John, Our drug stores, Walgreens and Osco have mini labs. They are taking what was once the basis of the Ritz/Wolf profit model. And Walgreens has more outlets and convenience than Ritz. And this still doesn't count all the competing drug stores doing the same. Ritz is dead, stick a fork in 'em. Regards, Bob S.
On Sat, Apr 4, 2009 at 9:32 PM, John Sessoms <jsessoms...@nc.rr.com> wrote: > From: Adam Maas >> >> Gotta ask how many prints you do a day? 300 is about 10 rolls of film >> worth. The last time I worked in a Camera store (Admittedly about 15 >> years ago) we'd have 10-15 rolls of film ready to go with single or >> double prints by the time the lab tech got in on most weekdays. >> > > A slow day will have 300 prints from the mini-lab; the same or more from the > prints in seconds kiosk. On a busy day, the printer will run almost non-stop > ... about 7 prints a minute ... easily 2000 - 3000 prints. I've had days > during Christmas where we had to keep the lab running an hour or more past > closing to finish printing everything that was in the queue. > > I get 3 - 5 rolls of film every day, with occasional days going as high as > 15 - 20 rolls. I think the most I've had in one day was 25 rolls. > > Ninety percent of my film is from disposable cameras, although I'm starting > to get a few young people bringing in rolls because they got a great deal on > a SLR off of Craig's List or the like. > > >>> From what I've seen of the minilab business, they've seen individual >> >> orders go up, but the number of people getting prints drop massively >> leading to a net drop in total prints. There used to always be >> somebody dropping off film. Note at the same time that a lot of labs >> are gone. 1 hour minilab shops used to be everywhere, with 1-2 per >> mall not counting the lab in most grocery stores and many department >> stores around here. Now there's just the dedicated photo shops (Blacks >> and Japan Camera here in Canada), the two big pharmacy chains >> (Shoppers and London Drugs) and places like Costco and Walmart which >> do central lab processing you can pick up. That means that most of the >> minilabs are gone and volume is still down at the remaining shops, >> which argues for a massive collapse in the print market. > > As far as I know none of the grocery chains around here have mini-labs. > Kroger used to, but they closed it years ago, about the same time they > decided to drop TicketMaster. > > We have Costco, Walmart, CVS pharmacy, Walgreens, Rite-Aid and Ritz. All of > them are Fuji minilabs. I run a Kodak lab in a major department store chain > that's not listed above. > > None of them have send out, except for Ritz which will send out E-6. > > Takes a week, but I've got a local pro-lab that will do it same day if I get > it there early in the morning (i.e. at 9:00 am when they open, and I can > have it back at 4:30 pm) > > We don't do send out either, but when it's working, you can send your > digital prints *IN* to us for printing ... or you can send them to one of > our locations near whoever you want to get the prints, and they can come in > and pick them up. > > Maybe the market is collapsing. If so, for now it seems the business is > falling onto my lab, and that's ok with me. I still need the job for now. > > -- > PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List > PDML@pdml.net > http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net > to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and > follow the directions. > -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List PDML@pdml.net http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
