Who is answering the questions? Jarratt Bryan

What is the primary purpose of your business? We focus on restoring damanged photographs. We have restored 100+ year-old images as well as pictures that suffered water and fire damage. The original image never leaves our office and is always returned to the owner, along with several prints of the newly restored picture. We’ve even restored a water-and light-damaged marriage license.

What is the business background of the owners? I have been employed full time since 1995 as a curriculum/ technical writer and development manager. Part of my job requires me to edit images to suit the needs of our courseware. This introduced me to photo manipulation software and I found I liked (and was good at) fixing damaged pictures.

Why did you start (or purchase) this particular business? In 2000, I started The Digital Pen initially to help local businesses and organizations gain a presence on the Internet via my web design skills. Soon thereafter, I expanded my services to include photo restoration because I'd done a few projects for family members. Seeing their excitement at having a cherished picture come back to life was very rewarding so I wanted to offer those same opportunities to the public.

What makes your business unique? As a home-based business, we don’t have overhead to speak of, which means our pricing is very competitive. Also, we post the finished images to the website for our customers to see and approve prior to printing. This offers them not only an idea of what the final images will look like, but we can also offer variations of the images, like pure black and white, sepia tone, or colorization.

What do you enjoy most about your chosen profession? It means a lot to make an old, battered, but very precious and sentimental picture come back to life for our clients. For many of our customers, the pictures they share with us are the only ones they have of loved ones. Helping them renew their memories with restored images is very rewarding. We also enjoy helping small businesses and organizations grow by helping them develop websites.

What has been the biggest or most interesting challenge to overcome as a small business owner? Getting the word out, especially in this economy, is difficult.

Is there anything else you’d like to share with our readers? Our website and Facebook page have many examples of our work. We offer free estimates, so you’ve nothing to lose by asking us to look at your image. We can also scan, catalog, and store your pictures on CDs

or DVDs, create DVD slideshows of your pictures, create custom photo collages including text, transfer VHS and Hi-8 videos to DVD, and design basic websites for small businesses and organizations.

Contact Information:

• Phone Number: 706-346-8731
• E-mail Address: jarratt@thedigitalpen.com
• Website: www.thedigitalpen.com