Film rape

[roresteen]

I support my local store/lab when I can...but like my older brother and father, I will buy film in bulk from B&H or another house when I can. There's also development and scan costs after that to consider.

 

[John Wiegerink]

I haven't read every detail of this topic, but I'll voice my opinion anyway. These smaller stores do need support to stay in business and compete against the likes of Adorama and B&H, but they must also show some common sense when it comes to pricing. Ever notice how stores never put a price tag on things they know they have over priced? Ever notice how stores almost always put a price tag on something they know is a fair or good price? Most people walk up to the cashier and when they find out what the item rings up are too embarrassed to say stick it in your ear when they know the price is way out in orbit. Smart on the stores part(maybe) and dumb on the buyers part. If everyone that comes in, picks up some film, finds the price way to high, told the manager(not the cashier) to stick his/her film in a nice dark spot. I'm sure the store would get the point very quickly. I know, that for me anyway, if a store does that to me I will not be shopping there for a long time. Of course I'll inform the management why they won't see me and I'll also let them know why. I have no problem with businesses making a profit, but common sense tells me that they on the verge of pushing it way too far sometimes. A little example of going to far? My wife broke/cracked the crisper draw on our two year old Frigidaire refer and she told me to go on-line and order a new one. Jokingly, I told her it would cost over $100.00. What a joke! Yup, the joke was on me as the darn thing cost $117.00. This is a molded plastic box! Give me a break! Looks like I'll get the glass resin out and do my own repair, 'cause common sense tells me ain't no plastic crisper worth $117.00. I'll take the money I save with this repair and buy some Fuji Acros. JohnW

 

[tequilabong]

I"ve been shooting MF for about 15 years now.....I"ve lost count, but let's say I"ve done 5000 rolls of black and white. Started when HP5 or so was about $1.89 a roll...from BH or Calumet. I probably purchased less than 10 rolls from the "pro" store in St. Louis. Why? Because it was about 40% more! Now, if they were wise, they would have been more competitive on film, and sold more to EVERYONE!! It's all about (in a loud booming voice), VOLUME, VOLUME, VOLUME!! The pro store in St. Louis has a massive wearhouse. They could have sold over the internet too. Yet they chose to keep selling, and still do, and suggested "retail".

As to the "cost", I doubt rather highly that freestyle and BH or Calumet are purchasing full truckloads of film. Perhaps by the pallet, yes...And sure, the "labor" to move a pallet equates to less cents per roll than moving a case....But that's it...it is cents...

I remember in the early 80's, working at a small camera shop, and the situation was the same....The K Mart's of the world, (pre walmart in Chicago)...were able to sell Kodak film cheaper than the stores' cost. CRAZY.

 

[mikebarger]

The additional cents per roll on all the rolls you ship to your little customers adds up to real dollars that can be better spent on new technology to further reduce your cost per unit shipped.

In your case, you haven't moved from film you just went to a high volume dealer. The manufacturer may well have seen an increase in sales as your dollars go farther with the high volume dealer. Why wouldn't a manufacturer push everything to the high volume dealer if it puts more money on the bottom line?

Mike

 

[hrst]

Guys,

Let's do our best to keep the film companies manufacturing film. That means: buy more film. It's cheap. I think this is absolutely the most important point. You can then make your own decisions where to buy it, while considering this...

If you have money for more film than you shoot even at high prices, then fine, support any store you want, but if you have to choose whether you support that local store or the FILM ITSELF, it's damn obvious at least for me! We are not in the 1990's anymore, wake up. It's not about "big stores vs. local stores" anymore, it's been "digital vs. film" for 6-8 years already.

 

[wogster]

Only if they have 500 rolls worth of customers on their doorstep (i.e. are nearly the only store in a 1M+ city) or willing to sell online. In the latter case, they should hope to move tens of thousands of rolls and hence are no longer a storefront but an online warehouse paying storefront rent, which is a bit stupid.

500 rolls at $2 profit is still nothing. It does not make a viable store.

The problem is the physical fragmentation of the market. If you restrict yourself to selling locally, at any margin, you cannot sell enough to be profitable. If you go for the global market you can be profitable, but your storefront (if any) will be an unjustifiable rental overhead compared to backstreet warehouse area. Storefront sales of low-volume goods just does not work; it only worked for film in the past because volumes were much higher with every adult buying.

It's time to get over buying from a storefront. If you own one, I'm sorry, it sucks, but that's the current market. Sell something else.

Some online sellers don't even have the warehouse, they simply have the distributor ship out small orders directly, you can often tell this from the shipping address, when 4 or 5 items of different kinds, from different online retailers in different cities have the same return address.

 

[MiddleGrayStudios]

Same experience all-around. I paid $15 for 2 rolls of 120 Kodak Portra 160vc in a store. I thought the lady perhaps rang it up wrong, but no. Nearly twice the going rate online.

 

[Leigh Youdale]

Leigh: 10 rolls is pushing it; think 30 and you'll make a decent saving. You should also look at Vanbar; they have a sydney outlet I think.

Yes, Vanbar do but their main warehouse is in Melbourne. Interestingly Chris Reid at BlancoNegro is offering Foma film at $5.00 for either 100, 200 or 400 ISO in 120 and 135/36 sizes.

 

[polyglot]

Yeah but I can get Acros or Ilford stuff for $4 shipped from the US/UK. Agree though that if you only want 10 rolls, the $5 deal is pretty good compared to the usual $8-10/roll I see in stores.

 

[applesanity]

There's a local lab that prints on Kodak Endura, which I sometimes want. A while back, I bought an old camera and wanted to see whether the meter was working, so I shot an entire roll of a bunch of boring plain scenes but bracketing a lot. I sent them the roll for processing and I asked them not to auto-correct for exposure for prints. Well guess what - the negatives clearly showed my bracketing, but the prints did not. I asked the lab guy why he corrected my images even though I asked him not to. He replied, "but then your images will be too dark or too light." I responded, "that's exactly what I want." The lab guy then said that he didn't know how to configure the Kodak machine for such. Processing was 14 bucks for development and 4X6 singles.

What's worse is that when I walked in, they were running the machines for 135 negatives. I swear, I've never seen people mistreat film so badly. The processed strips of 135 were dangling off a clothes hanger down onto the carpeted floor.

This is one of the last labs around for miles. This experience happened a few years ago; I've never been back. Also, they charge 9 dollars for a 120 Fuji 160C. Come on. I mail my color film away now to a service that does dip-and-dunk processing. Even if I calculate in the shipping costs, it's still cheaper.

Yeah our local photo labs are shutting down, but also your mom-and-pop grocery stores, your mom-and-pop hardware stores. If your groceries will be cheaper if you go to the Wal-Mart instead, what do you do? Local bookstores are closing down. Now you really only have Barnes & Nobles or Amazon.com. But I bet you anything Amazon.com has a larger variety of books at lower prices than your family-owned bookstore ever had.

Some people bemoan the loss of the Sears and Montgomery Ward mail-order catalogs. Oh well.

There is nothing to lament. It is the way of all things. I just placed an order at B&H yesterday that probably would cost nearly twice as much if I had bought at that local lab. No, wait. They don't have the wide selection I want anyway.

 

[thebdt]

I agree with many of the later posters in this thread. I just purchased some house-brand (Arista) 4x5 film from Freestyle; there's no way I could get 200 sheets for under $100 at a "mom-and-pop" store. And most of the "mom-and-pop" stores around where I live will be the first to recommend ditching film and going digital.

Long live the big-box mail-order houses!

 

[randyB]

I"ve been shooting MF for about 15 years now.....I"ve lost count, but let's say I"ve done 5000 rolls of black and white. Started when HP5 or so was about $1.89 a roll...from BH or Calumet. I probably purchased less than 10 rolls from the "pro" store in St. Louis. Why? Because it was about 40% more! Now, if they were wise, they would have been more competitive on film, and sold more to EVERYONE!! It's all about (in a loud booming voice), VOLUME, VOLUME, VOLUME!! The pro store in St. Louis has a massive wearhouse. They could have sold over the internet too. Yet they chose to keep selling, and still do, and suggested "retail".

As to the "cost", I doubt rather highly that freestyle and BH or Calumet are purchasing full truckloads of film. Perhaps by the pallet, yes...And sure, the "labor" to move a pallet equates to less cents per roll than moving a case....But that's it...it is cents...

I remember in the early 80's, working at a small camera shop, and the situation was the same....The K Mart's of the world, (pre walmart in Chicago)...were able to sell Kodak film cheaper than the stores' cost. CRAZY.

Now, the manufacturer will say they can't sell lower to the smaller places...BS...The manufacturer's price per roll is the same whether a store buys 1 roll or 1000!!....

It appears you never looked at the Kodak price catalog, they have price breaks for 20, 100, and case lots to cater to the different size retailers. There were no restrictions on the quanity you could buy other than your credit standing with Kodak. I believe it is illegal to sell the same quanity of an item cheaper to one retailer while charging more for the same quanity to another retailer regardless of the size of the retailer. I also worked for small and large camera stores in the 70's,80's and 90's, I also worked for a short time for Kmart and they priced the Kodak film a few cents above the case quanity cost just to get the film processing profit. That case price was noticably cheaper than the 20 count price. While at both the small and large shops we sold most 35mm and 120 film at 10% below the Kodak Suggested Price, all other film was sold at full KSP retail.

 

[MattKing]

Is there a Kodak price catalogue now?

As I understand it, Kodak has essentially done away with it's dealer network, and all or almost all retailers are now forced to purchase through independent distributors.

Matt

 

[randyB]

MattKing,
I was responding to tequilabong's post "I remember in the early 80's, working at a small camera shop, and my own experiences in the 70's to the 90's." I don't see where I indicated that this is the case nowadays. The retail enviroment is vastly different today compared to the early 90's (my last involvment ordering Kodak film/photo supplies). It doesn't surprise me if Kodak no longer sells directly to retailers, the overhead incurred with warehousing and shipping logistics for a dwindling market could be more than any profit made.

 

[ajuk]

I can get Tmax 3200 for £3.49 a roll if I buy ten or more rolls. That works out to about US$5.65.

It's £3.24 at Calumet While in the same place Ilford D3200 is £8.98, WHAT THE F**K!

 

[John Koehrer]

Regarding the pricing in the Kodak catalog & breaks @ 20-100&case lot. They don't have to sell it to the small guy, they have to offer the small business the same price for the same quantity. by the same token if the big box store was to buy 20 rolls, they would pay the same higher price as the small guy.
Whether you want to recognize it or not, 50 small shipments involves more man hours to ship than 1 large.
Many larger stores are also working off the anticipation discount & that decreases their actual costs by 1-2% & if you're spending $100k a month that's not pocket change.
It was the same deal with cameras, buy 20 & it's a lower net price than buying 3.

I think about a year ago there was a thread here about a small business in GB, hole in the wall type that by proper use of the internet was able to establish itself as a reliable & competitive shop & was able to open a second location locally but couldn't have done it without the internet sales. I think that's going to become a more common business model, establish the market, be able to provide the product & then go to brick & mortar.

For what it's worth $100k/mo. is not unreasonable to spend for a large store.

 

[Tom Kershaw]

Ajuk,

You should find ILFORD film cheaper at Silverprint, Morco, Ag Photographic etc.

Tom

 

[F80p]

I think there is no way out for 'film' other than mail order business. Local business route makes it too costly and illogical.

 

[Denis R]

price-jacking

It's £3.24 at Calumet While in the same place Ilford D3200 is £8.98, WHAT THE F**K!

did you look at the Ilford Photo Direct 2 Dealer catalogue and price list?
the price is £4.43

and for the US folks, the £ price is approximately the $ price

I don't buy ilford without refering to the book!

 

[SilverGlow]

To hell with the little ma & pa film shops...may they all go out of business....we got B&H, FreeStyle, others....if those little stores want to rape us with horrible pricing let them eat kakaa....let the free market deal with them...it's not our job!

 

[Mainecoonmaniac]

I vote with your feet and explain why. You'll get raped if they'll let them rape you. If you could buy some place that is cheaper the you should. It's a free country and it's capitalism.

 

[JMC1969]

To hell with the little ma & pa film shops...may they all go out of business....we got B&H, FreeStyle, others....if those little stores want to rape us with horrible pricing let them eat kakaa....let the free market deal with them...it's not our job!

Well, That is one of the more insensitive comments I have read here. And to think you have something in common with them.

 

[SilverGlow]

Jerk151, you're confused, sir....those stores are being very "insensitive" to the buyer by charging exorbitant prices...it seems your "compassion" is misguided, sadly. You have compassion for those types...that says a lot about you.

 

[fotch]

Small stores have a much higher overhead and lower turn-over. Much like the Chinese worker getting paid less but takes your job because your live where the cost are higher and you enjoy more benefits.

Of course, that is not your problem but a little bit of empathy won't hurt.

 

[SilverGlow]

Fotch, empathy should only go to real victims....not those that created their own problem with unrealistic policies directed at cheating film buyers.

I prefer to have empathy for my fellow film users and not the scammers....

So much confusion on these internets!