We are a small album manufacturing company situated in between the beautiful Heldervue mountains close to the sea in Somerset West South Africa. As with so many new ventures, it was started because owner and wedding photographer Gilliam Olwage could not found decent wedding albums back in 1998.
We started off with traditional black page albums where you paste your photos in. At the same time I become involved in litho printing and bookbinding.
I realized early on that your work – no matter how good, will not come to its full potential in a sub-standard album. Clients would get the printed photos (that was the days before digital), bought the cheapest album they could find, and put your stunning images in a sub standard album.
That reflected back to me as a photographer, as their friends and family would associate the end product with me. Its a fact that what you put out there will come back to you. If you don’t care about your end product, you will attract customers who do not care about quality.
Since then I have booked more than 900 weddings – all with a beautiful custom designed wedding album the couple could be proud of. The best part of it is that I did not had to advertise all these years, since the albums did it all for me.
After I sold the printing company, we started producing the albums from home. Soon I had to choose between my wife and the printers creeping into our bedroom. We moved out of the house after 3 years and into our current premises.
The early days was a lot of trial and error because layflat printed photobooks did not exist in South Africa in 2005. Information was nowhere to be found, and we learned the hard way.
Most of our staff came with us since the early days, and their experience are second to none. We are still learning, and will be learning ten years from now!
Why us
We look at photo albums from a photographer’s viewpoint. You need high quality photo books designed to put you apart from the rest. You need a company which will stand by you when you need them most. Whether it is to replace a cover or a page because of a spelling mistake, or to help you design your own custom album and packaging brand. Work overtime to have an album ready for an expo. Call before they print to let you know that you used the same image twice, or something is unsure.
Since the very beginning our main aim was not on making money, but on producing the most beautiful albums ever. Something which is unique and to help you get more bookings. Something beautiful your client will want to show off.
We love experimenting, and are always on the lookout to make our books to fit your brand. Whether you like clean and minimalist, or big and bold.
For us the most important part of any album is not the cover, but how your images are printed.
We also have a packaging department which do all our album boxes; DVD/USB packaging and photo mounting. We can do foiling, embossing, de-bossing, vinyl cutting and screen printing and laser printing to personalize your packaging.
We can also do printing and framing on glass /plexiglass and canvas.
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