Facebook’s astonishing $1 billion purchase of Instagram has turned it into a magnet for new users – which is quite appropriate for one Berlin-based startup. Picpack is a personalised printing service that turns your Instagram pictures into magnets to hang up proudly on your fridge.
The service launched last week, and has already caught the eye of some in Berlin’s tech scene, with Readmill’s Henrik Berggren the first customer and the good people at Gidsy also adorning the furniture with their favourite snaps.
Picpack was started as a weekend project six months ago by co-founders Thomas Albrecht, Jakob Fricke and Tadas Ščerbinskas but is now going from strength to strength. Jakob said: “Seeing so many happy customers already, including the incredibly positive feedback we get from all over the world, makes us really excited to open Picpack to everybody.”
Users simply choose up to 12 pictures from their Instagram feed, and for €18 the magnets – 5.8 mm by 5.8 mm with slightly rounded corners – are printed and shipped worldwide from Berlin the next day. They are pretty powerful as well, able to hold up to four sheets of A4 paper on a fridge (examples here, here and here).
And the big sale has proved to be of benefit. Jakob added: “For us the Facebook-Instagram deal is definitely good news, since it brought a lot of new Instagram users to the ecosystem, thus new potential customers for us… The feedback has been really good so far. We invited around 400 users to the beta phase and shipped beta magnets across the whole globe – from Berlin to New Zealand, the US and all over Europe.”
Readmill CEO Henrik is certainly a fan. He said: “The magnets are high quality and have great magnetizing power. The service is easy to use and is not too expensive.”
Thomas, Jakob and Tadas will be hoping for more happy customers like that so their service sticks…
