Service Photo connects its store, website, and inventory with dakis

Where they started

Service Photo came to dakis in the early 2010s with one hard problem: a camera store carries an enormous number of products, and most platforms were never built to handle a catalog that size. dakis was. It could hold the full range with accurate specs, images, and prices, and keep it current.

Back then, the website mostly showed people who Service Photo was and what it carried. As buying moved online, the site grew into something the business runs on every day and keeping it accurate became the priority.

"These people just would never know of us otherwise. They've never heard of us. We've been in business for 78 years."

Bringing it together

Service Photo came to dakis in the early 2010s with one hard problem: a camera store carries an enormous number of products, and most platforms were never built to handle a catalog that size. dakis was. It could hold the full range with accurate specs, images, and prices, and keep it current.

Back then, the website mostly showed people who Service Photo was and what it carried. As buying moved online, the site grew into something the business runs on every day and keeping it accurate became the priority.

"If this were a war, our website is the front line of that war. That's what people see first."

Key results

The clearest result is a website the team trusts, and trust rests on accuracy. Staff across the store treat the website as a working tool, checking stock and prices on it through the day, confident it matches what the point-of-sale shows. Burke puts the website's role in the starkest terms.

The same accuracy matters for manufacturer instant rebates (MIRs). An accurate rebate is what wins the sale, online and in store alike. Burke describes the customer who never makes it through the door:

“At eleven o'clock at night, they look at our website, they see the price, and they say, they've got the best price too, I'll go in tomorrow.”

If the rebate is wrong, that customer never comes. Keeping every rebate current is a relentless job: vendors change their promotions constantly. One employee once spent close to a third of their hours claiming MIRs and chasing the money back. dakis now manages Service Photo's MIRs, keeping each one current across dozens of promotions, so the store protects sales it would otherwise lose to a stale price.

That crossing between online and in store now runs in both directions. Where people once browsed the website and came in to purchase, many now buy online and ship, or collect at the counter. The local pickup caught Burke by surprise, and it works because online and in store have become a single path for the customer.

Years ago online sales was a hopeful one or two percent. Today it is meaningful and still growing. Burke points to the value of the right partners in a business that throws something new at you every day: For Service Photo, dakis has been that partner.

"You have to look at the vendors and the partners that are going to make your business better and make your life a little less hectic."