Kodak partners with Walmart Canada

Walmart Canada is the leading photo retailer in Canada, with more than 320 locations across the country. Kodak will continue to provide media, supplies, and service to Walmart Canada’s existing behind-the-counter lab systems and instant photo kiosks. In addition, Kodak will convert up to 100 Walmart Canada photo centers from traditional wet lab systems to Kodak Adaptive Picture Exchange (APEX) dry labs over the next 12 months. These new installations demonstrate the flexibility and scalability of the APEX system, as they are all higher-volume print locations that deliver thousands of prints per day.

With the new APEX labs behind the counter, Walmart Canada will expand its photo service offer to consumers to include premium products such as greeting cards, calendars, collages, and photo books. APEX is a modular and scalable platform, so the retailer has considerable flexibility for customization and can choose the APEX and kiosk features that best match the footprint and traffic of each store, while also enabling robust and trackable print-to-store connections from the Internet. Kodak will also be outfitting the APEX installations with duplex and wide format printers for creating dual-sided cards and photo books, as well as poster prints. The decision to work with Kodak followed a head-to-head comparison between Kodak’s retail solutions and other competitive solutions for both equipment and support.

In addition to innovating behind the counter, all of Walmart Canada’s photo centers will take advantage of the new Kodak Picture Kiosk Software 4.0 enhancements, including Video Snapshots feature, which lets consumers easily select images from video clips, convert them into digital pictures, and then use them to create prints or premium products in seconds; Pet Eye Retouch feature, which allows pet owners to fix the un-natural color that occurs in pets’ eyes when photographed with a flash; Facial Retouch feature, which automatically identifies facial imperfections and reduces or removes them to match the skin’s original color and texture; and Social Network Connectivity feature, which enables consumers to download images from Kodak Gallery, Facebook site, and Picasa Web Albums program, and use them to create prints and premium photo products.

Kodak announced the global availability of its new Kodak Picture Kiosk Software v4.0, offering powerful new features and enhancements to Kodak Kiosk, including a number of industry firsts such as Kodak Video Snapshots, Kodak’s Pet Eye Retouch, Kodak’s Facial Retouch and true one-touch premium products. The new features are available now in stores throughout the US, Canada and Germany, and are rolling out now through other parts of Europe, Australia and South America.