Richmond Pro Lab Shares the Journey From Film To Fast, High-Quality Digital

A 1938 basement lab that processed black-and-white alongside amateur rolls now runs a high-speed digital operation that can ship school orders in about two days. The Dead Pixels Society sits down with Richmond Professional Lab’s Ted Bullard and Josh Lewis to map the decisions that made digital not just viable, but superior, for volume photographers who demand both quality and speed.

Bullard recounts how Kodak’s consent decree opened the processing market and how Richmond leaned into professional work, long-roll film, and eventually early digital printers. Then Lewis pulls back the curtain on the operational engine: why fewer, faster machines beat a fleet of minis, how custom software gangs tens of thousands of orders, and why posting live turnaround times builds trust during peak seasons. They share into the Canon DreamLabo journey, HP ink and laminate advances, and the color fidelity and longevity that finally matched—then surpassed—silver halide expectations.

The volume landscape is shifting fast, with independents stepping in where a major player receded. That opens space for smarter products and sharper margins: yard signs, big head cutouts, layered graphics, and ship-to-home convenience that schools and parents no

Photo Imaging CONNECT
The Photo Imaging CONNECT conference, March 1-2, 2026, at the RIO Hotel and Resort in Las Vegas, N

Smart AI Business & Tax Moves: Think Like Kenner French & VastSolutionsGroup.com
Smart AI, business & tax strategies with Kenner French. Fresh insights!

Listen on: Apple Podcasts   Spotify

Mediaclip
Mediaclip strives to continuously enhance the user experience while dramatically increasing revenue.

Buzzsprout - Let's get your podcast launched!
Start for FREE

Independent Photo Imagers
IPI is a member + trade association and a cooperative buying group in the photo + print industry.

Photo Imaging CONNECT
The Photo Imaging CONNECT conference, March 1-2, 2026, at the RIO Hotel and Resort in Las Vegas, N

Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you.

Chapters

• 10:44 [Ad] Smart AI Business & Tax Moves: Think Like Kenner French & VastSolutionsGroup.com
• 11:34 (Cont.) Richmond Pro Lab Shares the Journey From Film To Fast, High-Quality Digital

Transcript

Erin Manning: 0:27

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

Gary Pageau: 0:46

Hello again, and welcome to the Dead Pixels Society Podcast. I'm your host, Gary Pageau, and today we're joined by Ted Bullard and Josh Lewis of Richmond Professional Lab in Richmond, Virginia. Ted's the president of the company, and Josh is the COO, and they're gonna talk about how Richmond is focusing on the professional market and particularly volume photography. Hi guys, how are you today?

Ted Bullard: 1:09

Very well. How are you? Great.

Gary Pageau: 1:11

Thanks for having us. So for the 12 people who don't know who Richmond Professional Lab is, can you kind of go into the company history a little bit?

Ted Bullard: 1:18

Well, my deadline dad started the company in 1938. He had he was a photographer himself. He had made his way through college and uh graduate school as a photographer when he came back to Richmond and uh he and my grandfather got together to start Richmond camera.

Gary Pageau: 1:34

Was it a full-blown lab at the time or was it a hybrid studio who did their own processing? At what point did they start bringing in outside work?

Ted Bullard: 1:40

Well, before u World War II, my dad had started the company in 38, World War II happened. He went to Norfolk, Virginia and ran the reconnaissance plant for the Navy. And then after the war, when he came back, Albert Smith had started a lab during the war on in the basement of a shoe shop in town. And so uh my dad and Albert got together and started the pro lab part, which it went through many iterations to get where it is today, obviously. But that's the lab started there at 217th grace and later moved to 213 West Fraud, where we stayed for 55 years.

Gary Pageau: 2:17

Was it always on the portrait side of the business? And I I always love these old stories about people who started labs in in basements just because that's where the water was.

Ted Bullard: 2:27

Right, exactly. Yeah, yeah. He was a portrait photographer himself, but when he started the got into the lab with uh Albert Smith, uh they did all kinds of processing, mostly it was black and white, of course, at that time. It was any kind of imagery that was available, professional and non-professional.

Gary Pageau: 2:45

Yeah, I was gonna ask about that because were they doing any amateur work at the time, too? Were they like an amateur wholesale lab, too?

Ted Bullard: 2:51

They did very much so.

Gary Pageau: 2:53

Yeah, that that was very common in those in those eras, just take whatever you could get because there wasn't that much of it back then in the 30s and 40s.

Ted Bullard: 3:00

Oh, exactly. It wasn't a whole lot, and a lot of it was being sent back to Kodak because Kodak sold the cameras with the film in it, and you would send the whole camera back to Kodak, they would reload with film, send it processed pictures back to you. So it was an awkward kind of service to really get into. But in uh 1956, Kodak the well, the federal government passed the consent degree in 1956, which said that Kodak could no longer include the processing and the purchase of the film. Right. So at that point, it really opened the door up to not only black and white processing, but color as well.

Gary Pageau: 3:33

You know, a lot of people who don't have history in the industry don't remember the whole consent degree thing where Kodak had kind of locked up, and then they also had to create the industry in the sense where they had to go out and teach everyone, anyone who wanted to be a lab, they had to go teach them how to do it.

Ted Bullard: 3:48

They sure did. And even when I came in in '72, I went to Kodak to train to learn how to do everything. Uh spent a year in Rochester to do that.

Gary Pageau: 3:56

Ted, what's your background in terms of coming coming into the business? Was this something you always wanted to do, or did you go do something else before you got into the business?

Ted Bullard: 4:04

No, I was in the horse industry. Uh I we had raced horses all my life, and I very much had planned to can pursue a career there. But in 72, I had a really near fatal accident on a tractor at the farm. And after I recovered from that, I told my dad I didn't want to go back to school. I wanted to go go to work. I had graduated from high school and started college. So anyway, I went to night school and for college and then continued to work with my dad. At that time, we had another business called Richmond Saddlery, where we imported and resold horse equipment as well. Wow. And uh so I really went into that part of the business because that's what I knew. My brother was already in the photographic business. My brother decided that he wanted to get out, and I asked my dad if I could get into that, and I didn't know anything, so he sent me to Rochester. Okay, I mean, I had a lot of yellow blood at that time, and uh, but that convinced me very much to uh forgive that yellow blood.

Gary Pageau: 5:05

At what point did Richmond Professional transfer more to the professional side? You know, I mean you were doing some amateur work probably through the 50s and 60s, but what was the point where you decided, listen, we're gonna be a professional lab?

Ted Bullard: 5:16

In the in the 70s, when I came back from Rochester, probably by 1976 or so, I really wanted very much so to move into the professional market. I talked to two of the local photographers to see if they would send me work if I if I went to do that for them. And they said, Yeah, they'd love to, because most of them sent their work down to Myzale, Atlanta at that time. And uh, so they were glad to have someone local to work with. And the word got out pretty quick and got very, very busy very quickly.

Gary Pageau: 5:48

And and that that was about the time you moved, right? I mean, didn't you move locations about that time?

Ted Bullard: 5:52

No, no, we were in the building at Broad Street and and remained there up until it was only two three years. Three years ago we moved here.

Gary Pageau: 6:01

So it was in a case of taking over that building over time. Is that kind of what happened? Like starting in the basement, then growing out and taking it over over time.

Ted Bullard: 6:10

Oh, absolutely. It was a four-story building, four and a half stories, and we took over the entire building. I bought the buildings next door, two addresses next door, and then I bought another building around the corner. And uh, so yeah, we we occupied a lot of space in the middle of downtown Richmond, which was good in a lot of ways, but uh had its very big logistic difficulties of getting material in and out of the building. So, you know, it had been my quest for a long time to move, but it always seemed like every time I got my act together ready to move, something came along, you know, economic problems in 2008, and then many, many you know the digital trade digital revolution, obviously, but quite something to deal with, and all these things just kept happening to put it off, put it off, put it off. Sure. And uh so finally I got old enough, I bet I figured I'd better hurry up and do it.

Gary Pageau: 7:06

So, question I have regarding like that whole transition, right? You know, everyone kind of knew, you know, I've been in the industry a while, you know, since the late 80s, 90s. I kind of I lived through that transition itself, you know, on the on on the outside looking in. Everyone kind of knew digital was coming, but never no one ever knew exactly when, you know, when it was gonna happen, when digital printing was gonna be able to compete with silver halite and all those things. What were some of the things you were looking for in trying to anticipate those trends?

Ted Bullard: 7:36

Well, in 99, we put in our first digital printing equipment. And I mean, I had realized fortunately early in the game that digital photography was going to be a big thing. It was definitely going to take over. And you know, Kodak had already, and Kodak actually invented the digital camera. And anyway, I kind of realized just whatever reason that that was going to be the big deal. So in 99, we started getting into it. We got into it very much so we were one of the first people to abandon film altogether and go strictly digital. And then I guess it's probably around 2002 that we put in the first Narutu R2R, which was kind of the main printer for our volume side of the of the business. The volume photographers were some of the first ones to embrace the digital technology because it obviously with them shooting 70 millimeter film and all the problems that surrounded the logistics of producing product for their customers, it was logical to do that as soon as they could.

Gary Pageau: 8:39

Was volume always a piece of the business in the sense there, because it sounds to me like you started more as a traditional portrait lab, but now you've got a huge visibility in the volume space. When did that start happening?

Ted Bullard: 8:50

Oh, it happened in the probably in the 80s, I would say. Uh, after we started doing the professional work back in the 70s, then we started to find the professional photographers who were shooting long-roll 70 millimeter. Uh, and of course, we could splice 220s because we ran CINI processors, which was a little bit unusual, but it was really targeted for that kind of volume market as well as the high-end professional work. So to be able to process the long roll film and everything really gave us a foothold in that part of the business. Unfortunately, I wasn't really good at figuring out like national marketing or getting much outside of our arena. So, pretty much what you know, Washington, DC and the state of Virginia were air turf.

Gary Pageau: 9:35

Yeah. But that's still, I mean, that was that I mean, that's a big market.

Ted Bullard: 9:39

Oh, it was, it was. And and we enjoyed great success there. We really did. When the digital revolution came along, that made that market much too small. And that was when we had to go to national.

Gary Pageau: 9:52

Absolutely. On the printing side, so you said you put in the uh the Narutus as digital printers. What was kind of your choice on that one? Because that's not really, I'm not sure I would call that quote unquote professional equipment at the time, right? I mean, there were a lot of a lot of higher-end printers platforms coming out.

Ted Bullard: 10:08

Yeah, the Naruto R2Rs were unique in that one, they were they were the highest resolution output that you could get at the time, and they had the capability and speed to handle role material. So um, you know, to be able to print in that fashion was much more automated, and it gave us the opportunity to really produce the highest end uh photographs that you could digitally.

Gary Pageau: 11:15

So, Josh, what's your entree into the company? What's your how did you get involved with the company as the C and you're not weren't always the COO, I imagine?

Josh Lewis: 11:25

No, no, I started out as a you know a temporary packager like a lot of our employees do. So yeah, you know, I started in 2009. So I was fresh out of college, you know, looking to see what I was gonna do. I had, you know, a background in both photography and business. You know, I like many of our employees started out in art school and then was smart enough to switch it over to business school halfway through. So um in 2009, I was just looking looking for a job straight out of college and just started in the packaging department and you know, very, very quickly enjoyed the work that we were doing. You know, for me personally, it's just a great intersection between being on the on the artistic side, being able to see photographs, being able to, you know, love that work. But then really the, you know, when you get into it, it's very process heavy. And that's you know, something I love too, is just you know, looking at efficiency. Done a number of positions over the years, you know. I did some RD specific stuff for us for a while. Um I was you know running on our full service department for a while. And yeah, I think uh the COO role, you know, probably about six years ago is when I kind of took over operations of the lab.

Gary Pageau: 12:25

Were you always as an art student, were you always into photography or was there I mean, there's a lot more to art than photography. So where what was your what was your area of interest in the art world?

Josh Lewis: 12:34

Yeah, it was definitely photography, you know. Okay, I you know took a took took an elective photo class and kind of fell in love with it. And so, you know, ended up getting an associate's degree in photography and yeah, really, really loved it. So yeah, there was definitely a period of time where I was, you know, you know, gonna do that for a living. You know, I shot, you know, photographed weddings for a few years and started kind of a portrait business for a few years and was doing all that on the side as the lab was starting to grow. And so at some point, you know, the our our trajectory took off enough that it made sense to kind of focus on the lab side rather than the photo side for me.

Gary Pageau: 13:06

You know, there's a lot that happens in you know, weddings where a lot of people get into the business, but it's a hard business to stay in, right? I mean, there's a lot of time commitment, a lot of weekends, a lot of family stuff you miss because you because you're doing the uh wedding gig.

Josh Lewis: 13:19

Oh, yeah. And dealing dealing with employees can be stressful sometimes, but dealing with brides is a whole different different ballgame.

Gary Pageau: 13:25

So yeah, we probably wouldn't want to address that piece of it. So I'm kind of I'm kind of interested in the the RD piece that you're talking about, because you know, I uh you know you guys have a reputation of being kind of on the forefront of a lot of things. What are the things you you're looking for when you're evaluating a technology? Is it is it the market? Is it the technology? Is it price point you can deliver something at? What are some of the things you're looking for when you're evaluating a new technology when it comes to output? You want to take that on?

Ted Bullard: 13:57

Yeah, I can address part of it because that was part of the impetus behind the move. Is I had planned to move whenever the technology changed. And when digital photography was happening and we were really getting rolling back about 2002, I thought that the printing industry would very quickly embrace the digital revolution and we would have you know high-quality, high-speed digital printing equipment for photographs a couple of years. Kodak and Kanaka and Fuji, the big players in the industry at that time, they were projecting that 2008 was going to be the year when more than 50% of the photographs are gonna be taking digital. I think they made that comment at PMA in January of like 2002. Right. And little did they know that that was the year that more than half were gonna take position. Yeah. So it was quite a big miss on our industry's side to not address that. And of course, the software companies had a lot of catch-up to do because the digital plunge had happened and they really weren't ready for it. And the manufacturers of the equipment were so far removed from it that those new two R2Rs that I was talking about, which we expected to use for maybe five years max, uh, we actually ended up running them until we moved. So that was very difficult to say the least. But the problem was there wasn't high enough printing technology or the capability of the printers wasn't high enough to produce high-quality images at the volume that we needed to be able to produce our work. Yeah. So by working with Canon and working with H. Jewett Packard, we were able to take both of those pieces of equipment and refine them enough to be able to produce what we wanted to do. Because even the Canon Dream Labs that we ended up going with, we worked with Canon, I think we went the first time of 10 years. Yeah. Uh like around 2010 or 12, yeah, to help them figure out that this wasn't really good enough. Right. So they finally got it good enough and they figured a lot of the problems out, both mechanically and photographically, to be able to produce that product. And then we worked with HP to figure out the added inks and technology that it would take to produce photographic product, and then to get the finishes, the coatings, and the laminates that we would need to be able to produce a photo wallet product. So I was highly concerned about the quality of the image and the longevity of the image. And both of the those companies coming out of the printing side, they didn't really understand the requirement for the longevity of the prints, as well as the resolution and the tonal range that we needed to be able to produce. So we actually operate now, as I think everyone does, but it's a much larger color space than we could ever achieve photographically. So if someone is to say that, hey, I really wish I could shoot film because I can do something that I can't do digitally, that's only because they don't know the capabilities of digital imagery. Because we in fact can manipulate an image or do whatever we want to do to produce something higher quality than we ever can photographically. So it it's uh it was uh just a quest and a difficulty to get there. So, really, with that equipment becoming available, we chose the time to buy the building, make the move, and build this building out for that. So when we came here, we were completely dry. We have no never brought any photographic stuff into the building and didn't produce anything in the traditional silver halide fashion.

Gary Pageau: 17:40

And Josh, you were gonna that that was great. No, I love I I love the history lesson because I think that's one of the things people today's world don't really understand what the transition was because you know when HP started exhibiting at PMA and things like that, people start showing digital printers at PMA, it would be like, yeah, but it's just not photographic. I mean, it's it's ink on paper and it looks okay and it is a picture, but it's not what you can sell as a professional photograph, right? There's coatings, there's paperweight, there's all kinds of things that color gamut that needs to be there. So, so so Josh, what's your what's your insight into that?

Josh Lewis: 18:16

No, I've always been very efficiency heavy. It's like, you know, the quality has to be a given. It's like, yeah, the quality has to be there, it has to be it, you know, like a true professional photograph. But right at the same time, you know, I've been I've been very efficiency driven since the get-go because we knew we wanted to grow, we knew we wanted to do all these things. And so I was never really one that wanted to go the direction of like a fleet of mini-labs because you know, there was many years where you know you could you could get you could get a silver, you know, photograph off of lots of pieces of equipment, but to get the speed and the efficiency that you needed, you would have to have, you know, right a warehouse full of them and people running them all. I always tell people when I give tours now that these Canon Dream Lab printers, that was the first time that I ever, you know, put a print off of a printer next to the silver halide ones and couldn't pick out the differences myself between them. And that was kind of the turning point for me because we had been looking for years for something that that would be true and that could have the speed. And that was kind of the the first thing that those two things overlapped. I was all in once that happened.

Gary Pageau: 19:15

So you would rather, from a production standpoint, you think there's more efficiency in fewer bigger pieces of iron as opposed to, like you said, a fleet of smaller printers.

Josh Lewis: 19:26

Yeah, and mostly because of the speed and the efficiency you gain, you know, that's what we've kind of differentiated ourselves some too, is you know, we we do print runs. So we've written a lot of internal software and we've written a lot of our own code to you know take take all the orders that are coming in, you know, tens of thousands of orders a day and categorize them when they come in based on their contents and their size and what items are in them, and sure be able to produce, you know, like like orders together and all that. So rather than rather than having equipment that could disperse a lot of two, you know, I feel like overall the efficiency is higher, you know, going that direction, having high speed equipment and ganging it up as much as we can.

Ted Bullard: 20:04

Yeah, one uh thing I would add to that is that even back when in the film, uh to me, the best way to process a roll of film was a sending processor. First in the chemistry, last out of the chemistry, it was all about the timing and the controls that you could have with that kind of equipment. So it really was an issue that if you wanted to process a perfect roll of film, you had to have a city processor. Sending processors at that time were only made for the film industry. So the volume capacity of those film processors was huge. So the demand for volume really came for the quest to be able to process one role perfectly. So that kind of applies here as well as the best printing technology is very expensive. So to be able to afford that level of technology, you've got to be able to produce a lot of product. So the size of the equipment is larger. Driven behind the individual image quality of a single print. So that we, if we're gonna produce the absolute best print, we need the best equipment to do that. And the best equipment is big because it was so expensive to refine that technology to that point. Right. So it's kind of a funny way of getting there, but the volume isn't just driven by more and more. It's driven by we really want to give the customer the absolute best product he can get, and that's a way to get it. So then it pressures on Josh to be efficient enough to be able to make that affordable. Probably because we are very sensitive to the profitability of the photographers, so we can't charge the photographer what he should pay for multi-million dollar pieces of equipment. So we're gonna have to produce a lot of it very efficiently to be able to keep his price structure where he can be profitable. Because we want our photographers to be profitable, so they'll do more of it.

Gary Pageau: 22:03

So let's talk a little bit about the volume market specifically. It's really changed massively over the last decade. I mean, if you would have told me, you know, in the year 2025, the volume photography space would be one of the most interesting parts of the professional photography industry. I think I would have probably rolled my eyes. But it's really, it's really changed so much over the last 10 years. Can you talk a little bit about that? Because you've really had you know the evolution of kind of the independent volume photographer kind of rise up as you know more and more and more opportunities come into the marketplace because you've had the the lapse of the major player, I guess is the way to say that. So you've got a lot of innovators, you've got a lot of people who are you know starting up volume photography businesses. I think 20% of the SPAC audience is new every year, which is kind of crazy when you think about it. When you're talking to some of these kind of innovators or these new players, you know, what are you talking to them about about why Richmond may be a good partner for them?

Ted Bullard: 23:04

Well, it really is part the support, our level of technical expertise is very high. We're very lucky to have Josh and several other of his counterparts that are, I would proudly say, are probably some of the more sophisticated and educated people in the industry. So we have a lot of intelligence and technology to share with those people or anybody that's interested to try to know how to do what they may need to do to be successful from our side, anyway, at least from the lab side.

Josh Lewis: 23:34

And then, you know, I think any lab you talk to now, you know, the quality is kind of like, you know, that's step one. It's like everyone has to have the quality because you know, it's all great. That's kind of the starting point. Yeah, and so from there, yeah, the the expertise I think goes a long way. You know, I'm I'm a numbers guy, I'm very big into data analysis and that kind of stuff. So we're, you know, continuing to look and see what else we can do for customers from that end, you know, actually analyzing the trends of what they're sending us, you know, giving them suggestions, you know, how they can improve their profit margins, you know, which, you know, showing them what their average sheet counts are, their orders, you know, all that kind of stuff. And so we really, really try to, you know, we're in a lot of ways, you know, we're the software company partners we have are great, and the lab is a kind of a separate entity from that. And so we kind of see how much we can help all the players together as far as looking at that data and figuring out how it can kind of be a win-win for everybody.

Ted Bullard: 24:27

Yeah, I think the other piece of that that I wanted to say was that it realizing that the photographers, when the high-end digital SLR cameras uh came out, they really felt like they were gonna get maybe more competition from the consumer market than they than they actually ended up getting in the end. Right. So at that time, a lot of the photographers were really struggling. And a lot of people did try to shoot weddings and try to shoot a lot of their own portraits and stuff to not have to pay the fees to photographers. So we really focused on the side of what was going to keep the photographers going. And even if their passion was to shoot, you know, wildlife or portraits or some other segment, they could use this piece, the volume part of the industry, to make money, to use for their profit to make a living, right? And then perhaps pursue their passion on the side. Sure. But at the same time, it did give them a venue to actually have uh sustainable income.

Josh Lewis: 25:24

Yeah, and I'd be uh you know, I'd be remiss if I didn't mention the the turnaround times also. That's something that's one of my proudest things. You know, I'm so focused on the efficient the efficiency side of things. And you know, we've you know, in the new building, once we kind of got settled after the move and everything, you know, we're we're kind of firing on all cylinders now. And you know, we've had them, you know, we've even started this year putting on our website very much on the homepage, just like what the average average days in-house for you know each type of order is that you can see live every week on there. And you know, I'm very, very proud that we've gotten to a point where we're not scared to do that. And you know, even October, busiest school photography, you know, time of the year, we were averaging around two days, you know, in and out of the house of all these orders.

Gary Pageau: 26:05

Yeah, I think that's when the customer expectations now, right? I mean, you know, I remember, you know, back in the film days, right? You take weeks or months to get people's orders back, and now it's everyone knows it's digital, but still you got to maintain the quality too. I mean, New York can deliver in a couple of days, but you got to maintain the quality that you're talking about. Yep, absolutely.

Josh Lewis: 26:23

I was gonna say, yeah, now the you know, we're to the point where the postal carriers is kind of the biggest thing, you know, it takes longer for stuff to get people in the mail than it does for us to actually process it, which is you know, something that you know we can only control but so much, but it's kind of the flip of how it used to be. You know, we can get it in and out of the lab in two days, and we still have to make sure it gets where it's going. So we focus focus a lot on the shipping carriers as well, because that's a big part of the industry at this point.

Gary Pageau: 26:46

Sure. Looking forward to 2026 and kind of the the expectations for the industry then, you know, I I was talking to one of the the vendors of one of the software vendors, is he says, you know, they're just not building any more schools, so it's kind of a flat market, uh, which is I guess one way to looking at it. But so so where do you see some of the growth opportunities for the industry going into 2026?

Ted Bullard: 27:10

I think a lot of those opportunities come from the sports and school-related activities. I mean, I think youth are gonna remain the sort of centerpiece of any, I think, volume photography. Uh, there's not a lot of opportunity for uh, you know, and I don't think people really want photographs of older people anyway. Anyway, I think the youth market will remain the remain the impetus behind it, but I think we can expand that market even further than we have already. There's a lot of opportunity there. But I think now with the integration of all the graphics and and things like that, we do produce a more diverse set of products than we ever have. I think photographers through diversity of product and diversity of venue. You know, the dance programs offer huge opportunities in any activity the child's involved in, the family's gonna want photographs of those things and everyone will enjoy sort of the history of that person growing up. So I think that's gonna still be the big part of it.

Josh Lewis: 28:10

You know, I love the product side of the business as well. You know, that's when I was doing RD, I was focused a lot on that of just like what are what are cool new things that like, you know, you can do with a school or a little league sports picture that you know people would like to have. And what is what's a way we can use our efficiency as a lab to get those products in people's hands in a you know a way maybe they couldn't before. And that's that's a lot of what we've been talking about this year. You know, we purchased some more equipment just recently for you know, like yard signs and the big head cutouts and that kind of thing. And that was right, that's kind of an example of an example of a product where we've been discussing it with our customers for quite a while, but if we were gonna sell it, we wanted to be able to do it in a way that worked best for them. And so most of them were used to, you know, you can go to to you know other places that just do that type of business. Sure. Um, but they're not in the school volume, they're not in the volume photography space. So they're, you know, you're gonna order them, you're gonna get them in a big box, you have to figure out how to get them to the to the parents. And so, you know, we said, okay, if we're gonna go in this equipment, we want parents to be able to order those products right along with their eight by tens and with their other products and get it delivered, you know, to their home so that it's you know a win-win for everyone. So I think that's that's kind of an area too, just looking to see how how we can get more cool products in the mix that parents can get delivered straight to them without it, you know, having to be a hassle.

Gary Pageau: 29:29

Yeah, because that's been one of the big changes too in the industry is you know, direct shipping to parents, right? Because I remember when orders used to go to the school, and now the photographers actually can send stuff to people's homes. That's opened up a huge opportunity.

Josh Lewis: 29:43

Yeah, and obviously, you know, COVID had you know some portion of an impact on that. You know, we definitely, you know, in the lab, using us as an example, we definitely expanded and created an entire department just for the ship-to-home stuff. When COVID was happening, that was kind of the impetus for that. And we were really kind of waiting to see as we started coming out of the peak of COVID, like if that was going to go back the other direction. But I think also if you're a school district and you know, you got on that model and you didn't have to handle any of the photos, it's like, you know, why would you want to go back?

Gary Pageau: 30:13

Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Yeah, it's opened up huge opportunities. So, where can people go for more information about Richmond Professional Lab and to learn more about your company, what you guys do?

Josh Lewis: 30:24

Yeah, absolutely. Our um our website is Richmond ProLab.com. So we you know that has all of our products and information on it. You can get in contact with our customer service team there. And we'll also be at SPAC coming up in Vegas. We'll be there the whole week, myself and we're actually bringing a pretty big team. There's gonna be 11 of us out there. So pretty much anything you want to talk about, you can find find us at SPAC this year and would love to talk about it.

Gary Pageau: 30:46

Awesome. Well, great guys. Listen, it's great talking to you, great learning more about the history of the company. And I like I said, I love talking to people who like are the second generation company, you know, people who like took over their dads from doing the processing in the basement and all that, then going fully digital. You know, it's quite the evolution. Congratulations on that.

Ted Bullard: 31:04

Well, thank you very much. And uh Blake's not here with us today, but my youngest son is very actively involved in the company. My middle son is involved as well, just uh not as much on the floor as Blake. Uh, so anyway, it'll I think it'll keep on going for at least one more generation.

Gary Pageau: 31:20

Awesome. Well, congratulations. We'll see you at SPAC. Take care.

Erin Manning: 31:25

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