Let me tell you a story about why we're in the album business, why we believe in brand building, and why you should too. Don't tell anyone but you're looking at two early Queensberries from the days when albums weren't everything we do. It may look a bit tired but the old wallet on top has excellent provenance, as they say. In 1990 Stephen brought his new fiancée home from Brisbane to meet his family in New Zealand. He gave her the Queensberry tour, saw the wallet and asked could he have it? Heather gave it to him. (I hope she gave Sonya something too!) Years passed. We stopped making wallets. But Stephen kept using his ... After - I don't know - a decade or so, people felt he needed a new one. A great gift idea, they thought ... but he wouldn't part with it, he loved it, it was a symbol of something and he used it every day ... for twenty years. But in the end the credit card pockets got a little sloppy and he tossed it in the trash. His daughter Charlotte, my grand-daughter, retrieved it. "You can't do that, Dad," she said, "you love that wallet!" Three points.

1. These were some of the first products we actually "branded". Up till then Heather and I thought people would recognise quality when they saw it. And pay for it. What did we know? We were the hippy/handcraft generation!

2. Your mileage may differ but I'd say a wallet that lasts twenty years of constant use is quality.

3. Even so, we had to stop making them.

Why? A few years earlier our government had dropped almost all New Zealand's trade barriers. Good idea, maybe, but it devastated our business. I remember calling on our best customer, who gave me a wallet to look at (from Thailand I think) that he could retail for about the cost of our materials and labour! It actually ripped when I was inspecting it. It wasn't even leather (bonded leather ... echh). But he just shrugged. I don't mind, he said. They'll replace it for me. Our baby brand simply couldn't stand up to the appeal of a really low price on an easily commoditised product, and in the end we stopped trying. But we persevered at product development and brand-building, and that - and our bespoke albums - saved us. Your strength as a photographer is that you're bespoke too. You can't be outsourced to the third world. If there's one thing forty years have taught us, is that people don't just buy quality. They buy a brand that adds reputation, expectation and certainty. Build a brand and you'll be OK. Cheers, Ian ;) PS The other wallet turned up in my Google Alerts on trademe. We just had to buy it when we saw it was described as "collectible".