Frame Destination Picture Framing

I started Frame Destination, Inc. while I worked full time as an electrical engineer. If you are thinking about doing something like this there is a new book coming out this March called Weekend Entrepreneur. The March ‘06 issue of Entrepreneur magazine has an article about the book and others on how to do this. Although Frame Destination, Inc. is no longer a home based business I am one of the Entrepreneurs in the book and the magazine article. You can read more about my story in both.

Owning a picture frame company that caters to photographers has a really nice side benefit that I did not foresee. I knew beforehand that I would have the pleasure of meeting great photographers all over the country via email and the phone. What I did not expect was how consistently pleasurable all of our customers would be. All of my employees have commented about how nice and easy to work with our customers are. We have had thousands of sales from thousands of customers but not once have we had a charge back, bounced check, or a customer trying to take advantage of us…knock on wood.

I have built the company primarily on customer service and word of mouth so customer satisfaction is number one priority. Not to say that we have never had an unhappy customer. I wish it were possible to have a business with multiple employees that never made a mistake but unfortunately it is not. When this happens we will get a phone call from an unhappy customer, but they are always polite and have never yelled at us.

The only drawback that I have seen is that since I love photography too, when I get on the phone I will often end up talking too much.

Cheer,
Mark

I use to be an electrical engineer designing control systems for telecom equipment. My interest in photography and entrepreneurship resulted in me founding a picture frame company call Frame Destination, Inc. Probably seems odd to you…it certainly seems odd to me at times. It was an interesting turn about in my life.

There were a few things that led up to this point. The first was getting my BSEE. During the majority of my career I was non-degreed. Completion of the degree was the final piece of my childhood goal to become a computer engineer. I already had the experience and now had the degree to make it official on paper. Everyone thought I would be thrilled after finishing the degree I worked on part time for 12 years but I wasn’t. I realized that happiness does not come from achieving the goal. It comes from pursuing the goal. No problem, I just needed a new goal.

I worked for small companies; large companies with all their bureaucracies and even a startup with the promise of get rich options. I also had the displeasuring of working in telecom during the bubble burst. All of this, combined with the need of a newer bigger goal got me thinking about entrepreneurship.

At this same time I was getting more into my photography and started doing some work for hire and selling some pictures. This led me to buying the first archival inkjet printer, the Epson 2200. I loved everything about it except the lack of picture frames for my new 13×19 prints. A little exploration of the internet revealed I was not the only one with this problem. Then one morning while driving to work I realized, hey I can do something about this. And I did.