Breaking PHOTRADE News ALERT: Changes at Photrade
Written by 
timsdd on November 14th, 2008 in Photrade.
Changes at Photrade
Dear Photraders,
As I am sure everyone is aware, many companies have been laying off employees to conserve their resources as the economy appears to be going into a recession. Particularly notable startups from Zappos to Zivity to Mahalo have laid off large portions of their staff.
I wanted to personally let you know that Photrade has recently had to go through the same kind of downsizing. We decided internally that it makes more sense to make cuts now so we can maintain the overall service going forward. As you may or may not know, we are a venture-backed company and fund raising timeframes have lengthened.
Thus with our reduced staff, we have been overwhelmed trying to keep up the former level of customer service as well as to continue to roll out new releases for the site. We will continue to run the service and do our best to get back to your questions in a timely manner.
We deeply appreciate all that you, our loyal users, have done to evangelize Photrade and are very sorry to have to make this announcement about our service. We’re working as hard as possible to try to raise more capital so we can expand the service offering again and get back on the “fast growth” track.
If you like the service and would like to get involved in helping Photrade move forward, please email me personally at andy@photrade.com.
We will keep you informed of any changes (especially positive ones!).
Yours,
Andrew Paradies (CEO and Founder)
Hmmmmm. Well this is almost exactly what Andrew told me yesterday in response to my post, Photrade: Strike 2! What is going on???
From what he told me I wrote this Photrade Issues Update: Site not DOA!
BUT
We have no way of knowing what that all means. Do the cuts of the staff truly help? Hurt? Buy them time? Did the staff get the shaft? Why can’t they talk about the site? If they don’t get funding and get it quick will the server have a sheriff’s eviction noticed pasted to it?
We have no way of knowing and honestly my faith being restored yesterday was mostly due to the fact that it was the first communication from anyone @ the site in over a month.
Maybe my faith isn’t restored. Though, it is nice to at least to get an official “update” as to why the customer served tanked.
Meanwhile however, my friend who ordered some merch from me….”Photrade never bothered to reply to yesterday’s email and they haven’t responded to my PayPal dispute, that place is pretty damn pathetic.”
SO there again, at this point I certainly would not have ANY faith regarding placing new orders! She placed a order about a month ago, probably when the fit hit the shan who knows….
I still hope for a “to be continued” (in a good light)
| 2.8 |
November 14th, 2008 at 10:38 pm
Laying off workers is akin to throwing off a ship’s cargo in a heavy storm. It’s absolutely necessary to do it and do it quickly in order to survive, but it’s a major hindrance to your long term supplies. Much the same applies to staff – paychecks are by far the biggest weekly drain on company funds, so getting rid of that weight can save the company thousands of dollars per week. That adds up to a substantial amount of money very quickly.
But the downsides are obvious – service businesses require multiple people to take care of all the little things that constantly pop up. If those people are gone, then a multitude of little problems that is normally handled w/o a hitch quickly becomes a mountainous task for one person.
It seems like, for whatever reason, their ordering process isn’t automated. You’d think their software would be designed to place the order with their fulfillment service when the product is ordered from Photrade. But apparently that isn’t the case, which I don’t understand since that’s the bread and butter of the site and you’d expect there to be hundreds or maybe thousands of orders.
Anyway, every business has a lot going on behind the doors, for sure. But with Photrade, if their photographers are making sales, they’re making money. So letting customer service slide, in terms of sales support, is simply shooting themselves in the foot b/c that’s simply lost revenue. I’m sure it’s much too early in the game for the site to be self-supported by sales, but you need every revenue stream you can get and having a bad reputation certainly won’t build it.
In terms of the site’s survivability, who knows. I think it’s safe to assume there are no guarantees here. If the last month is any indication, it appears as though Photrade is so short on staff that they can’t even keep the basic functions running. If that’s true, then this thing’s just on life support until it devolves to non-sustainability and it all crashes in. There’s no way around that; if there’s more work than (say) 3 people can do, then it just piles up and up.
It sounds like they have a fairly substantial backer in Charles Stack, et al, but the thing with venture capitalists is that the money may be here today, but if they’re spooked, gone tomorrow. Who knows.
http://crainscleveland.com/article/20080804/FREE/319748882/1022/www.invacare.com
Personally, I will continue to use Photrade, but I’m not going to make it the central part of my business as I had once planned to do.
November 15th, 2008 at 2:20 pm
Excellent points there Bradley. I agree with you ATB (Across The Board).
I’m sure it’s hard enough to keep the servers afloat both with time and $$. BUT like you said, just as important would be the customer service; that’s nearly the ‘whole point’ of the site.
Thanks for taking the time to make such an in-depth comment!
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Meanwhile check this out!…is Mr. CEO earnestly looking for additional investors for the site or burning the last few PHOdimes trying to rub elbows & or network?
http://twitter.com/andrewparadies
new post on adtechblog.com http://tinyurl.com/5cba9k
12:14 PM Nov 6th from web
in the press room… typing up some notes… last day of ad:tech… tired
8:54 AM Nov 6th from web
at ad:tech NYC – about to put up a blog post on luxury brands 11:19 AM Nov 5th from web
What does being @ Adtech in NYC have to do with anything remotely related to PHotrade??? But maybe we should speculate that on another blog post
November 16th, 2008 at 12:52 am
I thought the same thing about Andrew’s twitter when I was searching for info last week. So why we were dealing with outages he was writing a blog on “luxury brands”?
Jason Hatfields last blog post..Autumn in Coloroado
November 16th, 2008 at 5:53 pm
Beats the H-word out of me!
“Lip Service” like my friend “Anon” said?
That’s what it looks like to me!
What I don’t get is why would he string everyone along if ultimately it’s going to tank. Maybe he wants it to succeed but knows it won’t?
I still hope it does.
Hey, When is the next techie conference…if he twits from there then the jig is up!!