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Lthompson

Lot Lizard
Sep 21, 2017
9
2
First Name
Lindsay
We as an autogroup continue to grow and our options for pictures with Vinsolutions is to use their app, but it isn't fast enough for our volume. If any dealership has an old vincamera lying around we would love to buy it from you. Thank you from the Don Franklin Auto Group. (we need as many as we can get!!)
 
Does it need to be VinCamera?
Have you considered something like FlickFusion or SpinCar that could do the photos and feed them into your website?
3rd party isnt something we want to get into, but it has been looked into before, hiring hourly is likely cheaper for our owner as well. I am the photo taker at 3 of our 21 stores. We have 6 people in total who take all of our photos. I have an inventory of 1200 and usually around 200 cars on my photo list in one week. Most dealerships that have less inventory are using cameras and manually uploading or using apps such as Vinconnect which uploads very slowly. Uploading 1000 photos can take an hour or more. Vincameras are old, but can upload about 1000 photos in 10 minutes. Vinsolutions has completely abandoned the photo side of their service. If they had a photo app that would assign photos to stock numbers like their Vincameras, all my problems might be solved. I do appreciate your recommendations though.
 
3rd party isnt something we want to get into, but it has been looked into before, hiring hourly is likely cheaper for our owner as well. I am the photo taker at 3 of our 21 stores. We have 6 people in total who take all of our photos. I have an inventory of 1200 and usually around 200 cars on my photo list in one week. Most dealerships that have less inventory are using cameras and manually uploading or using apps such as Vinconnect which uploads very slowly. Uploading 1000 photos can take an hour or more. Vincameras are old, but can upload about 1000 photos in 10 minutes. Vinsolutions has completely abandoned the photo side of their service. If they had a photo app that would assign photos to stock numbers like their Vincameras, all my problems might be solved. I do appreciate your recommendations though.
So, you have six freelance photographers? Look at your costs for the aforementioned 3rd parties versus their cost and management.

Why would you not want to use a 3rd party as a means to outsource (generally cheaper)? You just said your volume has increased, presuming that has lead to many more vehicle sales and an increase in revenue. Hiring off of the street can be tougher than relying on a proven 3rd party service.
 
So, you have six freelance photographers? Look at your costs for the aforementioned 3rd parties versus their cost and management.

Why would you not want to use a 3rd party as a means to outsource (generally cheaper)? You just said your volume has increased, presuming that has lead to many more vehicle sales and an increase in revenue. Hiring off of the street can be tougher than relying on a proven 3rd party service.
I am one of the photographers. Your suggestion would mean getting rid of my own job. And yes, the owner has weighed the costs. Our other photographers have other titles as well, inventory managers, sales person. Even with a 3rd party photographer he would still be employing them. I am one of the only workers that has just the photographer title because I take care of so much volume. This is my full time job while in college and I am only paid hourly. Trust me, he isn't wasting much on me. The others he needs for many other reasons besides photography. The cost of a third 3rd party for 21 going on 22 stores all over the state of Kentucky? It would cost a lot more than a few hourly paid workers and around 4 salary paid workers.
 
Self preservation ahead of business needs
The cost of a 3rd party for 21 stores would be much higher than his cost to keep two hourly workers and 4 salary workers in Kentucky. What would you say is the ballpark for a 3rd party for that many stores, just curious? And I could have a different position here, but I chose this one, I needed something flexible while I'm in college.