Photome Wins Shopify Milestone Award
Shopify 10,000 Sales Award
To kick off this month’s blog post, we’d like to announce something we’re very proud of. Just after Christmas, Shopify sent us our first Shopify milestone award to commemorate Photome.ie hitting ten thousand sales. Several weeks before we got it, all they told us was that they were sending us out something to help celebrate. The first thing I thought of was maybe a badge we could pin to our fridge almost like a blue ribbon you’d win at the fair, but no, they gave us a full-blown heavy, paperweight of a trophy. It’s kind of hard to imagine us reaching ten thousand sales over the last three years, but I suppose when you’re not keeping track of it and because you’re not thinking you’ve processed that many orders for customers, it does kind of sneak up on you. That is to say, Felim and I are delighted to have reached this milestone, and thank you to everyone who has shopped with us since we started going into business. In a way, all of this is thanks to Covid 19. Allow me to explain.
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Photome began as something of a hobby. Because we were under lockdown during Covid, all the shops were closed, so any shopping people did was online at home and they had everything shipped to their front door. This became the new status quo, and even after the pandemic, I think people are still used to shopping that way (I know I certainly am). Having worked in retail myself since I was a teenager, when I lost my job in March 2020, I began to notice there was a demand for retro photo albums. When I worked in Photofast, a lot of customers came into the shop asking if we sold physical photo albums that they could print off their photos and stick them inside. These proved to be some of our most popular items sold.
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I saw that the demand for them was still there and nobody else really seemed to be selling them online, from what I could tell, so naturally, I put two and two together. I thought maybe it would be a way to test the waters and see if online retail, working from home, could work out for me. Felim gave me a hand with selling online, since he had worked in retail as a photographer for over thirty-five years and had designed Photofast’s website, so he was familiar with that side of business. Using Photofast, we began to sell our retro photo albums and lockets to customers all over Ireland and abroad.
When Felim was working in Photofast, he’d designed a series of photo charms and lockets, mostly for brides and grooms during their weddings, which proved to be modestly popular. The two of us decided to try and sell those handmade bridal charms and personalised lockets, because, much like the albums, there wasn’t much of a market for them online, which we were filling.
After the pandemic was over, the two of us decided to set up Photome.ie to officially rebrand ourselves and try to make a go of selling both photo albums and personalised photo charms that we made by hand at home. Before we knew it, we had our own independent business on our hands and although Covid wasn’t putting the brakes on life as we knew it and forcing us to stay home all day, Photome still remained our humble little engine that kept chugging away, keeping us going one month to the next. I never noticed how many sales we’d processed until our trophy arrived a few weeks ago and Shopify sent us an email telling us congratulations. Even now, I think it’s only hitting me as I’m writing this blog post.
I’d like to take this opportunity to say thank you to all of our customers over the years, whether you are a recurring one or you only bought from us once, you played a part in helping us cross this threshold and for that, we’re incredibly thankful! We wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for all of you.
Here’s to another ten thousand sales guys! Even if it takes another three to five years to get there, hopefully we’ll still be here doing this, as long as you guys are still happy shopping with us (and Shopify of course).