Interview with Joe DiMare, CEO of Bigeframe

If you’re looking for a really big digital picture frame, wireless or otherwise, Bigeframe is one of the only players. The smallest frame the company offers is 15 inches, with the biggest running 20 inches. Bigeframe also offers 19- and 20-inch wireless digital frames.

Bigaframe is a small company based in Tennessee, making its name through word of mouth and Internet sales.

Joe DiMare, CEO of Bigeframe, was nice enough to take some time to speak with us about Bigeframe’s history, its challenges, and its future.

When was Bigeframe founded?
We started Bigeframe about three years ago. I bought a little frame for my wife, a little one like a 7-inch digital frame, for Valentine’s Day. I was like, you know what? This is small. I need a big one. There was no one selling a big one for under $2,000 at the time, so we had to start trying to build these things.

Your website emphasizes the size of your frames. Why is that so important?
Size is always important. You don’t always want to have to be right next to your frame. I always figured that other people want to see it, too, so if it’s bigger everybody else can get a better look at it.

(The size helps it) play into a lot of other things, too, because we sell a lot to businesses and conventions. They use them as displays in their booths. They definitely don’t want a small one.

What percentage of your sales is to businesses? What percentage to consumers?
It seems to be, because of our design, about 80% business, 20% families.

You attribute that to the design. What do you mean by that?
Our design is kind of plain, (because) it’s too hard to work with wood. That’s how we started out, doing wooden frames. It takes an entire day just to sand one and get it looking pretty. It just takes too long.

I could buy pre-made stuff, but it was never the thickness that I needed to hold the components. I always had to build something to surround it. That’s why we graduated to aluminum, which I guess looks plain to people. (But that) leads us to our accessories. We’re going to have a wood overlay that people can snap on. We’ve been getting requests for that.

What other features do you offer as differentiators besides size?
The market is moving in the direction of being able to do video. You definitely need to do video because people have video cameras. Why wouldn’t you want to show a video of your kid blowing out his birthday cake candles?

What types of businesses are buying the frames from you? Is there one type of business that’s more likely to buy a frame than another?
Actually I think all businesses could benefit. We’ve had to turn down people who wanted to use them as outdoor signs. It’s too hard to read them outdoors. The phosphorous gets somehow degraded. I don’t know the science about it, but they don’t last long outside.

Most businesses we get are people who want to show a product in a new way. We’ve used it a lot in restaurants that want to display out their front door.

I just had a call today with a casino wanting some for displaying next to slot machines.

Are you pursuing business customers with advertising or salespeople, or are you looking for them to find you?
We are so small - we only have about 3 employees. The only advertising I’ve done - because I’ve learned not to spend too much money on it because I don’t get anything back - is pretty much just over the Internet. Word of mouth seems to do really well for us right now. We’re doing better in sales each month.

How are you getting the frames manufactured? Are you doing that overseas and then shipping them back here or are you doing it locally?
We’re making them. We get the parts, some of the parts from overseas. We have a supplier in the US, but they’re getting the parts overseas because I know it’s almost impossible to make an LCD panel here. Right now the parts have to be from overseas.

What kind of challenges do you run into, making the products yourselves? That sounds like a lot of work.
It’s actually kind of neat. I think that’s why we get business: because we can modify the frame. The slot-machine customer that I just mentioned wanted dual panels, one on the front and one on the back. It’s going to be a really cool design. I told them that we could do that. They just had to send us the blueprints. We can be very flexible making it ourselves, which is good for us right now.

Do you have a roadmap to getting to that size where you’ll need to be manufacturing the frames in a plant?
I can see it. It just seems really scary to me. I’d probably have to hire the right people. If I had large orders where I told them it would take three years to complete their orders, they would laugh at me. I’ll definitely hire more people if you send me money. It kind of puts me in a bind, because people are scared to shell out money like that. Something will give way, because they aren’t going to find these large panels anywhere else for the price we’re offering them for.

Do you sell in retail?
We tried that. That was one of our money losers. People just aren’t walking around with $500 in their pockets, I think.

We spent six months out in a mall in Nashville and we got zero orders. It was really depressing. We tried everything. We didn’t want to give them away free, but we tried everything but that!

You’ve been in the digital frame space for 3 years now. What did you expect would happen that hasn’t happened yet?
Why doesn’t Kodak or Dell come out with their own large digital frame? I think they would make so much money, but there must be a reason I don’t know.

What did you not expect that has happened?
Our supply. Sometimes I only need five LCDs and I can’t get a hold of my parts sometimes. They tell me it’s on a ship and I have to wait. You know how you see on the news on CNN these cargo ships are sitting in the harbor and no one’s unloading them.

I worked for Dell. They were shipping out over 10,000 computers a day from where I worked. It was amazing, but they would also tell us to tell the customers that they couldn’t get a hold of their LCD panels.

So I think it’s just something to expect. I think our demand is too high for them. People are liking these flat panels.

I think people, even if they don’t buy my digital frame this year, they will next year. How many picture frames does a person have in their house? They definitely have more than one. I’m thinking if I’m still in business, it’s only going to get better.

When did you add the WiFi frames?
About a year ago.

What have sales of those frames been like?
They were (good) at first. We got a really good rush, but lately it seems no one is (buying). It’s probably because we raised our prices, and that’s because of labor. It takes a long time to put just one together.

I still sell them. Just the other day we sold one. (This customer) didn’t mention anything about our competitors. He just wanted something that was higher resolution than we normally offer. Then we bought it.

We’ve got the best stuff out there. It can do anything, literally. It’s like a computer. It pretty much is a computer. You just can’t play video games on it, so I can’t sell it as a computer.

Is that why it takes more time to put a wireless frame together? Because it’s more like a computer?
It’s the software, really. The software takes about 4-6 hours to baby sit, the way we’re doing it. I don’t have it set up like Dell does in their factories, where it’s pretty much robotic. You have to format your hard drive first, put the DVD in, then baby sit all the commands. Then, when it gets started, it wants to run Microsoft Windows Update, which sometimes is not reliable and you have to wait a long time for that to initiate. That takes about 4-6 hours. Then, if I find out something didn’t happen how I wanted it to, we have to wait until we get it right. I don’t want to start shipping out stuff that doesn’t look the same to different customers.

Your WiFi frames run Vista. Why?
It’s the latest and greatest. It’s got everything.

I actually did try out Linux. I was really happy because it was free, but it’s free for a reason. And that’s because no one’s written any software for it for a digital frame. It just didn’t look good.

I could sell it for a lot less - not a lot less, but for about $100 less, because that’s what we’re paying for Vista. It just didn’t work out with any other software. We were doing XP, but of course we might as well go to Vista if it’s out.

Vista’s gotten knocked for bugs, instability, and incompatibility issues. Are you running into those problems?
Not on the digital frames, because we are only doing stuff made for it. So, it’s like a new frame. We’re not trying to install Office 2000 on it. That’s why people are running into problems, because they’ve got old software that they paid a lot of money for and they want it to work. Or they’re doing an upgrade. These are full, complete installs that run smoothly. We haven’t had any problems.

One thing though that we did have to switch was our remote control software. The one we were using with XP did not work (with Vista), so we just switched the supplier on it.

In writing about the WiFi frame, your site says “most normal people will never need this type of picture frame.” Why do you think that’s true?
I’m in the business; you would think I would have 50 digital frames in my house hanging around, right? I’ve got just one.

I actually made myself a wireless one to have, too, because I wanted one. I thought it was the most awesome thing you ever saw. I hang it up and all I’m doing is showing pictures on it. I could have done that with my regular one.

The advantage of our WiFi is definitely picture quality. Our others top out at 640×480 because of the hardware. The WiFi is 1280×1024.

Do you think that there’s not much of a future for video sharing, wirelessly, on the frames?
I think the hard thing about sharing stuff is who you’re going to trust with the content. I’ve got two kids and I do not like them going to certain websites. I don’t want a video just popping up on my frame that I did not see. Some of that stuff could be X-rated.

I definitely think that people are going to love sharing photos and probably videos. It just should be monitored.

Do you see the price point as being the biggest obstacle to the wider adoption of these kind of products?
(The biggest obstacle is) education. They’ve got to be easy to use. That’s another thing with ours and why we go with Microsoft products. Everybody kind of already knows how to use them from their jobs. Introducing them to a whole new platform is kind of scary. It’s definitely got to be easy for the customer or they’re going to get turned off really fast.

How does that education of the customer happen? Is it through a manual, online help, something else?
I think it’s all of the above. That’s one of our big problems. We have a one page instruction that says, pretty much, turn it on and put your data in there. It’s hard to educate people without sitting them down and showing them.

We’re starting to put videos up. We definitely have that plan, but it’s hard to take time away and start doing that. Definitely getting people educated on the site with a tutorial would be nice.

What do you expect to see in the market in the next 12-18 months?
One thing we’re moving to is cellular frames, where it can actually work with a cellular service, so it’s not dependent on a local WiFi signal.

It would connect up to the cell network and make connections to the Internet that way?
Yeah. It’s like a USB telephone modem.

Are there particular carriers that you’re looking at working with?
We’ve got a group that wants to work with Verizon on it. We told them we would build them the frame, they just have to get service. It’s kind of expensive, though. It’s $80/month with a two-year contract.

I think our convention customers would love that. Sometimes they’ll go to a place that doesn’t even offer a connection and try to show something. If they could log in using cellular, I think it would be really cool for some people.

Beyond that, what do you envision for the next 12-18 months for Bigeframe? Where are you headed?
We’re always looking for the best parts in our low-end model. If we can keep it under $500, I think there’s a little bit of a market there, at least.

This is what I want to do: Get a big order, have enough money to go to Taiwan and show them what I need. But I haven’t even been to that yet, haven’t even attempted that. Instead of relying on a part that we’re getting, I need them to make it a certain way. And if they could, it would be great.

I’ve done research on it, but it’s still way out of my price range. That’s definitely what I would do. Just make it bigger and better.

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