European photo-merchandise market hits 578 million Euros

Small, vertically-integrated and price-aggressive players, often using discount websites such as Groupon, are still emerging in some market sectors, such as wall décor.

"Fuelled by photo-cards, canvases and calendars and potentially evolving ‘hot’ single image gift sectors, the photo-merchandise market is forecast to grow by 4% CAGR between 2012 and 2017, to reach nearly  Euro 657 million in 2017," said Jeremy Wills, Senior Market Analyst at Futuresource Consulting. "This will be assisted by mobile and connected CE devices and photo applications that leverage social networking, and an increasingly consolidated competitive structure offering the market attractively-priced products, available quickly and easily."

Online remained the dominant channel for ordering photo-merchandise, representing 88% of the market in 2012; 70% of these orders (Euro 379 million) were placed online and mailed to homes, up by 1% from 2011, mainly due to growing presence of online players such as Photobox. 18% of orders online were picked up in-store in 2012 and this sector grew in 2013, fuelled by expanding retailer offerings.

The overall number of photo-merchandise orders placed via martphones and tablet PCs grew in 2012, with several resellers, retailers and producers offering photo apps, or photo services apps as part of a wider retailer app. As an overall percentage of the market, this was still low-key during 2012, but gained momentum in 2013.

"Wall décor consisting of posters and canvases, continues to account for the majority of industry revenues – it was 35% in 2012 and we expect it to hold this position for 2013, once final numbers are in”, said Wills. ”The wall décor market value is expected to grow by 6% in 2013 to 2014, driven by canvas revenues rising while poster revenues fell. Calendars, photo-cards, and single-image gifts were the next largest markets, with 30%, 21% and 14% of sales respectively, and we do not anticipate any major change to this ranking. Calendars remain a seasonal product, with over 90% of sales between October and January," 


To coincide with this report, Futuresource has published a consumer research study report during February 2014 quantifying and qualifying the smartphone/tablet app-based photo-merchandise/photobook/photo-prints market in Western Europe. 

Alongside the photo-merchandise report, Futuresource has also released a new consumer photobook market report, which assesses the development of the photobook market in Western Europe and includes retail volume, value and average price forecasts through to 2017.