Chari Pack Is Changing The Photo Game One Print At A Time

Entrepreneur and dedicated bootstrapper Chari Pack is a preserver of memories. Inspired by her passion for photos and wanting to create something lasting, Chari founded Persnickety Prints and Persnickety Box to give people who craved quality and tangible memories over digital ones.

Scaling her previous business, Chari sold Persnickety Prints and began to think bigger. Persnickety Box was created in 2022 and is an all-women-led team based in Utah. Seen as Tinder for photos, the Persnickety Box app allows users to swipe their favorite photos into a box, and 30 archival, high-quality prints arrive at your home in keepsake boxes. Chari is recognized as the first female in the U.S. to own and operate a professional photo lab, showing her commitment to elevating the photo printing industry and to helping people protect their legacies.

HA: Can you tell me about Persnickety Box, why you started it, and what gave you the idea?

Chari: I was a young girl who loved photos and storytelling, and I would scrapbook with my mother. In 2010, I started a photo printing lab. We have big machines because I wanted to find digital photo prints that last. In the film days, when I was a little girl, we would take a picture, and you couldn’t see the picture until you developed the roll of film. You’d get your picture, and you’d have this archival photograph, and there’s a way to print those. When you’re developing film, there’s no ink, paper, or toner. It’s archival, and so we have these photographs from generations before us. Our grandparents had these Kodak photos, and they lasted because they were processed in a darkroom setting. I was very passionate about our stories. We’re taking so many photos and doing nothing with them. In 2010, people were still scrapbooking. Scrapbooking was really big, and I wanted high-quality prints at a lower price for women who wanted a scrapbook. 

I created a company called Persnickety Prints. The Persnickety Box didn’t start until 2022. I was a single mom, and I found myself single with three kids, running a business, and trying to survive. I resorted to, of course, dating apps just to find friends. I was like, ” Why are dating apps so fun? I’m like, what if we can make printing our photos from our camera roll, the thousands of photos that we have, as fun as a dating app? I created the Persnickety Box app, and it took a long time. I’m big on bootstrapping. I don’t like to be owned by anyone. I don’t like to borrow money. I used my own money, found a developer, and started developing the Persnickety Box app, where you simply swipe photos into a box, and the photos arrive every month in a keepsake photo box. The beauty of it is that they’re not a bound photo book because we’re using the darkroom. We take your digital image, convert it to a digital negative, and process it just like film. That’s Persnickety Box.

HA: How have you seen the company grow? 

Chari: I think the more digital our world becomes, the more people are starting to create more tangible things. We have grown simply by focusing on emotion instead of just selling a product. It’s an emotional thing. Photos bring back emotions of our childhood, of maybe early trauma. I know I’ve had that. I’m very big on storytelling, and why the picture that we take today might be needed in 20 years. If we just leave it in a digital cloud, how is that going to impact us if we can’t ever see it again? The growth in the business has really come from people realizing that through story.

HA: What makes the company stand out among other photo apps? 

Chari: We definitely focus on quality first, real photographic prints. They’re not cheap ink prints. They’re nothing that you could get at home. The machines that we use are half-a-million-dollar machines, and they’re water-based. They can withstand fire. They’re images embedded in the paper. Word of mouth is our biggest growth; the swipe experience kind of removes decision fatigue. We found that people want to maybe print some of their favorite photos from their trip, but they’ve taken 10,000, and they don’t know which ones to choose or which size to print. Our smartphones are not printing four-by-six pictures. There’s cropping involved. We found that with the quick swiping feature, we’ve made it very simple with just four-by-four retro nostalgic-sized prints. We remove that hesitation or the decision fatigue with the app. It’s different, and it’s very simplified. It really takes out the guesswork for people. You just literally swipe a photo. There’s no uploading required. My 90-year-old grandmother can do it, and a two-year-old could do it. It’s that easy. Nobody else has that functionality out there in an app.

HA: In terms of your company, do you keep everything in-house?

Chari: I like to keep my businesses small, and I don’t have investors. I’m a bootstrap company. Persnickety Box has been live and running for four years now. It’s growing every single year, but it’s a slow growth. We like to control because our customers and our relationship with them matter. For us, it’s not about wealth. It’s about making a difference in the world. We are a small company in Utah and female-founded. Not that we’re discriminating against men, but our whole team is women. We are just women with a passion for story and legacy, especially with generations to come.

HA: How has forming Persnickety Box helped you through certain times in your life? 

Chari:  It’s helped me so much. What’s interesting is that we all need a purpose every day. To me, seeing photos and people posting them online, or seeing how excited they get when they receive their box, is so fulfilling. These photos can bring emotion and happiness to people. I’ve lost family members, I mean, if you think about a funeral or even a wedding, everything is around the photos and the stories. When you open up a picture, all those memories come back. It’s the moments that you’re remembering, and they can help you heal, especially through grief. Photos to me are powerful. I had childhood abandonment issues with my dad. Growing up, my father just left, and he wasn’t around, but I have photos of him when he was young, and he was around. When I look at those,  it helps me to heal. Photos also give us proof that we were loved or that we are loving. I have three boys, and they don’t remember anything, but I’m like, I took you to Disneyland, and here is the proof. Photos are proof of a happy childhood, or they can help you heal. There are different techniques and therapies that use photos to reprogram the mind and try to heal through the emotions that they bring. To me, that’s very fulfilling