Reach for the Stars

Specialist photographic retailer Movie Market, based in Sherborne, Dorset has been supplying glamorous images from the worlds of TV, sport, music and the movies to thousands of fans across the world since 1981.

But with a growing customer base, including top sports organisations, Movie Market has had to adapt to meet changes in both customer expectation and demand.

Until December 2002, Movie Market produced large print runs of images that were then stored until purchased, but with customer orders totalling a staggering one million prints a year, it became unpractical to archive such massive quantities of pictures on site. So at the end of 2002, Movie Market’s managers decided to overhaul the entire operation by making the move to digital processing and purchasing a Fujifilm Frontier 390.

Steve D’Arcy, Movie Market’s general manager comments: “As an ambitious company working in a niche market we were keen to improve our existing operation and grow our business. We were spending a great deal of time, and space, producing, storing and accessing images and we realised that it just wasn’t practical to carry on like this. By moving over to digital processing we are now able to archive all our images on a main server which saves on space and has also greatly reduced our wastage levels.

“Buying the Frontier 390 has also enabled us to adopt a ‘just in time’ principle. When a print order comes in it is now identified in the archive and routed straight to the Frontier which prints the requested image. The whole process, from order to dispatch, now takes a matter of minutes meaning that we can handle many more orders each day.” But when you’re dealing with the stars, it’s not just a quick turnaround that’s important. The images produced by Movie Market have to be of the highest quality too - another reason why the purchase of the Frontier was vital to Movie Market’s future.

Steve explains: “From a specification point of view, the Frontier 390 offers exceptional print quality and, as we print on Fujicolor Crystal Archive Digital Paper, we get the best results possible from it. Fujicolor Crystal Archive DP has a thicker base than normal paper and so gives a superior quality finish to our prints. It’s also known for its longevity, which is vital in our line of business.

“We recently completed two major orders of 150,000 and 60,000 prints without a hitch, so we’re absolutely delighted with the Frontier and the service it allows us to offer our customers.” For more information on Movie Market visit the website at www.moviemarket.co.uk or call them on 01935 811000.