Hidden Gems: Meet Jennifer Tsay of Shoott

Today we’d like to introduce you to Jennifer Tsay.

Jennifer, we appreciate you taking the time to share your story with us today. Where does your story begin?
From my time as an actor and creative, I saw firsthand how most artists struggle because their lives are gig to gig and they can’t find enough work to sustain a career. For photographers, we came up with the idea of consolidating demand at specific locations so photographers could enjoy multiple back-to-back clients; we then had the crazy idea of passing along the benefit to clients in the form of a free photoshoot where they only pay for the photos they want – so we’re helping both photographers and clients for a great win-win solution. Most times clients have to pay upfront no matter how they felt about their photos – we wanted to give clients the power of choice and a convenient, affordable solution to create more demand for photography. For photographers, we know the free photoshoot offer is scary so we provide a $100 per photography hour minimum guarantee plus commission, tips, and extra bonuses to respect their time. In return, Shoott takes care of all the pesky business logistics including but not limited to marketing, customer service, gallery delivery, sales, etc. so the photographers just have to show up and focus on what they love: photography. We are intended as a great source of supplemental income for professional photographers so they can stay in the game.

I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
Not at all! As first-time founders, everything was a struggle! When you’re “disrupting” an industry, that can understandably come with a lot of suspicion so we’ve actually dealt with a lot of hate and even death threats for our business model, which inherently sounds like it might be a scam or “too good to be true” both from clients and from photographers. It’s made us have to be really on top of being clear, consistent, and as transparent as possible so people could see that we mean what we say and are truly striving to create a business that is a true win-win-win between Shoott, photographers and clients!

We’ve also had to deal with figuring out how to operate during COVID, how to navigate skyrocketing digital ad costs with never-ending shifts in the digital advertising landscape, managing 750+ photographers in our network – not all of whom are aligned with our mission, and all the other minutiae of trying to figure out how to both stay in business and potentially scale. Running a startup is a non-stop stream of struggles!

Thanks – so what else should our readers know about Shoott?
We are the only photography service out there providing a free photoshoot where clients only pay for the photos they love. We deliver a gallery of 40+ lightly edited photos in just 3-5 business days. We have a 4.9 star rating on Google and we support over 750+ photographers across 60 US cities. We are a small business (our team is only 12!) whose mission is to support local photographers all over the country!

Besides our unique offer and our internal operations, Shoott is most proud of the fact that our service represents joy and love – photos capture moments in time of our unique journeys and sometimes professional photos feel unnecessary but in the long run, the only photos you regret are the ones you didn’t take (minus any major lapses of character or judgment haha) or ones you paid for that you didn’t even like. By providing our pay-by-the-pic model, we’re striving to make professional photography more accessible to everyone; we hope this results in people getting more in the habit of booking local professional photographers more and supporting these talented artists. We love providing supplemental income for our photographers – they’re diverse, real people with real lives and it’s a tough economy out there and if we can help support someone who loves photography and is talented at it, I think we’ve succeeded.

What are your plans for the future?
Since we’re still a small business, we’re hoping to continue strengthening our operations so we can be around for the long run. With all the economic uncertainty at the moment, our biggest priority is ensuring we stay in business. Beyond that, we’re hoping to provide more photo offerings to clients, provide photography education, and hopefully expand internationally!

Pricing:

• Free 30 minute photoshoots
• Pay only for the pics you love
• Photo pricing starts at $25 each but the more you buy the more you save!

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.shoott.com/
• Instagram: @shoottphotos
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/shoottphotos
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/shoott/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCYkpw5uCI2b204Sc78JLl0w

Image Credits
Shoott photographers