Developing a new focus Developing a new focus (July 28, 2004)

Film processors learn to live in a digital world

by Jaime Marconette

With a slow shake of the head, Sam Mistry explained why advertising is not a viable option for his business.

"We can't compete with the advertising of the 'big boys,'" he said with a slightly somber tone.

Mistry owns University Avenue's Photo Express. With the rise of digital photography, business for film processors has decreased dramatically.

"The roll count is down by more or less 75 percent," Mistry said.

Watching their sales decline, many local photo processing businesses responded with measures to survive the transformation to digital. Though these expensive undertakings allow for processing prints from digital cameras, business is still slow to pick up.

For Photo Express, the money devoted to upgrading equipment cuts the money available for advertising services. Mistry must look to national companies to promote options for processing prints from digital cameras. Kodak's current advertising campaign asks, "Where are the pictures?," and according to Palo Alto film processors -- they got 'em.

Faced with less requests for prints, Palo Alto businesses responded with massive technological upgrades. Mistry reports he pumped $218,000 into new equipment. Local businesses can now process any digital requests.

"We've invested in all new equipment so we can do it faster," said Mark Toal, owner of PhotoTime. Last fall, Toal installed photo kiosks for digital camera memory cards and equipment that allows digital restoration, retouching, and enhancement.

"Our main aim is marketing the 1-hour (processing) to show that they are as easy as film," he said.

Business is slowly returning, Toal said, but he saw a 30 percent to 40 percent drop in the first few years of the digital photography boom. He now reports that roughly 25 percent of his business is related to digital.

Terry Shuchat, owner of Keeble & Shuchat Photography, said that whether people admit it or not, "photo finishing is still dropping off."

"A lot of people don't want prints," Shuchat said, adding that many consumers are happy with simply e-mailing pictures and storing them on the computer. Shuchat updated his services a little more than a year ago, enabling his business to print from digital. Shuchat said options also exist for local business owners besides printing photos.

"What we're losing on the processing side, we're picking up with digital camera sales," Shuchat said.

Some store owners have not been so lucky. Though technological upgrades provide support during a declining market, customers are not coming back as quickly as retailers would like.

"They're working, but not fast enough," Mistry said of the upgrades he made. He later added that digital processing abilities are "not filling the gap" created through the loss of business.

Not even the loyal bond of a "regular customer" is shielded from the results of technological advancements such as the digital camera.

"I don't see [some regular customers] quite as often," Shuchat said. "If they had a family gathering over the weekend, I'd see them on Monday."

Yet, there exists light at the end of the lens. Informing the consumer of different options, and providing quick and easy services are the keys to raising business.

"The future is more digital and less film," Toal said. "Our goal is to provide more services . . . Our goal is to make it faster for everybody."

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