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Staying in the picture
Retail photo developers
are surviving despite
the rise in digital cameras
As elsewhere in the nation, retail photo developers in Hawaii took a hit when digital photography came along.
The cash cow of developing negatives and making prints at stores dried up somewhat for several years as the popularity of digital photograph soared. Shutterbugs bought their own photo printing machines and their own photo paper, and processing companies floundered while pondering how to cope.
One key to adjusting has been new minilabs that allow customers to process their digital images while they wait. If a customer has a problem using the equipment, trained photo technicians frequently are available to help.
Longs Drug Stores Corp., which has 31 stores in Hawaii, completed installing such minilabs in its local stores earlier this year, said Phyllis Proffer, director of investor relations for Walnut Creek, Calif.-based Longs.
"Not only can a customer do self-service printing, but they can also go to the trained photo tech in the stores, who can really give them the highest quality in the print," she said.
One of the suppliers of the new minilabs in Hawaii is Fuji Photo Film Hawaii Inc., which is based in Waipahu and has about 80 employees.
Company President Hiroshi Okutsu said processing of digital photos in Hawaii is "still (a) one-digit number against the total prints," but he expects that to increase. He said that in Japan, up to 30 percent of processed photos now are digital.
Okutsu said one opportunity for growth is to teach digital camera users how to get their images into print, since many people apparently take pictures but then just leave them in their cameras or on their computers.
Proffer said Longs likewise is trying to educate customers about the possibilities of digital photography.
"There are a lot of service offerings," she said. "We can print from digital cameras, we can print from CDs, but here's what's really cool: We can process your film negatives and put them on a CD, so even if you don't have a digital camera, you can still have a lot of the benefits that people with digital cameras have."
Proffer said that as recently as a year ago, "digital photo made up less than 10 percent of our photo orders (in Longs stores nationwide), and now it's over 25 percent."
"There's been such a big migration to digital," she said. "It's definitely the main choice of consumers today. It's a national trend."
But not everybody is catching up with the digital trend as quickly as the larger retailers.
"My business dropped like 35 percent since 1996," said Randy Tseng, owner of Randy's Photo Lab in Moiliili. "Normally I did a lot of work for private schools, public schools, for, like, newsletters. But now they scan their own photos. My business now is basically the City and County, modeling agencies, museums -- archival things; they still use film."
Tseng said his one-man operation has adapted somewhat and now can make digital photos from discs and memory cards.
"Business is coming back slowly," he said.
Donald Ho, owner of 50 Minute Photo, which has outlets at Hickam Air Force Base Exchange and Schofield Barracks Exchange, said he actually blames the "big box" retailers such as Costco and Wal-Mart for the drop in his business.
"People think that digital forced a lot of the photo processors out of business," he said. "But it's not. It's the competition from these large retailers. We can't compete with them.
"And it affects the consumer mindset," he added. "They come in and wonder why we charge so much or whatever. The only thing we can offer now is better service."
Ho said digital photos now account for about 20 percent of his total processing.
Ho's business also has suffered because much of his clientele has been deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan.
"Business (on the bases) right now is extremely bad because of the Iraq thing," he said. "We had just recovered from 9/11, and then this Iraq thing came along. We're just hanging on by our fingernails."
