With over 100 million monthly users, no doubt you will have heard of the social phenomena that is Instagram; the app that allows you to create and then share your favourite pictures online. Cue, INSTABEAR, the website that prints and delivers your instagram photos straight to your door.
Exeter University students Solomon Akhtar and Tom Frew are the thinkers behind this great new site. I had the chance of meeting up with Solly to discuss this latest innovation and learn a bit more about INSTABEAR.
How did you come with this idea?
“It’s really random, but I came up with the idea when taking a picture of London Bridge, and this was right after I had just got a new iPhone and started using Instagram. I have always liked having physical prints of photos and just thought there must be an easier way to get them!
Tom and I then teamed up along with a few others who have helped along the way, to create the website and infrastructure behind the website!”
What makes INSTABEAR different from other printing companies?
“We print straight from the ‘cloud’. This means that once you have logged into our site with your Instagram username and password we can display your photos instantly, and also print them!
So many printing companies make you mess around with making accounts, registering, plugging in your phone and uploading each photo one by one. The amazing thing about INSTABEAR is the fact that you can login with Instagram and then select your photos and place an order in less than a minute.
You don’t need to mess around with a printer, ink, cables and uploading with INSTABEAR.
We also wanted to make sure the quality of prints was up to the highest standard, (I have a room full of test prints, we tried out all different companies until we found the perfect one we wanted).
Oh, and we can get your prints to you by the next day, (if you order before 1pm). There are very few other printing websites that offer this, and if they do its for an extra charge!”
I heard about your recent success at Deloitte’s Young Business competition…
“Yeah we were entered in by Exeter University alongside some really great other start-up companies. We didn’t really know what to expect, but brought with us proof of our concept and lots of prints!
We must have done well in our business pitch as we came 2nd which was really exciting, especially since we hadn’t actually launched INSTABEAR by this stage!”
Any last words about INSTABEAR?
“We set out to make printing fun, easy and quick. It’s awesome to have retro style polaroids of your instagram photos, and they are actually really cool to share around and write little captions on the bottom of them!
We also offer 3 other products, including snaps which are our square mini prints! Which fit perfectly in your wallet or purse!
So yeah check out instabear for yourself, like us on Facebook and spread the printing love.”
Keep Reading to see more about how it works AND for details of our exclusive competition and discount!
[pagebreak]I was lucky enough to be able to try out the site and order some prints which came, as promised, within two working days. The prints look great, the colours are vibrant as well as looking very high definition. I ordered some polaroids as well as some jumbo ones, which you can see in the photos. The polaroids are great if you want to remember the exact date of the picture and where and when it was taken because you can write on the bottom of them.
I would definitely recommend INSTABEAR to anyone wanting hard copies of their photos– apart from the fact that they look great, the process from start to finish is so easy as there is no faff with cables or uploads and printers and ink!
The printing process…
1. Choose your photo options (quantity, pricing)
2. Choose which photos you would like using plus or minus that appear on each photo meaning that you can print as many of each photo as you like.
3. The third stage, payment and confirmation!
Two days later…
[pagebreak]COMPETITION TIME GIRLS!
So you want to win your entire Instragram collection printed for free?! All you have to do is Instagram a photo within the theme of “summer”, either a memory or what you’re going to be doing this summer and tag @hercampusexeter and @instabearhq and we’ll pick THREE lucky winners on Thursday! Ready to buy? Her Campus Exeter have managed to get an exclusive 10% discount using the code HERCAMPUS10. Enjoy girls – and good luck in the competition!
Photo Credits: www.facebook.com/instabearHQ and www.instabear.com