Technology lets students, parents layout personalized pages in high school yearbooks
By KAREL HOLLOWAY / The Dallas Morning News

Yearbooks can be a big rush or a real letdown.

Lots of pictures of your child and it's great. Just the formal class picture and maybe a glimpse of a cute face at the back of a group and the big book seems a waste.

Yearbook companies are springing up to help avoid disappointment, offering schools and parents a digital way to make the books more personal.

Treering, headquartered in California, says it was the first company to offer schools personalized pages in yearbooks. Parents, or the students if they are old enough, can lay out their own pages with photos and text and add them to the standard book.

Co-founder Chris Pratt remembers his daughter bringing home her book with just two photos of her.

"It didn't capture her memories," said Aaron Greco, who started the company with Pratt.

The company started last year, using a digital process to offer personalized pages. Greco said other companies now are springing up to offer similar services. Several area schools, including some in Rockwall and Wylie, are using Treering, he said, though he would not say how many clients the company has.

The digital process is called print on demand.

Instead of setting up pages and then printing them on a large offset press, Treering pages are similar to documents on any computer. Pages can be added or deleted almost as easily as attaching a file to email. Books can be cheaply printed, one individualized copy at a time.

That means the yearbooks can be truly personalized. Schools using the system no longer have to place large orders, or large deposits, in advance.

Schools create 80 percent of the pages online – this is the traditional part of the book. But parents automatically receive other pages they can use as they want, uploading pictures and text of their child.

Once the book is finished, parents, students, or others, like grandparents, can order the book they want. It can have no personalized pages or dozens.

Because of the streamlined digital process, the books are often 20 to 30 percent cheaper than other yearbooks, Greco said.

"One mom that had three kids at the school had 16 pages for each kid." Greco said. "The pages were beautiful."

Parent volunteer Tonya Fenoglio is in charge of the yearbook at Rockwall's Hartman Elementary School. She said Treering seemed an easy choice.

This is the first year Fenoglio has been the yearbook coordinator. She searched the Internet to see if there was a better option than the company the school had used for years.

She found Treering and liked the ability to personalize pages and the lower cost.

"All the other yearbooks seemed really outdated," she said.

She has already created the pages for her daughter. They include pictures with her friends and activities from first grade. Other parents have gone online to finish their students' pages as well.

Fenoglio says she likes the chance for parents to add personal details such as teacher names and important days.

"They'll kind of have a Life at Grace Hartman Elementary School," she said.

EXCERPT FROM ARTICLE:

A growing number of schools, including Scotch Plains-Fanwood and Baldwin Senior High School, on Long Island, are also using new publishing technology offered through companies like... Treering to give every student the option of personalizing a yearbook by adding pages to fill with photos and memories, at little or no additional cost. Scotch Plains-Fanwood’s yearbook advisers, Julie Whitty and Amy Rutkowski, said they hoped the customized pages and more inclusive approach would increase their sales; in recent years, about half of the students bought yearbooks, which start at $75 this year.  READ FULL ARTICLE ON NYT 

Treering mentioned in an article by OriginalThought LLC CEO, Bob Lieber, about creative business models. Here's an excerpt:

Thinking Creatively About Business Models
By Bob Lieber‍

To help you think a bit out of the box, here are two unique and inspiring business models examples to serve as thought starters just to get you going:

• Application-Focused Model: http://www.treering.com/. This company focuses on the school yearbook and makes the process for schools much easier and much more personalized. Their description for their business is "Yearbooks for the Internet Generation".

READ MORE

MESA - Yearbooks are a great way to look back on school memories, but some kids have very few pictures of themselves in them.

ABC News Phoenix (KNXV-TV) covers Treering custom yearbooks. Treering customer Brenda Sibley is interviewed.Watch the video

NBC affiliate KCRA-TV Sacramento Morning News interviews Treering CEO Aaron Greco.

Yearbooks have been a part of the school experience for decades. While that tradition hasn't changed, the content of the yearbook has certainly evolved. Today, students and parents can customize the yearbook with meaningful, personal content. Established companies such as Minneapolis, Minn.-based Jostens Inc., as well as newcomers such as Treering Corp., are enabling students to put personal touches on their yearbooks.

"Not much has changed in yearbooks over the past 100-plus years other than color pages, but we think the time has come," says Aaron Greco, CEO of Treering, Redwood City, Calif. The company launched in 2009 and began printing and shipping books this spring.

"It's so incredible seeing students' custom pages with all of their personal memories from the year that currently are lost on peoples' hard drives and flash drives," Greco says. "Although the yearbook is an ideal memento of one's childhood, it's amazing how poorly the current yearbook model actually captures it.  "We certainly think personalized yearbooks will become the 'norm' for schools," he adds. "It is the primary reason we founded the company."

At Jostens, over the past two years, the company has developed and tested proprietary technology that allows students to make their own memories a part of their yearbooks. Jostens Personal Yearbook Pages enable students to publish photos and stories of themselves, their friends, and events and add those pages to their own copy of the school yearbook.  Says Tim Larson, president and CEO of Jostens, "Enabling students to publish their own content, along with the entire school story, encourages self-expression and allows students to add their own unique personalities.  "We are ushering in an entirely new era for the timeless tradition as we introduce even more ways for students to personalize their yearbooks."  Beginning in August, Jostens will provide online tools at https://www.yearbookyourself.com to design, review, and order custom yearbook pages. The website provides an easy way to design four-page inserts that are bound into the book to personalize every student's yearbook.

Treering works in a similar fashion, as schools create a traditional "core" yearbook that includes the entire school. The school yearbook team assembles a collection of student headshots, faculty pictures, and images that commemorate select school events such as athletics, arts, and more. Parents and students can then customize their own pages at www.treering.com. Treering prints each student's custom version of the yearbook.  The company says it saves schools money by having families order online directly from Treering; so schools don't have to place deposits for yearbooks, have no minimum purchase commitments, and have no leftover inventory at the end of the year. The company adds that due to its on-demand printing, schools have a later publication date for their yearbooks.

The company also promotes itself as eco-friendly. Through its partnership with the nonprofit organization Trees for the Future, a tree will be planted for each yearbook purchased.  

"We've had an incredible response to our product in our first year," says Treering co-founder Kevin Zerber. "For something that has been around for as long as the school yearbook, it's incredible how out-of-date the current publishing model is and how much technology improves the entire process."