From: Mark Roberts
Bruce Dayton wrote:
>Certainly a tell-tale sign of the future of film. Sounds like the
>cost to get color developed is only going to rise until doing it at
>home is the only viable option.
>
>I'm sure glad I sold my film gear when it still had some value.
About two years ago I stopped in at one of the big box stores in a
major shopping mall in Pittsburgh and decided to have a look at the
photo lab. I chatted with the manager there and learned that their
daily volume for film processing was... about 5 rolls. "Sometimes 10 a
day on weekends". I'm sure the level has gone down since then. Before
long it won't even be worthwhile for them to use film processing as a
loss-leader to get customers in the door. Expect the cost of chemistry
to skyrocket then.
None of the students in my classes has ever used a film camera.
Their loss.
Five to ten rolls a day was about average for the mini-lab I was
running. Mostly those one-time use disposable film cameras, although I
did have a few dedicated SLR shooters as regulars.
I also had one guy who occasionally came in wanting E-6 cross processed.
I don't think we lost any money on the film processing itself. The
loss-leader was 4x6 prints from digital, and only then if the customer
bought real high quantities.
In fact, I don't think we lost anything on the high quantity orders.
As far as I know my lab always broke even or better once I had enough
business to keep the machine operating.
"Loss" came from paying wages to have an operator there when there was
no business. That's the way it was when I got there.
I did my best to insure high quality output, making sure the equipment
was maintained properly and they weren't using outdated materials
because no one bothered to monitor and make sure the oldest materials
were used first, and that sufficient supplies were on hand to meet demand.
Right at first I had to send back a lot of outdated chemicals through
the company's reverse logistics. Took them a while to replace the
outdated chemicals with fresh chemicals. And for a while they couldn't
keep sufficient quantities of some materials in stock.
My quality standards brought the customers in and built the demand to
the point I managed to keep the lab busy. And while the lab was busy, it
made money.
The only problem I never found an adequate solution for certain people
who would order prints through the internet and never come to pick them
up. Small orders were no problem, but I had several instances where the
customer ordered hundreds of prints they never would pick up.
The only thing I could do was keep a watch list, so if someone had an
order of 500 - 600 prints waiting, especially over 30 days, I wouldn't
print any additional orders for that name until they picked up the
existing orders. That did cause a little conflict.
I've been to the store a couple of times since I got fired, and the lab
is dead again, back to the same old crap from before I took over, and
they've got no customers. I expect it will be closed soon enough & that
equipment pulled out.
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