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Saturday, May 17, 2003
More on the camera store.
Unfortunately, I ran out of time before completing the story, but here's the rest, and it really touches on Anil's statements regarding progress towards digital developing.
We continued talking about the nature of his store:
His employees, "used to take the batteries out of disposable cameras and sell them out of a fishbowl, then donate money to the Gay Men's Health Crisis." He notes, "it's as if Zabar's closed, or as if some other icon," closed. The story of Clicks is, "a story about New York City's cruelty," about, "a small business that struggles that can't get financing," about, "people that get cut who work hard." As far as where he goes from here, he's "taking vacation next week," and says, "I don't know if I'll be back in the near future." He says he needed the SBA loan "to upgrade the equipment...my equipment at that point was already 10 years old." New equipment would be necessary to, "be able to do many of the things that people are looking for." He claims, "We were the innovative, imaginative, creative and cutting-edge source."
But what about digital photography?
"I knew that digital imaging as a concept was going to be the future back in 1996." He, "Rented a floor and decided to go after the commercial market -- ad agencies, publishers, graphic designers..." He, "wound up renting 2 floors, with 35 people, but what i wasn't sure of was how long and how much of a market would evolve for retail." He says that, "a consumer with a digital camer has very little use," for a photo store. He says the primary use for them is in, "e-mailing, storing to hard disk and CD or other media storage," and that if they want hard copy, they'll, "print out photos on an Epson or an HP." He says there's a fundamental difference between what film users want and what digital users want, and that this makes the business model for small photo shops obsolete. "When you have a person who captures lets say 100 images on a media card, they'll see the images and print out 2 or 3...if they want copies, they'll come to me, and they want 15, but they shot 100 -- I used to be able to print the whole roll and make money off it." In addition, most digital camera users that come in aren't prepared to deal with the market realities of the technology. He says a consumer will come in for copies, but they'll be unsatisfied because "they shot in a low-res...[or] they don't want to pay what it costs," among other reasons. He says that generally speaking, the main photographic companies have not developed a strategy to allow digital consumers to remain loyal to the markets that used to thrive on film-based products and services. "Kodak right now, they changed CEO's, they got a guy who came from one of the computer giants...their job is to try to demonstrate to the consumer that they need a photo shop." He notes a generational difference in the conflict between film and digital. "People in my generation, I'm in my 50s, we are accustomed to having albums," whereas for people my age(22), "you're not interesting in shooting pictures, you're interested in capturing images." So far, just within his family, three stores have closed, including Clicks, "my wife's store, and another store on 57th street." He says, "all the stores, they're hanging on, and they're working for peanuts, they're struggling to survive." He says there has been success for, "some of the stores that have 1-hr processing, but they sell a lot of other things," and therefore the processing doesn't have to be profitable so long as it draws customers to the equipment and other products in the store. He says "all of these little hole-in-the-wall stores...they're all struggling and they're all coming up against the inevitable."
Steven I. Weiss 9:11:00 PM
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