How Dakis connects POS, online orders, and lab workflows, with Pat Hugron

Your customer starts a photo order on their phone, asks a question in store, pays at the counter, and expects everything to “just work.” Most retailers cannot deliver that simple experience because their POS, e-commerce site, kiosk, and lab workflow are stitched together from different systems, each with its own SKUs, pricing, and payment records. We sit down with Pat Hugron, Vice President of Operations and R&D at Dakis, to unpack how unified commerce for photo retailers is meant to fix the daily grind of reconciliation, duplicate inventory, and channel confusion.

We trace Dakis’s long path from early product recommendation tech to building tools for camera stores, photo labs, and specialty retailers who need a single platform. Pat shares what has changed in production over the years, why outsourcing the long tail of photo gifts can be healthier than trying to make everything in-house, and why “seamless” matters as much to the lab as it does to the customer. We also dig into the return of film, why the resurgence surprised so many stores, and how better film processing workflow and delivery can keep customers engaged long enough to actually order prints.

Then we get practical about what “unified” means: one product catalog across online and in-store, a save-and-send quote that lets staff build a cart and email a payment link, and unified data that can support smarter follow-up and add-on sales. Hugron also previews what is still coming, including purchase orders, receiving, and serial number tracking, plus how retailers can get hands-on training at the IPIC boot camp.