Pitman Photo Supply runs an enterprise storefront with dakis

Where they started

For years, Pitman's website was mainly a storefront window. It showed customers who the store was and what it carried, while in-store sales and the photo lab drove the business. During those years, dakis was already part of the operation, handling printing and the website.

When Pitman decided to build a real online store, Lauren set out to make it happen. She had come to Pitman from large corporate e-commerce, so she knew the scale of the job: putting a full catalog online and keeping it current was the work of a sizable team. Pitman had no such team.

"It's not some third-party company that has no idea about the industry.”

Bringing it together

For years, Pitman's website was mainly a storefront window. It showed customers who the store was and what it carried, while in-store sales and the photo lab drove the business. During those years, dakis was already part of the operation, handling printing and the website.

When Pitman decided to build a real online store, Lauren set out to make it happen. She had come to Pitman from large corporate e-commerce, so she knew the scale of the job: putting a full catalog online and keeping it current was the work of a sizable team. Pitman had no such team.

"We get a lot of, you're the first store that popped up on Google, which is huge."

Key results

The clearest result is national reach. Pitman's full catalog, deep across cameras, gear, and accessories, sells to customers across the country, not just in Miami. The Google Merchant sync surfaces its listings when someone searches for a specific item, and a buyer in another state finds Pitman. Even obscure stock that once sat on the shelves now moves, because online it reaches the few people looking for exactly that. 

The same platform that brings customers in also removes one of the store's biggest headaches: manufacturer instant rebates (MIRs). Vendors change rebate rules constantly, sometimes day to day, and keeping them right is a job on its own.  

“That's a nightmare. Maintaining that on your own would take up all your time.”

dakis now manages MIRs for Pitman, keeping every rebate current and accurate, while the team focuses on customers and the lab.

Taken together, the catalog, online visibility, the rebates, Lauren estimates that it is work that would take a team of more than ten people to run in-house. dakis does it instead.

"It's absolutely worth it. It takes care of basically everything."

Pitman is not standing still. The point of sale still runs on an older system, separate from dakis, so the team keeps the two in sync manually, re-entering data that could otherwise flow between them. Connecting them directly is the next step Lauren is set on. She also plans to bring film developing online, extending the lab work Pitman has been known for since 1928. Each step builds on dakis.