looks like Ritz is officially done

[aldevo]

Any word on if this affects Wolf camera or not?

This is the best upudate I can give you.

http://www.reuters.com/article/marketsNews/idUSN0837940420090708

 

[bob100684]

This is the best upudate I can give you.

http://www.reuters.com/article/marketsNews/idUSN0837940420090708

from my former co worker at Ritz.

Staples, Sears and K-mart are interested as well as David Ritz with a new group of investors.. Somehow I could see sears working out for them as then they could roll their portrait studio into the operation and have a portrait studio and lab at stores instead of a photographer and an 8x10 dye sub.

 

[PKM-25]

This is the best upudate I can give you.

http://www.reuters.com/article/marketsNews/idUSN0837940420090708

Thanks, I like our local store, I actually think it does OK, especially when the leaves start to turn...

 

[bob100684]

once again, the problem isn't every Ritz store is bad. Their "ultra" stores carry just about anything/can get it for you. We had several EOS3's and 1V's in the back, nikon f5, 4x5 film, all sorts of developers, e-6 kits and this is only a year ago. The problem is that they wanted to be like McDonnalds, or McPhotofinishing putting up tiny understocked with shitty selection stores in malls across the country.

 

[Paul Sorensen]

I believe it was at the Wolf (which by then was a part of Ritz) near where I lived in Denver where I heard the salesman explaining to a customer that the "pro" cameras shot pictures faster, and that was the "secret" of pros. Pros simply take so many more pictures that they get more good ones than us mere mortals. If you buy a faster camera, you can too. The customer seemed to be totally eating this up! Not too much of a surprise that this kind of place would struggle with profitability in the long term.

Oh, and the fact that half of their floor space was taken up by frames and albums.

 

[Sirius Glass]

once again, the problem isn't every Ritz store is bad. Their "ultra" stores carry just about anything/can get it for you. We had several EOS3's and 1V's in the back, nikon f5, 4x5 film, all sorts of developers, e-6 kits and this is only a year ago. The problem is that they wanted to be like McDonnalds, or McPhotofinishing putting up tiny understocked with shitty selection stores in malls across the country.

Yes, but once you alienate a customer, the customer is lost for good. And so are his friends.

Steve

 

[TheFlyingCamera]

Frames, albums and minilab processing are the profit centers of a camera store. The store is lucky to make $50 on the sale of a $2000 camera. But they make $8 on the sale of a $20 album, and $12 on an $18 processing order from the lab. So of course the majority of their inventory is going to be the little stuff that makes the money. They carry the cameras to get people in the store to buy the consumables that drive their profit. In any camera store, there's a balancing act between too much and too little service at the hardware sales level - too much service, and you become an extension of the camera club where folks come to BS all day with the salesmen, and no actual sales transact. Too little, and the BS'ers won't come in, which is ok, but the serious customers who want help won't come back either, and won't send in their families with their film and processing, albums, enlargements, and frame purchases.

 

[aldevo]

Frames, albums and minilab processing are the profit centers of a camera store. The store is lucky to make $50 on the sale of a $2000 camera. But they make $8 on the sale of a $20 album, and $12 on an $18 processing order from the lab. So of course the majority of their inventory is going to be the little stuff that makes the money. They carry the cameras to get people in the store to buy the consumables that drive their profit. In any camera store, there's a balancing act between too much and too little service at the hardware sales level - too much service, and you become an extension of the camera club where folks come to BS all day with the salesmen, and no actual sales transact. Too little, and the BS'ers won't come in, which is ok, but the serious customers who want help won't come back either, and won't send in their families with their film and processing, albums, enlargements, and frame purchases.

The Minilab business is pretty much dead or, at the very least, it 's got to go out to a larger, central lab for processing.

Picture frames and albums are dead, too, because most people in digital photography don't produce reflection prints. BestBuy, Amazon, etc. can all offer digital picture frames at lower cost than Ritz could.

And, while we're at it, that $2000 digital camera can be had for $1900 on Amazon.

Basically, the market's passed them by.

 

[aldevo]

Yes, but once you alienate a customer, the customer is lost for good. And so are his friends.

Steve

I don't know. At this point, I think a lack of choices in the retail marketplace tends to do a pretty good job of herding us back.

 

[Nikanon]

my boss told me today Dave ritz rebought the company and will continue to operate normally

 

[aldevo]

my boss told me today Dave ritz rebought the company and will continue to operate normally

Indeed. This is hot off the presses:

http://www.bizjournals.com/triad/stories/2009/07/20/daily41.html

A bankruptcy court must still approve the plan.

 

[Naples]

I used the Ritz here in Naples for all my needs (35mm) until they “went digital”. Every time I would go in they would ask why I was still using film. It really got annoying, so I found other sources for my processing and equipment.

A few weeks ago, before a trip, I went into Ritz for the first time in eons to see if they had T-Max 400 film. They had only one roll, which was far less than what I need, so I bought my film online.

It is a delicious irony that abandoning film users and “going digital” turned out to be not the panacea advertised.

 

[JBrunner]

Indeed. This is hot off the presses:

http://www.bizjournals.com/triad/stories/2009/07/20/daily41.html

A bankruptcy court must still approve the plan.

Interestingly, I'm told it's not the first time he's done something along these lines...

 

[sfadam]

i scored hundreds of dollars worth of film for pennies on the dollar when they went digital. i would be excited to see if they are clearing anything out (film camera related) because of the bankruptcy but i'm assuming it's been gone for years now.