Camera Land reaches a national market with dakis

Where they started

Before dakis, Camera Land's website depended entirely on one outside contractor. The work was competent, but access ran through a single person, so changes happened only when they were available. A price drop or a sold-out item had to wait, and taking on a new product line meant routing every item through one set of hands.

Camera Land came to dakis around the time it was moving out of Manhattan, leaving a midtown location with high foot traffic. dakis came recommended through the Pro buying group, where other retailers were already using the solution and spoke highly of it. What drew Joel was straightforward: a platform built for the scale of a camera store's catalog, real support behind it, and a system he could run himself. By his own admission the least technical person he knows, he can now update stock in seconds.

"It's been one of the best business decisions we've ever made."

Bringing it together

Before dakis, Camera Land's website depended entirely on one outside contractor. The work was competent, but access ran through a single person, so changes happened only when they were available. A price drop or a sold-out item had to wait, and taking on a new product line meant routing every item through one set of hands.

Camera Land came to dakis around the time it was moving out of Manhattan, leaving a midtown location with high foot traffic. dakis came recommended through the Pro buying group, where other retailers were already using the solution and spoke highly of it. What drew Joel was straightforward: a platform built for the scale of a camera store's catalog, real support behind it, and a system he could run himself. By his own admission the least technical person he knows, he can now update stock in seconds.

"The internet's the internet. You could be in Timbuktu, it doesn't make a difference."

Key results

The clearest change has been visibility. Camera Land had worked with a local marketing company without gaining much traction. Once dakis took over the Google services, the numbers moved, and Joel now follows the team's recommendations and watches the results in the reporting.

“You go to our website, it looks like we're a behemoth.”

dakis also manages Camera Land's manufacturer instant rebates, keeping each one current as vendors change the rules, so the store stays priced right without tracking every change itself.

What Joel comes back to is how little the system asks of him. A deep online business runs without adding stress, and on the rare occasion something is off, a quick call sorts it out.

As soon as we went with it, the numbers popped up."

Camera Land is still growing, and Joel's focus is staying visible to photo and sport optics customers alike. Hunters and birders looking for binoculars and scopes are a growing audience, and being the store they find first when they search is what wins them. dakis is part of how Camera Land keeps growing beyond its four walls.