MyPublisher, considered a pioneer of the personalized photo book industry, is letting go of 47 workers at its printing plant in Elmsford.
According to a notice filed with the state Department of Labor, the company at 8 Westchester Plaza is citing “economic reasons” for the layoffs, which are set to begin May 1 and continue through July 31.
MyPublisher was founded in 1994 by Carl Navarre, publisher and CEO of Atlantic Monthly Press. It began selling “the first photo book kits to retailers like Barnes and Noble, Fox Photo, and Moto Photo, in addition to cataloguers including Exposures, Orvis and Neiman Marcus,” according to its website.
It subsequently expanded its distribution and in 1999 it phased out its offline business and started its digital online application at MyPublisher.com. As digital photography continued to grow, the company became a leader in creating photo apps and proprietary book-design features that enabled amateurs and professional photographers to customize photo books, as well as share and print their images.
In 2001, MyPublisher entered into an exclusive five-year partnership with Apple Inc. to supply all printed photo book products for the computer company”™s iPhoto software application.
The company prints and ships more than 120 million photos per year ”“ all done in-house, according to its website.
In April 2013, Redwood City, Calif.-based Shutterfly, also an image publishing service, bought MyPublisher for an undisclosed amount.
At the time of the buyout, Shutterfly CEO Jeffrey Housenbold said, “By combining MyPublisher”™s best-in-class software client with Shutterfly”™s industry leading cloud based platform, we will continue to drive growth and set the standard for design, choice and quality in the personal publishing and social expression category.”
Attempts to reach Shutterfly for comment were unsuccessful.
