‘Keep relevant with what people want’

Lessons on surviving digital upheaval from an innovative leader in the photo world who emphasizes fun 

Guest Editor Gretchen Goldsmith speaks with Mark Comon, vice president of Paul’s Photo in Torrance, Calif., about how his business has dealt with major market changes.

How significant has the change to digital been in the retail camera store industry? 

The typical camera store paid the rent with film and processing every month. Now that is all gone, so as a camera store, you have to rely on hard-goods sales and whatever else you can do. Some people have a fairly good niche still in the processing department, doing prints, which people still want.  Granted, it’s not as much as it was, but there’s still a fair amount of business there. 

How quickly did this digital shift occur? 

Two things have happened. First of all, in the digital world, people don’t print. You guys in publishing may be seeing the same thing, that people aren’t buying books. They’re reading online, they’re downloading, but they’re not going to the store and buying a book. That’s the same kind of thing that happened to us. People are shooting more pictures than ever, but they’re not sharing them in a printed form. They’re sharing them online, they’re sharing them on their iPad, or they’re stuck hopelessly on their computer with our moms and dads’ generation not being able to look at them, view them or print them.

How fast did that turn occur?

Five years. The switch came in the late ’90s.

How many retail camera stores are there today compared to, say, 10 years ago?

It depends on how you define a retail camera store. The small mom-and-pop camera store, the small mom-and-pop, one-hour photo lab, those guys are all gone. I would be willing to guess that there are a third less camera stores in the U.S. than there was 10 years. Two big chains merged. They had thousands of stores and they’re down to just a couple hundred stores.

What methods have you used to bring in new income to replace that business? 

We just have to work hard to keep the customers we have. We still do a fair amount of printing. Granted, it’s not as much as it was before, but we’re trying to transition people into new ways of printing. We’re doing photo books, a lot more enlargements, canvas prints. Then we do education. We do classes and trips and tours to build loyal customers and keep people interested in taking better pictures. I find when people take better pictures, they take more pictures and have more fun with it.

Are there any programs or ideas you’ve implemented that have been particularly successful?

We’re still fishing for the right answer as everyone is in the printing world. No one really knows what makes people decide to print pictures. Well, no, we do know what: It’s an event, whether it’s a wedding, a birthday, an anniversary. As far as the class and education side, I just have to keep relevant with what people want to learn today. As new cameras shift, as new technology shifts, people want to learn new things and they want to learn about what’s new and how it works best for them.

The emails you send out vary. Some are quite plain and some use templates. Can you explain?

I go back and forth. When I send a personal email, I do it as text-only because I hate to get an email from someone when it’s just all these red x’s all over the place and you can’t see it, so when I send an email or a newsletter, it’s all text. So if you want to find the information, if you want colored pictures and stuff like that, you’ve got to click on the links and go someplace else. Constant Contact is fancier. I get answers on my emails from my regular customers who know me. I’ve had absolutely zero response from people who don’t know us personally with email marketing. But I find it really effective for, “We just got this new thing in. Come take a look at it.” or “We’re going to have this special event tomorrow night. Come down and check it out.” 

Are there any particular classes that have been most successful for you, and any idea why that is? 

Our photo boot camp is the most popular because it’s a six-week class to really get you going on your camera. Everyone buys a fancy camera to go on vacation or for a party or for an event, and then quite often you’re not 100% satisfied with the result. Here, you come in, we take you through the camera top to bottom. You have assignments, you go away, you come back. Hopefully you’re learning. When you make better pictures, you’re having more fun. That’s what it’s all about for me. Creating an environment where people can have fun and succeed. 

You teach classes on Photoshop and other digital photography tools. Why would you offer classes that hurt your remaining film-processing business? 

The technology is going to come whether you embrace it or not. If you put your head in the sand, you’re just going to get run over. Would I like to go back to the days of film? As a film-processing, developing guy, yes. But as a photographer and a photography coach, I see huge improvements in what people are doing and cameras and technology—and an interest. Maybe one of the aspects that your readers should be looking at is, “How can we embrace the technology and turn it to our advantage?” Why don’t you guys offer support materials? You can’t look at a map on a Kindle. You can’t look at a picture timeline on a Kindle. “Here, we have the supporting products for this new book in stock. Come down and get it.”

Was this shift in your thinking an instant thing or did you grow into it?

I had to grow into it. The other thing you have to remember—when digital photography started, it sucked. I didn’t embrace it because the pictures were low-quality. After a very short while, it got a little bit better. Then for some people, it was OK; for the serious guys, it wasn’t. Gradually, now there is nobody that doesn’t do better in digital than they did in film.

What have been some of your most successful classes?

Everything I do is successful. Everything I do is fun for the customers, fun for me. It’s just a great experience—that’s the way I build it. A lot of times I decide where I’m going to go (to lead a group) by asking my people where they want to go, and then we go there. 

How do you go about asking them? 

Generally how it works is we’re sitting at the bar on the last night of the trip and [I may ask], “Where do you guys want to go next?” In the next two weeks I’m taking my third safari to Africa, and that trip came about sitting in the bar on our last night in Germany in 2005. This is our third time going. Same thing happened in January—I’ve got a snowmobile trip to Yellowstone in the wintertime.  

People can buy cheap cameras pretty much anywhere these days. How do you keep them coming back to you? 

Number one, we sell at the same price you can buy them online for, so there’s no price advantage for buying online. The big question is, when you have a problem or need help, how much help is the Internet going to give you? They’re not going to help you at all. I understand a camera is a little more taxing technologically than a book is. For me it’s all about personal relationships. I know all my customers by name, they know me. I’m on third-generation customers. 

What advice do you have for Christian retailers?

You should be able to do it better. You can always do it better than the big guy. The bigger the guy, the more opportunity you have to find what you can do better then they do, how you can service your customers better, how you can help your customer, be the value-added resaler. Remember what you’re best at. I know what I’m good at and I don’t do things that I’m not good at. I leave that for somebody else. 

You sound pretty passionate about it.

I am. I love what I do. I get up and go to work every morning and love it. CR