Jack Perry turned a devastating fire into a hot property by building a business from the ashes. His fledging Doorstep-Digital that scans, backs up and organizes photos, videos, slides and documents “at your doorstep” began with a fire in 2011.
The family Christmas tree ignited and completely destroyed his home and severely damaged three others in the Memorial area. Running upstairs to retrieve his fire equipment, Perry suffered burns on his face as smoke filled the house. It was too late – the fire was raging and in 45 seconds had consumed the house and skipped to the other homes burning them by 80, 50 and 40 percent.
“We lost some art and priceless work that our children did,” Perry said. “It pressed on my heart to do something for clients in my photography business.”
During 15 years as owner of Perry Video and Photography, he and his wife, Julie, an Episcopal High School math teacher, had backed up many of their personal memories, most precious being family photos of their children 12, 10 and 3. With a mighty lesson learned, an idea was born for D-D during 13 months out of the house. A client of his photography business, John Donovan, is now a partner in the new venture.
“He liked what we were doing – saving yesterday for tomorrow,” Perry said. “It’s going great. We’re thriving and trying to grow our franchises all over the U.S.”
The two-year-old Houston business already has expanded in Texas from Houston to Austin, San Antonio and Dallas. More outlets are being test marketed with local people in Seattle, Chicago and Denver. The franchise goal is to do around 70 across the country, one in each state and more in large states like Texas.
Franchisees will control their own business with support provided from the Houston base. For a small percentage and startup costs ranging from $15,000 to $33,000, D-D provides basic equipment and expertise. Businesses lease a van through D-D that contains the equipment needed and is already “wrapped” with the business artwork.
“We know what works and can provide a quicker path to setup,” Perry said.
Primary customers for the archiving service are people in transition: retirement, death and divorce. But some clients are fanatical photographers like Julie Silverman with her 19,000 pictures.
“I love pictures,” Silverman said. “I consider myself the unofficial family historian. It’s my hobby. I tried to do it (archive) myself. Digital-Doorstep was the best gift I ever gave myself.”
Silverman was able to delete about 6,000 of landscape photos she could not identify. The D-D team of four worked at her house for two to three days, saving 25-30 years of memories. Closets full of albums ended up on memory sticks and in the cloud. D-D advises two physical backups held in the client’s possession and two in cloud services in case one of the latter goes out of business.
“I was nervous about some places I called, as unorganized as my pictures were, and I wanted someone local,” Silverman said. “When I talked to Jack, I was very impressed. Now when my adult kids call and ask for pictures of “Go Texan” day in the fifth grade, it’s easy to find them.”
Perry’s van with the cute little girl logo on the side goes on the road again when out-of-town Texans like Amy Liebert call from San Antonio. Her husband’s grandfather, a WWII veteran, had died. His widow gave Liebert access to boxes of vintage pictures and even letters written between the two grandparents.
The team helped Liebert decide what to save. Sometimes D-D acts as a kind of therapist, working with clients to purge boxes rather than hanging on to everything.
“I found a treasure chest all over the house,” Liebert said. “I decided they needed to be preserved and shared with siblings. The best part of the process was that I could take the pictures and mementoes back to my husband’s grandmother. I didn’t even read the letters. I was able to get them all together and put them right back into her closet.”
At Christmas, D-D also has a service that uploads images and makes a memory book. Liebert wanted her husband’s brothers and their children to have memories, too. Two D-D archivists spent two days in San Antonio to do the entire job.
“It’s something we wouldn’t be able to do,” Liebert said. “Most people can’t take hours and hours in front of a scanner, and the scanners are superfast.”
Liebert moved to Texas from California three years ago and had used an archiving service there that required mailing her treasured photos. The originals never came back. Also, many pictures were rejected because they did not fit into the scanners, unlike D-D’s service that uses photography as an ancillary resource to do the work.
“Sometimes we get artwork that needs to be handled with proper lighting and photography where a scanner won’t work,” he said. “You have to have an artist’s eye.”
D-D also tries to take the stress out of dividing assets in a divorce. Rather than fighting over pictures or other memories, sharing copies eases the irritation level. If you want to avoid the angst and vexation around securing memories and maintaining civilized discourse, contact Doorstep-Digital at (800) 406-4650. Located in the Galleria area of Houston, their website can be found at: doorstep-digital.com