Today we’d like to introduce you to Mitch Goldstone.
Mitch, we appreciate you taking the time to share your story with us today. Where does your story begin?
I co-founded what is today ScanMyPhotos.com in 1990 with a simple idea: help people save and share their photo memories before they fade away. The inspiration came from my last photo with my dad, taken when I was six years old at Disneyland. He passed away soon after, and that photo became priceless to me. It showed me how powerful a single picture can be, and how important it is to protect them.
We began as a retail photo lab in Irvine, California. Then, in the early 2000s, as photography was transitioning from film to digital. Instead of resisting change, we reinvented ourselves. We invested in new technology and pioneered the first large-scale photo scanning services in the country. Over time, we expanded from helping families with shoeboxes of pictures to handling giant archival projects with hundreds of thousands of images for museums, schools, corporations, and even entire countries.
Along the way, our work has been featured on The Today Show, CBS Evening News, The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Fox News, and the Associated Press. Most recently, we digitized 347,000 film negatives for the Cayman Islands’ National Archive. That project became a national exhibit, a documentary series, and was profiled on CBS Evening News. Seeing an entire country reconnect with its history through our scans was one of the proudest moments of my career.
Today, ScanMyPhotos.com is celebrating 35 years in business. We’ve preserved one billion photo memories, from family snapshots to priceless archives. Our mission hasn’t changed since the day we started: to ensure that people never lose the photos that tell their stories.
We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
It definitely hasn’t been a smooth road. Everything changed with the digital revolution. Overnight, people stopped dropping off film, and our core business model vanished. Most shops like ours closed. We had to reinvent ourselves completely.
The transition wasn’t easy. We invested in expensive new equipment, redesigned our business from the ground up, and took big risks without knowing if they would pay off. For years, sales would rise and fall with every tech shift — from the rise of digital cameras to the launch of smartphones.
Additionally, competing against big-box stores and tech giants with billion-dollar marketing budgets was challenging. We had to rely on creativity, customer trust, and word of mouth to sustain our business. Even national media exposure didn’t always guarantee sales — it taught us to stay humble and focus on service first. There were significant boosts from appearances on The Today Show and feature profiles in media outlets like USA Today.
Looking back, those struggles forced us to innovate. The lesson is to listen to and solve customers’ problems. Instead of just being a local photo lab, we became the first nationwide, high-volume photo digitization service. The bumps in the road shaped the company into what it is today: resilient, customer-focused, and built for the long run.
We’ve been impressed with ScanMyPhotos.com, but for folks who might not be as familiar, what can you share with them about what you do and what sets you apart from others?
ScanMyPhotos.com helps people save their memories by turning old photos, slides, negatives, and videos into digital files. We’ve been handling this since 1990, and we can manage anything from a small box of family photos to massive archives with hundreds of thousands of images.
What sets us apart is our speed, care, and personal approach. Families trust us because we treat their memories like our own, and we even suggest adding a GPS tracker, such as an Apple AirTag, for added peace of mind. Due to the California wildfires, we switched everything to handle express same-day scanning.
One of the projects we’re most proud of was scanning 347,000 film negatives for the Cayman Islands. Those images became part of a national exhibit and were featured on the CBS Evening News. Moments like that remind us this work is bigger than business — it’s about protecting history and bringing stories back to life.
If readers remember one thing, it’s this: photos fade, but memories don’t have to. Our job is to help you keep them safe and easy to share with the people you love
Alright, so to wrap up, is there anything else you’d like to share with us?
If there’s one message I’d share, it’s about perseverance. Building ScanMyPhotos.com hasn’t been easy — we’ve lived through the rise and fall of film, the digital camera boom, the smartphone era, and endless changes in technology. Many businesses like ours closed, but we continued to reinvent, learn, and move forward.
What I’ve learned is that success isn’t about avoiding challenges — it’s about refusing to give up when they come. Every obstacle became a push to do better, to adapt, and to keep serving people who trusted us with their most important memories.
No matter what business you’re in, don’t let the setbacks stop you. Keep going. The long road is worth it when you stay focused on your purpose.
Pricing:
- 1800+ pictures digitized for $145 + free shipping
Contact Info:
- Website: https://ScanMyPhotos.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/scanmyphotos
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ScanMyPhotos/
- Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/Scanmyphotosc
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCFgxb8T2P8n-kIyZroq55TA
- Other: https://www.ScanMyPhotos.com/blog
Image Credits
Mitch Goldstone, CEO & Chief PhotoArchivist at ScanMyPhotos.com attending CES in Las Vegas
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