Archiving children’s drawings

Every family has a pile somewhere of their children’s drawings. Since culling out and saving the best works isn’t easy, two moms/entrepreneurs from New Jersey devised a solution: theART:archives. How it works? Parents send in their kids’ drawings and theART:archives team professionally photographs each one and sends back a DVD catalogue that can be viewed on a computer screen or TV. The start-up’s founders suggest ordering a separate DVD for each school year to create a complete record of a child’s accomplishments. theART:archives’ prices range from USD 275 for 25 pieces of art up to USD 325 for 55 artworks. The company’s business model loosely resembles that of other cottage ventures that employ digital technology to reduce clutter, among them small businesses that transfer home videos to DVD or digitize a CD collection for iPod use. While millions of families own scanners and are tech-savvy enough to create DVD artwork collections on their own, many are likely to appreciate the time-saving convenience of a service that will handle the process for them. One to start up locally, in areas with plenty of two-income families with young children. Easy add-on product? Use a publishing service like Blurb to transform the digital scans back into coffee table books featuring the budding artists’ work. Spotted by K.M. Morano