Next Byte moves on art reproduction

Apple reseller Next Byte has formed a wholly-owned company, dubbed Digital Da Vinci, to take advantage of the burgeoning demand for quality reproduction of digital media.

Adam Steinhardt, managing director of Next Byte and Digital Da Vinci, said the five-month-old company specialised in reproducing canvas art.

“We can pretty much take photos, artists’ works [and so on] and put them on a canvas of up to 12 metres by one metre in size and put that in a frame,” he said.

South Australia-based Digital Da Vinci would also have a presence in certain Next Byte stores, such as its larger, merged store in central Adelaide due to open 1 April, he said.

Digital Da Vinci was already making inroads with consumers via home shows and bridal fairs. Wedding photography, for example, could be blown up and framed like a painting, Steinhardt said.

Further, Apple had made no definite announcement on when iPhoto’s Photo Books would become available in Australia. So Digital Da Vinci had decided to launch its own Photo Books service for both Mac and PC users.

A collection of photos and captions made by Apple’s iPhoto program could be turned into a PDF or CD-ROM and sent to Digital Da Vinci. In seven to 10 working days, customers would get a professionally bound, linen covered, coffee table-style album, he said.

In the US, Apple users simply press a button to begin the automated process of producing the book.

“We have been chasing this for two years and with the new 2005 version [of iPhoto] have been able to do this. We are very excited about it as our books look sensational -- very close to, if not better than, Apple's offering,” he said.

Steinhardt suggested that Digital Da Vinci was a natural move for the Apple reseller.

“The way it all started was that Next Byte outsourced its marketing division to Designtrix,” he said.

Next Byte had then seen the advantage of creating another company to serve specialised areas, such as the digital media reproduction market.

Four fulltime, and one part-time, employees were staffing Digital Da Vinci. The head office was in Glenunga, South Australia, as was that of Next Byte, Steinhardt said.