Saturday, April 18, 2009

Upcoming Changes

Hello,

I wanted to update you on several changes that we are making to our product lines, timed to coincide with our upcoming major release.

We have spent the past couple of months evaluating the products available from several printing companies and as a result, we have been able to significantly expand our print options. In particular, we have selected several prints that we believe have the potential to act as anchor pieces for larger spaces, and we are now able to offer these prints in larger sizes than we have in the past. Expanding into these more substantial print dimensions required us to answer several important questions.

The first determination that needed to be made was what was involved in shipping such large prints. We were surprised by the limit imposed on box sizes by our shipping carrier, UPS. We were originally looking at offering extremely large sizes, up to 3.5ft by 5ft, but found that UPS would require these prints, when framed, to be shipped freight. This would add several hundreds of dollars to the cost of the print - an unacceptable burden on our customers. Because of this, until such time as we can identify a more reasonable shipping alternative or grow large enough to obtain significant discounts from UPS, we have decided to limit the size of the prints to those we can ship with standard ground.

Even within the set of acceptable sizes, increasing the print dimensions required custom ordering each frame for each print, as few frame suppliers provide premade frames in these larger dimensions. After extensive research, we have identified custom frame makers which meet our quality standards and are able to provide excellent frames in the required sizes.

The final challenge was to identify an alternative to glass for the largest of our prints. While reflection control and museum glass are used in our smaller pictures, the weight of glass makes it a prohibitive option for our largest prints. We investigated using acrylic for these prints, which is a common solution in the art world. While acrylic is lighter and is available with a similar range of reflective properties as glass, it scratches much more easily and can therefore be harder to maintain long-term. It is also still heavy enough to adversely impact both our customer’s shipping costs and their display options. As a result, we have decided to use an alternative for our largest prints: canvas. Most of our print sizes will be available in our traditional giclee prints with either our standard conservation or the optional museum glass as they have always been. However, our larger prints will be available on canvas. Canvas provides an excellent medium for large prints because it adds additional texture and depth to the print while not requiring glass or acrylic protection. In many cases, canvas will be an option in addition to our regular prints, allowing you to choose the medium that you prefer, but our largest prints will be offered exclusively in canvas.

We are excited about these new options and hope you are as well.


Terence

City Escapes Nature Photography