An App to Help You Tell Your Photo Stories

Hello, I’m Krystle Wurster and I lead social media for Bulldog Drummond. We work with a diverse range of companies and people to break through the noise and meaningfully connect by looking, feeling and being completely different. A large part of this is through storytelling, and I’m fortunate because a large part of what I do each day is working with seasoned executives, thought-leaders, authors and storytellers who help tell these stories.

Each month our content team comes together to think about people and brands that best communicate our editorial themes. Our theme last month, The World’s A Stage, What’s Your Story? sparked the inspiration to reach out to Chatbooks. When Rachel Hofstetter, CMO of Chatbooks, found time to talk with me I didn’t want to end the conversation. Her personality is addictive and so is their brand.

I use Chatbooks almost every day to tell the story of the first year of my daughter’s life and share it with our friends and family. Their user-interface and seamless digital integration simplifies photo-printing. Sure, there are a lot of photo printing sources out there, but for me, Chatbooks is the most seamless and easiest to use. And their customer service is phenomenal. I’ve naturally become an advocate because they do such a tremendous job on so many levels of their business.

Photo books for people who don’t have time to make photo books.

Chatbooks started three short years ago when Vanessa Quigley, Chatbooks founder and mom of 7, was looking at a photo book her son’s preschool teacher had made. She loved it, and at that moment realized she had yet to print any photos of her son. As her family grew, their photo albums shrunk. As a scrapbook enthusiast this pained Vanessa, but also sparked an idea. She knew that printing photos should be easy and wanted to create a way to make that happen.

Within a week of pitching the idea to her husband, they designed a prototype and it had instant success. It turned out solving her own problem also solved other parent’s problems. Their video has 70 million+ views.

The company model is successful because it solves many of the pain points that come with printing photo albums, like photo sizing, spacing and even act of printing. Through their automated model, their application allows people to sync photos by adding them to their Favorites on their devices and with the touch of a button photos are saved, automatically uploaded to the app, placed properly into an album and once it reaches the 60 photo mark the book is printed and shipped. People can also link the app to their Instagram or Facebook accounts to sync photos. And there’s always an option to customize and edit books if you want to take personal ownership of the final output. Chatbooks is extending their offerings by tapping into brand partnerships like their recent collaboration with Rifle Paper to offer specialty albums.

Helping people remember what matters.

Chatbooks has also nailed the family-friendly price of $8 per book. It takes the pressure away from feeling like the album needs to be perfect. And the result is that they are more candid, authentic and personal. My daughter’s first blood draw ended up in one of her albums, perhaps not the sweetest moment, but to me an important part of her first-year life story.

Chatbooks helps people forget about the stresses of taking time to document memories and instead spend more time creating them. They believe in the connections they create and the stories they help to tell. They’ve impressed me and I encourage you to give them the opportunity to do the same for you.