Turn photos into oil paintings and earn 80,000 yuan in three months. Entrepreneurship Story Part 1 In the Wuhan Technology Entrepreneurship Challenge, 23-year-old Chen Mo and his "920 Divine Painting" project won the Best Project Award.

Chen still regrets that he did not reach the top three. He said: "Our failure was mainly due to the limitations of the TV challenge. If the judges could see the process of turning our photos into oil paintings, the result would probably change." Last year 7

In March, Chen Moran graduated from Wuhan University of Technology with a major in multimedia. He gave up his stable job with a monthly salary of 3,000 yuan and started his own business.

His store is located at the entrance of Huashi Cultural Street, with an upper and lower floor of nearly 100 square meters. The walls are covered with oil paintings made from photos, which are lifelike.

Chen Moran said that a handmade oil painting costs more than 2,000 yuan on average; and through oil painting software, it only takes 2 hours to turn a photo into an oil painting, and a 36-inch oil painting only costs 580 yuan.

"We have found a low-cost oil painting production process, and there will definitely be business opportunities in it." The reporter saw in the store that there was an endless stream of customers coming to consult. Since September last year, the store has turned a profit, and every day

Accept at least 30 oil painting orders per month.

As of today, the store has sold more than 1,100 oil paintings, with sales of 150,000 yuan and a profit of 80,000 yuan.

Chen Moran said that to achieve such results, they spent nearly two years cultivating the market.

For being exposed to this entrepreneurial project, Chen Moran said he would like to thank his partner, 41-year-old Wang Chengtan.

Wang Chengtan’s classmate Zhu Songchun teaches at the University of California, USA. In 2007, he developed a digital art production system that allows oil paintings to retain the composition and character charm of photos, and the texture is very close to hand-painted oil paintings.

Zhu Songchun established a company in Wuhan and invited his old classmate Wang Chengtan to be the general manager to promote this technology.

In early 2008, Wang Chengtan saw statistics from relevant departments in the newspaper that there were 100,000 sets of wedding photography in Wuhan every year, with an annual output value of about 1.2 billion yuan.

This set of numbers allowed Wang Chengtan to find a direction. "Newlyweds hang their wedding photos at home. If the wedding photos are made into oil paintings, they will be more personalized." He decided to promote this product through wedding photo studios in the city. During this period,

I met Chen Moran who was receiving photography training in a photo studio, and the two hit it off.

There are thousands of wedding photo studios in Wuhan, large and small. Being able to join forces with them should be a good sales channel.

However, this is not the case. After a year of hard work, although Chen Moran and Wang Chengtan have developed nearly a thousand photo studio franchisees, based on the cost accounting of the wedding photo studio itself, oil painting photos can only be included in the package photos of 8,000 yuan to 10,000 yuan.

, there are very few couples who can spend so much money on wedding photos.

"The photo studio offers high prices to customers. A 36-inch oil painting costs as high as 2,000 to 3,000 yuan. However, the profit it gives us in the end is very low. We can only earn a few dozen yuan from making a painting." Multi-channel marketing finally paid off

After a year of trying, Chen Moran and Wang Chengtan came to the realization that relying on wedding photography stores to promote products was too slow for market recognition and they had to open their own physical stores. To open a physical store, they only relied on oil painting.

A single project is not enough.

In March last year, the East China Normal University Cultural Street opened. The two of them jointly raised more than 100,000 yuan and rented a 100-square-meter shop at the corner of the street. The store of 920 Shenhua Dream Factory, which is homophonic to "I love you", opened.

In addition to the main business of converting photos into oil paintings, the store also provides photo development, photo T-shirts, photo cartoon dolls, gift frames, photo art wall design services, etc., which can meet the various needs of different customers.

The two have a clear division of labor. Chen Moran is responsible for sales and photography, while Wang Chengtan is responsible for sales channels.

In order to increase their popularity, they tried every low-cost marketing method.

Chen Moran posted on the forums of major websites, "After it was deleted, I continued to post, and I could only post in every possible way." The products in the store are mainly targeted at the wedding crowd and the home decoration crowd. Every time there are large-scale home decoration exhibitions, Chen Moran also prints some picture albums.

Distributed in front of the exhibition.

With a multi-pronged approach, the 920 Shenhua DreamWorks store finally managed to see the light of day. In September last year, the store’s monthly sales exceeded 18,000 yuan, and it turned a profit.

Want to be experts in photo processing Chen Moran and Wang Chengtan’s ideal is to develop the 920 Shenhua DreamWorks store into a national chain franchise store and make it an expert in photo processing technology.

"When everyone thinks about things related to photos, they will think of 920 Divine Painting." Chen Moran is full of confidence in the store.

Currently, they are summarizing and standardizing store management and operation methods through the operation of direct-operated stores. Once the time is right, they will openly recruit franchisees.

If the franchise store matures, Chen Moran and Wang Chengtan plan to sell the software and promote it through employment training and entrepreneurial franchise models.

In fact, although they have a good project in hand, because the oil painting software was developed by Wang Chengtan's friends, the right to use it expires in 2013. At present, the two parties are still communicating about the right to use it.

“Now I am hesitant to recruit franchisees because I am worried about this aspect and I am worried that the interests of franchisees will be damaged.