12 — Indiana Gazette / The Blairsville Dispatch / Shopper’s Guide - Business Indiana - January 2023
Local business preserves memories in digital age MEMORIES: From A-11
ways in which they could help us. “The entire team at Com- monplace was incredibly welcoming and gave us a professional location to meet with our clients for our first 18 months in business. We’re very thankful for Common- place’s belief in our vision from the start.” Now firmly established in the TEC offices at 665 Phila- delphia St., Suite 110A, Mem- ory Lane Media is typically open Monday through Friday from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. “But, we do strongly suggest setting up an appointment before stopping in, because we have client meetings and deliveries throughout the day,” Dan said. Memory Lane Media can be reached by calling (724) 464-4703 or visiting www. memorylanemedia.online. “We’re also active on Face- book and are starting to build our Instagram presence,” Dan said. “Check out our Google re- views: We were just made aware that we’re the highest rated home video digitization service on Google in western and central Pennsylvania!”
community, who helped them get to where they are today. many “We’ve had a strong com- munity of family, friends and advisers that have support- ed us from day one; it would be impossible to thank all of them individually,” Dan said. “Word of mouth is the best form of advertising for our business and we’re so appre- ciative of all of the referrals that we’ve received.” They also had a tremendous amount of support in their early days from Common- place Coffee. “Up until last November, when we moved to our cur- rent location, we worked out of our home studio,” Dan said. “With two small dogs and an infant, we couldn’t easily hold client meetings at our home. “One day, early on in our business, we called TJ Fair- child, who owns Common- place with his wife, Julie. We presented our problem and asked if we could hold client meetings at their location in University Square, off IUP’s campus. Without hesitation TJ agreed to let us meet cli- ents at their shop and asked if there were any additional
“(We’ve) built a strong partnership with the Bows- er-Minich Funeral Home here in Indiana where they have contracted us to create Life Tribute videos for their clients,” Dan said. Lastly, the business offers options for photo-printing services and custom printed photo books. Working with such im- portant items, the Flemings want customers to know that the utmost care and respect is given to anything that is passed into their hands. “The number one thing our customers can expect is care,” Dan said. “We care about our clients and we care about their stories. We know that the items we are being trust- ed with are one-of-a-kind. Because of this, we treat our clients’ home media like they are our own from the mo- ment they first bring them into our office, through the digitization process and until we hand them back to them in the same, if not better, con- dition we received them in.” Dan also urged anyone thinking of preserving any of their media to do it as soon as possible and to share them with loved ones as often as they can. “We often hear, ‘I wish I’d have done this while my loved one was still around — they
Submitted photo DAN FLEMING worked on a recent project at Memory Lane Media, located in the TEC offices at 665 Philadelphia St. in downtown Indiana.
would have really enjoyed seeing these home movies.’ Digitize your memories now and take an evening or two to watch them with your family. Put your cellphones on silent, grab a bowl of popcorn, a few boxes of tissues and relive these wonderful moments from your family’s story. Our clients often call us after they have their family movie night
and they’ve all been so thank- ful to have taken the time to preserve their home movies.” If you’re not able to, or not ready to digitize your media, Dan also had some tips to help preserve your items in the meantime. “(If) they are stored in the garage, attic or shed, move them to your main living area immediately!” He said. “Heat and cold can wreak havoc on these irreplaceable items that you have just one copy of. We offer fairly extensive repair services and have repaired tapes and film that have sur- vived house fires, floods and decades in poor storage con- ditions — but why take the risk?” Since starting, the Flemings have come to enjoy seeing the reactions clients have to their work. “Without a doubt, our fa- vorite part of the business is watching our clients’ faces light up when we give them a preview of their complet- ed digitized memories in our office,” Dan said. “Watching them as they see their now- adult children taking their
first steps as a baby, hear- ing their departed parent or spouse’s voice again, or countless other stories, is in- describably rewarding.” When working with Mem- ory Lane Media, clients get both their digitized copies as well as the original copies of the items handed over. No originals or hard copies are kept by the business. It’s also not a one-shot sort of deal. “Dozens of home movies can fit onto one USB flash drive,” Dan said. “Our cur- rent record is 93 home videos on one flash drive. Our flash drive pricing is incredibly fair and starts at just $9.99.” These digitized files on a flash drive can be played from almost any computer or lap- top, or many models of Smart TVs, allowing you to play them directly on the television screen. In addition to flash drives, Memory Lane Media also of- fers digitizing memories to DVDs despite DVDs already being older technology. The Flemings also have a strong relationship to their
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MEMORY LANE Media provides clients with media digitization services.
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