The Competitive consulting: agility, innovation and internationalisation conference is taking place in Tbilisi, Georgia from 3-4 November. The conference brings together consultants from across our region to hear from some of the top voices in the industry, learn best practices, update on the latest trends and discuss business development with firms operating on an international scale.
One of the key areas the conference looks at is innovation in many forms – including moving outside the traditional industries consultants target for clients. Mirian Jugheli is part of our panel on Exploring new sectors: creative industries. Here is his take on innovative approach to marketing for SMEs.
When a child is born, many things change in a family: sleep cycles get messy, baby clothes, diapers, formula food take up most of the space. On the other hand, new energy, new challenges and new reality give you more motivation to explore new areas and find new skills and talents in yourself.
When our daughter was born in 2014, a new life began for us as well. When I returned back to work, my wife began sending me pictures of our daughter. Every day the pictures became more and more creative.
Some of our friends who had also just become parents wrote comments on Facebook saying “it would be so cool to take a similar picture of our child”. And that’s where the idea to create a special photo service for children only came from.
Of course there were many photo studios on the market but none of them offered specially crafted photo sessions for newborn babies.
“I think we should try this,” my wife told me. “This is a brilliant idea and it will be successful.”
We bought some props, ordered cheap lighting and bought a new lens for our family DSLR camera that usually lay on the shelf. We set up a Facebook page, DINO Photography, posted a few pictures and tried creating ads.
Two days later customers began contacting us requesting photo sessions for their children. We started inviting them to our apartment or visiting their houses. Very soon demand skyrocketed and we realised we needed to expand as soon as possible. We found a place for a studio, bought a new camera, new equipment, hung a door sign and opened our doors to customers.
DINO offers various types of services including newborn sessions, special birthday photo shoots called the Cake Smash, outdoor sessions and creative collage shoots. All the prices and services are matched to the market and are affordable for everybody.
Parents usually book dates months in advance, many times - during pregnancy. The reason to it is that the process is so individual that it takes several hours and there can’t be many photo shoots a day.
Nearly everything at DINO, including photo shoots, editing, props, decorations, scenes, etc. is done by my wife. A lot of the decorations are custom made by young Georgian artists.
DINO communicates online and parents book dates via Facebook. There is no website or any other platform, because communicating via Facebook is flexible and suits everyone’s needs perfectly.
Every piece of customer feedback or request is taken individually. Every posted photo has its tone of voice, its mood and a story. Many customers and non-customers say that they check DINO Photography Facebook page every day for a daily dose of positivity.
After celebrating our first year in business it can be safely said that DINO Photography, an idea that was born with our daughter, is the country’s favourite new born and toddler photo studio.