Today we’d like to introduce you to Paul Zimmerman.
Paul, please share your story with us. How did you get to where you are today?
I fell in love with Photography when I was about seven years old when my parents bought me an old Kodak Instamatic film camera. I think the first picture I took with it was of a rock, far from Ansel Adams quality work, but it did start me down the long road of photography.
In high school, I did everything I could to spend as much time in the darkroom as I could just, so I could process my film and start printing. But it wasn’t until my sophomore year of high school that my photography teacher told my parents that I should consider pursuing photography as a career. It was that moment that I realized Photography could be my future.
In 2002, I graduated from the Rochester Institute of Technology with BFA in advertising photography and moved to Chicago shortly after to pursue architecture photography. For six or seven years, I worked as a freelance photographer as well as an assistant for photographers from all over the world and learned most of what I know today from those experiences.
But it wasn’t until 2007 when I met fellow photographer Jeff Delacruz that my career took its biggest change. Jeff and I opened our own studio, focusing on our own freelance work, but it quickly became apparent that there was a largely untapped market to provide affordable e-commerce photography. So, in 2010, Jeff and I launched Products On White Photography.
For the first few years, it was just me and Jeff, shooting, selling, marketing, building the website, wearing every hat one could when running a small business. Today, we now have six employees, four of which are full-time photographers. Jeff has moved from being an everyday photographer to running our day-to-day marketing, sales, and business development. I still shot, but run the day-to-day operations as well as work on future POW development.
Has it been a smooth road?
It hasn’t been a smooth road, to say the least. Before we started POW, I had very little in savings, a tremendous amount of student loan debt and I actually had to take out a small loan from my brother to help launch the studio.
To make ends meet, I worked retail part-time and 12 – 14 hour days as assistant shooting on location most of the time. And then the recession hit, which dried up a lot of the freelance and assisting work I was getting.
But, I pushed through and started landing bigger jobs and POW slowly began to grow as well. After about three or four years of Jeff and I do it all, we hired our first full-time photographer, and have basically hired a new photographer every year since.
But I would say, the biggest struggle was just sticking with photography. I could have very easily moved on to another career and made more money early on, but I stuck it out, and I would say it paid off. I also learned so much more both about photography and life then I would have had I not stuck with it.
We’d love to hear more about your business.
We provide a simple solution for retailers and online merchants to get quality, high-end product photography at an affordable rate. We created a unique and easy online solution for our customers to place their orders and submit requests for product photography. But what sets us apart from other than the attention to detail our photographers pay to each shot, is our custom online ordering system that allows our team to manage every detail of the 100’s of clients we have nationwide, big or small.
But, I really think it’s the attention to detail and craftsmanship of our photographers that has really helped our studio rise above the rest. Our concept is often imitated by other photographers or studios, everything from our pricing model down to the color of our logo and website. But the biggest element of failure among the other studio is their ability to create a quality image that goes above and beyond what is expected. They can try and copy everything we do, but what it really boils down to is the quality of service and product we are providing each and every customer, that can’t be imitated.
Is our city a good place to do what you do?
Chicago is an amazing city for small business and business growth. I couldn’t imagine trying to launch our concept or our studio in a city like New York or LA. The cost of rents alone would create such an issue that it would be hard to get off the ground as easily compared to Chicago.
We were also lucky in that we started out in a business incubator, so our rent was extremely low for the first six or seven years. That allowed us the opportunity to use funds elsewhere, such as equipment, business development and hiring new employees.
From a business and community standpoint, there isn’t much this city doesn’t have to offer. I honestly think, the only thing keeping Chicago back from being a “San Francisco” is the gun violence, the public school system, and Chicago winters, but there’s not much we can do about the winter.
Contact Info:
- Address: 1801 w warner ave
Suite 102
Chicago, IL 60613 - Website: https://www.powproductphotography.com/
- Phone: 312-880-7124
- Email: paul@powphotography.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/powphotography/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/POWPhotography/
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