With Studio Ninja turning two years old, co-founders Chris and Yuan departed Melbourne for a 10-day tour of California, USA, including a 5-day stop in Las Vegas to exhibit at WPPI, the world’s biggest expo and conference for wedding and portrait photographers.
A year ago, exhibiting at WPPI seemed impossible. We simply didn’t have the money or manpower to pull off an expo. Although our users were very loyal and supportive, we felt Studio Ninja lacked some killer features that would stack up against our competitors, who were bigger, more established and much better-funded.
Fast forward 12 months. We have listened to our users’ feedback and hustled hard to build new features that made our photographers’ lives easier. With the help of our amazingly hardworking team, we launched many features in quick succession, including editable workflows, lead management, and integrations with Xero, Quickbooks and ShootProof. This culminated in the launch of the Studio Ninja App in both the App Store and Google Play Store, two days before the start of WPPI. Suffice to say, tears of happiness and relief were shed.
Although our floor space was small, and we couldn’t afford beautiful Mac workstations to sign up people on the spot, the response we got from attendees was extremely positive. Some people were surprised at the product’s ease of use and powerful features, while others enjoyed having conversations with two passionate co-founders.
Our trip didn’t just finish at WPPI. We toured Zappos, one of the world’s most beloved online shoes store, in downtown Vegas, and Facebook’s headquarters in Palo Alto (yep we spotted Zuck in his office). We caught up with Aussies (Ryder, Mark and Suzanne) and met more users (Priyanka and Marisa) along the way. There were life stories exchanged, laughter shared, and connections made that would stay with us for a long time.
On our last day in Los Angeles, we sat down to reflect on the goals we set out to achieve:
Goal 1: Meet as many existing Ninjas as we could.
Success! We’d like to extend a special shoutout to our photographers and users, Julie, Wes and Javier, who volunteered their time to help us out at our stall over three days. We also met many others, including James, Scott, Rensche, Cat and Adi, to name a few.
Goal 2: Build on our relationships with existing partners and meet new potentials.
Success! We got to spend time with our partners and the incredible people behind them, including Colin and Rob from ShootProof, Aly from Fundy Designer, and Daniel and Davina from The Image Salon.
Goal 3: Increase Studio Ninja’s visibility among photographers and be part of more conversations.
Very positive! Studio Ninja is now on the radar for many American photographers who haven’t heard of us before.
Goal 4: Lots of new sign-ups.
So far we’ve fallen short of our target but we’re optimistic this will turn the corner with more time.
Goal 5: Talk to photographers and create solutions that would solve their business problems.
Based on the feedback and conversations, we have reassessed our roadmap and reprioritised features. While we recognise there are heaps to do, we’re super pumped and excited about the coming year!
If you’re already using Studio Ninja, be sure to check out our latest roadmap (pinned post) in our Facebook Group.
Until next time…
Chris and Yuan
