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Howards Way - part 2 of 1 2 3

by Phil Jones Published 01/02/2000

By working from home, Howard is able to portray a very professional image to his prospective clients. Great care is taken that the clients are made to relax in pleasant surroundings. If clients are expected in the evening, Howard and Pat will wait until after the interview is over before cooking their evening meal; in the same way the room used for interviewing clients in their home/workplace is kept separate rather than used as a family room. All this adds to the professional ambiance and care of detail that you would like from someone taking your wedding pictures.

Interviews generally last between 30 and 45 minutes. If a client wishes to book at the interview, that is good, but if not, then Howard does not pressurise them into a decision as this would probably result in a no and his reputation would also suffer. He works in a relatively poor district and a "pushy" photographer would soon pick up a bad reputation and consequently become very unpopular.

Howard attends the majority of the weddings himself, and a selective few are attended by his partner Pat. He always tries to fit into the wedding by dressing accordingly i.e. Lounge suit or Morning-suit etc whichever is appropriate. He also sees the couple about 6 weeks before the wedding to re-cap on their particular requirements, and then on the big day he tries to be as friendly and relaxing as possible.

Howard estimates that 90% of his business comes from Wedding photography with the other 10% being split between commercial and portraiture for which he uses his converted double garage. His business is mainly directed round Wrexham and a surrounding radius of 12 miles approximately. This however, seems to stop on the border between Wales and England. Howard says surprisingly he is never approached to do weddings for people living or getting married in Chester.

When Howard first set up his business he used to use cheap albums for cheap packages and expensive albums for expensive packages. Nowadays he only uses one type of album; the all leather or pre-bonded leather Tony Sarlo range, - which he considers to be excellent - where he uses their reasonably priced album for all packages. These albums are such high quality, but so reasonably priced that they compare favourably with other - cheaper suppliers.

When people start to sell their photography package, they tend to start with the cheaper albums and therefore Howard feels that he is already one step ahead of the game with the far superior quality of the albums he uses. If people wish to upgrade their album from the Tony Sarlow range, this is possible. When people come for their initial interview to discuss the wedding, Howard offers them a very reasonably priced package at £450 approximately, and because he offers an upgrading system he finds that approximately 8 out of 10 couples will gradually build on this and spend more, than if he had initially offered them a package at £600 - £700. Because of the method Howard uses, in his opinion it matters not what the starting price is, he will always be able to build on it for his end of sales product.

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1st Published 01/02/2000
last update 09/12/2022 14:55:00

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