Calumet photo vanishes in the US

[adelorenzo]

via the Phoblographer: All their US stores are closed and, judging from the Facebook posts, employees had no idea they were out of a job today. Their website has also gone down.

 

[TheFlyingCamera]

Holy shit! I hope this is some kind of weird hoax- I was just in there a couple days ago and everything seemed fine!

 

[snapguy]

Kaput

I looked 'em up on Facebook and their site says after 75 years their stores in the US are closed but the ones in Europe will continue. Somebody wrote in and said his wife was told to not come to work toay but was not told she no longer had a job. Funny way to run railroad, as they say.

 

[Jeff Kubach]

Sad news indeed.

Jeff

 

[Chan Tran]

Sad news indeed.

Jeff

Indeed! Calumet is one that carries a lot of film stuff.

 

[Ian C]

The news has already been recorded here in the last paragraph under "History".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calumet_Photographic

 

[removed account4]

bummer ..

 

[peteyj10]

Wow...I was planning on going there on my days off, as they are (or I guess were) based in Chicago.

 

[jeffreyg]

While I suspect that the rumors are true, their phone did answer with the usual recording but it says to leave a call back number and attempts to access their website comes up with "server not found". Too bad at least for now.

http://www.jeffreyglasser.com/

 

[TimFox]

Very strange. I got a normal advertising e-mail from them on March 12, including dates on upcoming events, but all the links seem dead today.

 

[BrianShaw]

April 1 isn't for a few more weeks.

If true, this is sad... very sad.

 

[TimFox]

After reading this thread, I found this on the net:
Dead Link Removed
with recent comments from very disgruntled Calumet employees.

 

[Trail Images]

Certainly some very sad news for all who purchased there over the many years, but more so for the employees left without a job now....

 

[railwayman3]

That sounds disappointing. I've bought a few items from the UK branch in the last year or two (nothing much, but I haven't needed any big items) and found them efficient. They have sent me a periodic glossy brochure/catalogue by mail, and this gave me the impression that they supply a lot of very nice and expensive professional gear in the UK ?

 

[Ian C]

Chicago Tribune: “Calumet Photographic abruptly shuts down, files Chapter 7.”

http://www.chicagotribune.com/busin...t-photographic-closes-20140313,0,868130.story

 

[Thomas Bertilsson]

It's Calumet USA that is disappearing. European stores are still remaining in business.

 

[DREW WILEY]

I once bought quite a bit from them. But since they opted to drop almost all of their traditional film and darkroom stuff quite awhile ago, I rarely
had reason to buy from them. They bet on only one horse.

 

[omaha]

When a business shuts down like that, it generally means they ran out of money to lose.

Reading between the lines on that glassdoor.com page, it seems like these guys have been broke for a long time, are probably way over-extended with every supplier they have, and their bank finally cut them off. Its hard on the employees to shut down like that, but (pure speculation here) my guess is there literally isn't any money to pay them with anyway.

Sad stuff.

The other group of people who often get burned in a situation like this are suppliers who did get paid any time in the last 90 days. The courts can go back and demand that those payments be returned so that the money can be distributed evenly over all suppliers. The idea is it prevents the owner from making sure his brother-in-law gets paid, at the expense of some other supplier. That happened to me a few years ago, and as a small business, it really sucks. You think everything is fine, and all of the sudden you get a notice from the court that that $3000 payment you received two months ago has to be returned, and you will probably (if you are lucky) only see 5% of it when its all said and done.

 

[Richard S. (rich815)]

I once bought quite a bit from them. But since they opted to drop almost all of their traditional film and darkroom stuff quite awhile ago, I rarely had reason to buy from them. They bet on only one horse.

Same here. Have not been there in years.

 

[MattKing]

Calumet are one of the supporting partners for APUG. I hope this doesn't cause severe problems here as well.

 

[TheFlyingCamera]

Surely they will re-open (temporarily) if for no other reason than to liquidate existing stock.

 

[adelorenzo]

Surely they will re-open (temporarily) if for no other reason than to liquidate existing stock.

If they are in bankruptcy or some form of creditor protection then probably not, the courts and creditors now decide what happens to any remaining assets.

 

[Eric Rose]

As with most of these bankruptcies, the people that are really hurt are the ones least able to absorb the lose. The employees. My heart goes out to them.

 

[Barry S]

Surely they will re-open (temporarily) if for no other reason than to liquidate existing stock.

I'm guessing the bankruptcy trustee appointed by the court will hire a liquidation company. Funny, I just got a 20% off coupon at SPE and was going to buy something this weekend. Guess I'll wait for the tacky liquidation signs to go up.

 

[Photo Engineer]

The entire photo industry has taken a huge hit this year world-wide. I was just browsing their site yesterday and all seemed well. I can now guess that they were hit hard here in the US.

PE