and start churning out work the first day, right? You got to build up the volume and put your processes in place and everything else to refine it and make sure it works. And marketing is the same way.

Rocky Bowles 24:13

And the problem with our, like I would say, with labs or people that have been traditionally in this industry is that they're really not using the new technology in the right ways, right? They're getting their emails out and everything else, but they're not segmenting their audiences. Talk to the people that haven't talked to, get a good email system stuff, setting newsletter stuff, discounting, talk to your customers. What do they need? Yeah, you're you're gonna have to reinvest or sell those that don't want to do this. What are they doing? They're they're selling, trying to get in, you know, Shutterfly to buy them as another distribution.

Gary Pageau 24:51

Right. Sorry, that won't go very far. I don't think they're in the position to buy anybody these days.

Rocky Bowles 24:55

But you understand what they were doing, right? Life touch is that motto. White House did that. They had their lip and then they bought a land in Dallas, right? Like everybody was trying to buy up these, you know, smaller players. And I think what's happened is a lot of what's going on with photo isn't that it's side hustles, they're pretty decent small businesses, but they're not Kodaks, they're not smug mums, they're not milk books, but they're making albums, right? Develop them, they've got a good client base and they know how to market. Hey, reach out to me because I know if you add a little fiber to it, but you've got to be one of those people, and that's why I always say, you know, go back, you'll see when I met someone who said, Hey, let's really give this a try. We made a lot of money and developed new things in this industry, so it's it's just the mentality of the people, and sometimes there's 10 of them in a group of 20, and sometimes there's just five. But that speaks to mid-markets. I'm not beating anybody out. I've been doing software and trying to connect businesses to their consumers and be to be all of that through SaaS, you know, outside of all of this, and it's happening in all those places. Those that take the risk, those that you know try to be a startup in a traditional Fortune 500 environment. You really can't. You've got to let those people go. You gotta let them go and do their thing and take that risk. But I understand right why you can't.

Gary Pageau 26:26

So it's not just the photo industry, it's everybody that makes the decisions that yeah, it's not unique to photo, although you I mean, photo has its own sort of weird aspects to it, right? I mean, it is one of the only industries where we require the customer to input their media to create something, right? It's not just like you can go to the grocery store and buy a photo with your picture on it, right? You have to the customer has to interact with the app, upload the picture, do some stuff, crop editor, whatever. So there's a lot more to it than that. So, but I want to talk a little bit about kind of the your your time at Kodak Alaris, right? Because so you're at East from Kodak, you left, and then you came back when there was Alaris. Talk a little bit about that project, because that's

Kodak Alaris KC2 And The Share Button

Gary Pageau 27:16

a case I think where you feel that there was a very unique piece of software involved, and it just you know didn't get the attention it deserved.

Rocky Bowles 27:25

I think it's when I meet clients and customers see marketing as a cost center instead of being able to see marketing as a revenue generation system. That yeah, no, I get it with somebody who doesn't get that part. But yeah, I the Kodak Alaris part, oh, that was so much fun. And I got to get meet new people that had come into the company, but I got to get back with so what was that time frame?

Gary Pageau 27:49

Because Kodak Alaris came out of the post-bankruptcy side, so that was you know, probably what 1314 era.

Rocky Bowles 28:00

I got brought back in 2014 again, software.

Gary Pageau 28:04

Okay, and so and and that really wasn't the you know, everyone knew Kodak moments, quote unquote, at the time as sort of the kiosk business, right? I mean, that was sort of you know, we're the kiosk people now.

Rocky Bowles 28:16

Yeah, so what ended up happening is is all those people knew how to have that discussion. There was a new CEO, he was a British guy, and it had come in, and they were able, he was able to see it, and he heard it, and he was like, Well, this makes all kinds of sense. Get going and gave us a bunch of money, and they called me and said, Hey, you want to be a part of it? Of course I do. And they were like, Hey, let's you know get this going. And and it was really because they were able to sell it up the line up to a point where I mean, in all honesty, people were going around some of the division people to talk to the CEO because there were blockages that were two, probably two layers above us that we people were trying to speak to that saw all of this entire thing, not just the marketing, as a cost center, not a revenue.

Gary Pageau 29:09

So so what specifically did it was KC2, right?

Rocky Bowles 29:14

Yeah, it was KC2.

Gary Pageau 29:15

So, what does that do for the people who don't remember it? What did it do?

Rocky Bowles 29:20

So it was basically a newer version of ProShots in the sense of we were trying to connect labs to photographers to consumers with an updated piece of technology. We were trying to make it easier for labs to make their catalogs, we were trying to make it easier for photographers to make their catalogs, but on top of it, oh my God, I mean, that's where the share button came in. We were like, well, allow them, and it'll have this little C C2 thing on it in the lab, and we'll let them share it. We were trying to figure out how to print right from it, making albums, you know, just having an album builder that took all the best images, called them. We're working on something like that. We were working on a filter pixel product, which was really funny because we sat with a bunch of photographers and we basically eliminated smiles with eyes closed. Because we thought, well, that would be bad. All of us as non-photographers making decisions for photographers and labs. We said, Well, we'll make we'll cull out all the eyes closed smiles, and I'll never forget the room. It still brings chills because I will never forget this because I'll I apply this to every client I ever had. And you know, that's a blind spot was they said, Well, you're gonna eliminate 98% of original true smiles. People close their eyes when they smile. Right. And we didn't know that, right? So it's just like I'm saying when you think about all this technology that we were working on and how we were gonna show things in a room and you know, down to figurines and how to spin them in a 3D model so we we could have Zoom meetings with you, right? We were gonna place in studio with these amazing, amazing Zoom concepts that we didn't even talk to Zoom about, right? We were just trying to get other people right to understand what and in all honesty, when people did come back to us and say the NAT, it was very hard for us because we had nobody to point to, nobody else was doing it for us to go. Well, you know, I think if you put the share button, so that was what was exciting was all the other pieces, and then how they were going to break it into school and sports and everything else. And I just, you know, my piece of it was helping labs come back online on photographers, but heart really lied with the consumer because I felt like it was really the last choice for them to have an easy way right to their images.

Gary Pageau 31:44

So what happened? Because clearly it's not dominating the marketplace, but there, but obviously the concept is still valid because people are doing it now, right? Yeah, and they're but so so what well, I mean, was it a corporate thing? Was it a too early for the market thing? Was it priced wrong?

Rocky Bowles 32:00

What was so I think there were a couple of things, and I think this goes for any business.

Gary Pageau 32:04

Sure, that that's what I want to talk about because I think everyone can learn something from this.

Rocky Bowles 32:07

Well, there's been a first layer of trust, right? Everything out there right now, and especially for new businesses or any existing businesses, trust and the AI world is becoming incredibly important.

Gary Pageau 32:20

Sure.

Rocky Bowles 32:21

So they had a trust issue that didn't help them, although they had the trust from their clients that they could develop something new, that there was a group of people that were smart enough that could pull them through it, they they had to believe in it. So there was that trust issues. We hit those same kinds of things, and then the labs started to say, see, here we go again. Here we go again, and then photographer said, I don't want to build this catalog. And now you can imagine somebody built the software behind your shopping ad, somebody built the software behind the Walmart app. Walmart, somebody has to take that picture, put that picture in, make sure it's that is the cost of doing business, and we could never convince lands and photographers that was, and you still really can't. That's the cost of doing business. That's why it's easier to go directly to the consumer. But I really honestly believe that the labs and the photographers would have gone 100% down the road with us had we been able to continue talking to that same group of people who didn't see us as a cost center but saw us as a revenue generator and said, God, just I mean, I literally remember somebody I worked very closely with saying to me on a Friday, We're gonna make it till December, we're gonna launch this thing. He comes to the office on UJ and says, Hey, you gotta obviously my own business. He said, You gotta destroy any hard drives, anything you've got that talks about this, it the project's done, they're not gonna fund it any farther. So it was one day, and that that's the story that I saw. As far as well, the three people that I was working with very closely, again, some of them are still at Kodak. That's what happened to me. And we were so excited because we were getting to that we were gonna beat photo day, right? And we're gonna beat photo day to the market. We knew what they were doing. That's a whole story for another day. We knew what they would do, and we were gonna beat photo day, and we just they took our legs, and I get it. I knew it was kind of the end of that whole concept, but I understood from the business standpoint if they weren't going to shop this to somebody else and get it.

Gary Pageau 34:40

Right. Yeah, at least recoup the development investment by shopping it out.

Rocky Bowles 34:44

Yeah, they should have shopped it out and let everybody go, but I know if they let everybody go, what they would have lost because some of those people are still there throughout those what other people might have considered a failure. They're still there because the company knows, had we all left, you know, had everybody gone, what a drain that might have been. So that's kind of in my own humble opinion. I'm not an employee and wasn't in those meetings. I was getting information fed by people I trust and care deeply about. Um, it was a font. The sales guys got it. Anyone that knows it. There was 10 guys, everybody knows those names, Gary. You know them very well as well. They were working on the pro division, trying so hard to save their clients, trying so hard to save Kodan Harris and that division. You know, hustling like crazy because we were so excited. We all believed it, we saw it because you know the technology was there. Now I'd love the opportunity for somebody to open that storage belt and have another conversation now that we have AI.

Gary Pageau 35:47

So let's talk a little bit about kind of where you see the market going. Because I because I I always when I have discussions about people who like have been in photography

Reduce Friction Or Lose The Sale

Gary Pageau 35:56

for a long time, you know, they're always like they always talk about you know, it's different from other markets in the sense that you know it's such a deeply emotional personal product, right? It's really something that you know it's not like buying a box of triskets or something else, in the sense that, you know, when you have photography, right, it's important to you. And and people, you know, take a trillion images every year and all that other stuff, but it's always that the the challenge of you know of getting people to transact, right? That's always seems to be the question, whether it's customer acquisition, which is a challenge, as you mentioned before, or is it just you know, hey, how do I get them to even pay attention and open the app, right? So, what are some of your thoughts for people who you know may have been in the industry and you know for a while and they want to get that shot in the arm back into it?

Rocky Bowles 36:52

I think it's love it again, because most of the people that I know have the same love of it, you know, they weren't photographers orners either,

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Rocky Bowles 37:00

right? Right, love

(Cont.) Reduce Friction Or Lose The Sale

Rocky Bowles 37:01

it again, and it is like he who wins or she who wins or they who wins is the person who takes the prescription out of the purchase, right? And being able to really figure that piece out, right? I see it being incredibly diversified. I wouldn't I don't know how I'd feel about a camera company, right? But I think I would have said that in 2012. The phones, right?

Gary Pageau 37:28

I think oh, I see what you're saying.

Rocky Bowles 37:30

I think you had a wedding where the person was a photographer and a videographer and a drum person and all these things.

Gary Pageau 37:35

Exactly.

Rocky Bowles 37:37

It's done on a phone, modified on a phone, mobile, you know, it's not a desktop kind of a situation, right? So you know, people who can I I I just don't think if you're still holding on to a print, people are still printing.

Gary Pageau 37:56

Right.

Rocky Bowles 37:56

What we can't hear, the marketplace is not critical, and and this is all marketplaces, and AI is going to make this worse. And I think we've seen this as we're crossing into a complete digital landscape where there are people who lived in a complete digital world. You are going to try to sell a thing, a something from a photo. If you're not going to try to make it easy to share or easy to just buy it because I want it and I want to be able to put it on any substrate or whatever, right? You do not have the critical thing thinking of me to be able to open something on a desktop or a mobile app, which even the latest and greatest stuff still isn't there yet, and try to put my picture in and make a canvas, make a mixed title, and make a bigger in and make your thing and make your that's and make your that. That ordering system doesn't exist. If with King C2, I think that would have worked the way that we had talked about how we would promote this mobile, how we would sell it a collection, right? Handle it. But I now see that in the new way, which is you sell I don't care what nobody cares about your name, right? Rocky's mixed tiles, Rocky's four-in-sixes, and all you do through that channel is sell four by sixes, right? Something else, but the days of getting somebody to sit in front of a computer and do that whole business is only getting worse. It's not getting better.

Gary Pageau 39:31

I mean, you know, I have this argument with my friends who have photo book apps, right? And it's like how much AI do you put in and how much you let the consumer do, you know. And I there's people who strongly believe in the software side that there are people who want to just design, design, design, and they want to, you know, adjust the font and tweak and do all that stuff. And then there's the other people are like, I'm just gonna let AI do it. I think the people who want to take the time to craft a book, like in the old blurb environment or something like that, but they're still out there, but there's fewer of them, right? Like you said, there's a market. Yeah, there is, but it but it's not the biggest market. The biggest market, easy market.

Rocky Bowles 40:14

But again, you have to kind of understand how big you can be. And if you're not really projecting how good you how big you can be, right? You're not gonna be able to then be the best bookseller, and now you're gonna sell four by six prints, and now you're gonna do this because now you're just creating that environment nobody likes, anyways, and only just you know, when you think about it now, it's people no one has those forward-facing brand websites, they have their own WordPress, web flow, and then there's a page wanna buy pictures, and then that goes to a whole nother third environment, which are those photo apps, traditional apps of today, which are awful for people because they are back into that old model that nobody has, right?

Gary Pageau 41:01

Just reducing the friction, I think, is something that people need to spend a lot more time on and not worry, not worry so much about you know the perfection side, right? Just can you get it and make it easier? Because I I was reading that book by James Claire called Atomic Habits, and he talks about how to change habits, right? And it's a whole other thing, but the reason why it applies here is I really learned what I learned from that book is that human beings are fundamentally lazy. We will choose the easy way to do almost everything, right? That's and that makes total sense.

Rocky Bowles 41:33

Yeah, and anybody that's done well because I remember everybody saying chat books. Why did chat books do so well? Well, they figured out a way to get a share button from Instagram into their ABL builder, they're printed the same stuff everybody else's, and they reduced that friction. And what they didn't do was say to 60 labs, let me sell my idea to you, right? They print, they made they close the loop, which is why I've always said to people, hey, Apple does it, close the loop. Google's trying to do it with Android, close the loop, it's gone now. Yeah, but I think that there's like a diversification, I think worrying about your brand. If anybody thinks that a professional photographer doesn't know you're selling to a consumer somewhere, right? No, you're not it's it's just not, yeah, right. So it's that thing of if you're hiding behind this thing because you've got a couple hundred thousand dollar customers and you can get 40. I get it used to be four, but now you gotta get 10. Maybe you gotta get 20.

Gary Pageau 42:33

Right.

Rocky Bowles 42:34

The marketing, if you just do the marketing, you'll get the volume that brings that for you. Right. No man, stop giving everybody their percentage, that percentage. If the photographer is going to give the consumer their image, and the consumer is going to continue to take images, oh my. And I thought photographers, it will only help them because what they'll be able to do if they stop worrying about packages is they will do what the younger groups are doing, which is they're charging X amount for their work.

Gary Pageau 43:03

They're actually charging for the quote craft or unquote, whatever that is, right? The experience. Maybe you know, if they're not worried about that, they can now, you know, add a drone and they can charge extra, or they put in a photo booth and charge extra, or they hire a they hire their own DJ. I mean, a lot of the successful photographers I see are really becoming event planners in the sense that they're really providing an entire service around the wedding, and pictures are a big part of that, but they're also providing some of the other services as well, short of bartending. And I'm sure that's gonna come at some point.

Rocky Bowles 43:38

I mean, you see that coming. I but I think the thing and the overriding thing you and I are talking about is those who transition. Oh it's just for the industry, people see, well, this works, it should continue to work. I want it to continue to work, and I want you to sell it in a way that makes people make this continue to work, and it just is so it is those who go, you know what? I'm gonna become five-minute photo and I'm gonna sell four by sixes, and that's it. So no one has any choice, and that's it.

Gary Pageau 44:13

Yeah, yeah, that's literally that's the business model for some of the folks you've referenced in this.

Rocky Bowles 44:19

In this so that's it, I need it, and those who can understand that there's a cost involved, but eventually it pays for itself. You just have to want to weather that storm, that's a risk. And you and I have seen people who are risky both inside Fortune 500 companies and outside, make a lot of money. And you see people who were very smart, but not risky who did not. And that's really to me the overall different difference, and that's the difference saying about code, the risk when you talk about these new businesses today, it's a risk. And then I think now marketing is so important. So, especially in a visual field. So if you're treating marketing as a cost center instead of something that generates revenue, you're gonna keep there's I can't I cannot make people hear your message anymore. They've already scrolled past it. You gotta start dancing, you gotta start when the silly stuff and talk bringing your cost down, but also trip knowing you're gonna get volume.

Gary Pageau 45:25

So people wanted to interact with you directly and learn more about what Rocky Bowls is up to. Where would they go? How would they connect

Where To Find Rocky And Closing

Gary Pageau 45:34

with you?

Rocky Bowles 45:35

Yeah, I think most people know me through LinkedIn, so you can find me at raquelbowls.com and you'll have the prepper spelling. And then my website is just raquelbowls.com as well. I mean yeah, Raquel Bowls. Reach out to me. A lot of people have my phone number. If if you don't have it, probably somebody else does, right? So reach out to somebody and you can you can usually find me. I show up in all the places most people know.

Gary Pageau 45:59

You show up at all.

Rocky Bowles 46:00

Well, I love it, right? Even if I'm in it, not getting paid. I love talking about it. I love helping. These people are my friends, you're my friends. If I give you a tip and you make a lot of money, you'll remember me. Rocky helped, you need somebody, that kind of stuff. I still believe in the boats being listed.

Gary Pageau 46:18

Awesome. Well, thank you, Rocky. It's been great talking to you and best wishes, and hope to see you again soon.

Rocky Bowles 46:23

You know you will talk to you later.

Erin Manning 46:28

Thank you for listening to the Dead Pixel Society podcast. Read more great stories and sign up for the newsletter at www.the dead pixels society.com.