Some photographers still insist on pricing below cost or competing only on price. In the race to the bottom, these photographers will always win, or lose, depending on how you look at it.
If a photographer sells very cheaply or works for free, hoping that customers will one day agree to pay much more or that a huge volume of work will magically appear, then this photographer will be greatly mistaken.
On April 6th, CPI Corp., the company that owned and operated all of the Sears portrait studios and about 20% of the Walmart portrait studios, in the USA, shut down its US operations. Its Canadian in-store studios are, so far, unaffected.
CPI, (in)famous for its dirt cheap portraits and free prints, was ….. (wait for it) ….. losing too much money. It owes about US$174.8 million. Creditors gave the company until April 6th to repay US$98.5 million. So CPI is a winner in the race to the bottom!
In 2007 and 2010, CPI bought two other cheap portrait companies that …. (again, wait for it) …. had gone bankrupt. That’s right, two more winners in the race to the bottom. Are you sensing a pattern here?
CPI has said it will look for a buyer for its ~360(?) Canadian store portrait studios operated by CPI Canadian Images, which is not to be confused with the other CPI – Canadian Press Images.
By the way, CPI Canadian Images is looking to hire “photographers” for some of its Walmart locations. No experience required. The reply-to e-mail address in the pre-April 6 job ad uses the now-dead US company address. The post-April 6 job ad uses a Gmail account.
Other than a business model of below-cost, loss-leader pricing accompanied by lots of up-selling, there were a number of other factors involved in this company shutting down. The fact that everyone today has their own digital camera certainly played into this. Customers can do their own cheap portraits.
One former customer, Becky Schaaf, used to take her 4-year-old son to a Sears Portrait Studio every three months during the first year of his life, until she decided she could get the same result, or better, on her own or by finding local professionals.
“We started to realize that with a decent camera we could be taking strong photos,” said Ms. Schaaf, now a mother of two in Ashland, Ohio. “I just got an iPhone…[and] for the day to day, we’re just as happy with that.”
So what can a photographer learn from this?
Photographers who try to increase their business by lowering prices and hoping for volume are wasting their time. This business model does not work for photography.
A business exists only because it can do something for the customer that the customer either cannot do for themselves or doesn’t have time to do.
Customers who pay more expect more. But customers who pay less do not expect less. So why aim for the bottom market when it costs exactly the same time, money and effort to service as a higher market?
There’s no money in cheap.
Very well done. This article speaks the truth. I currently work for CPI Canadian Images and it is extremely frustrating to work my butt off for little pay out. Their marketing is so out in left field it’s not even funny. We have reached the one year mark of the States business closing down and we’re not faring any better. I have a feeling we’ll all be closed after Easter. Just a gut feeling I have.
OH no this is horrible! So how does a young photographer get some experience under their belt. Just go out there and jump in the water? Sink or swim as they say?? I found this blog post when I was googling for CPI job postings. I would love to get some work but no one wants to pay for a newbie. Yes I’ve worked for free and many non-profits come back to ask for more and I tell them I need to get some compensation, at the very least travel expenses and a meal!
Any advice for a girl that wants to break into the business?
Rose –
Don’t sit back and expect that a company will hire you for a 9-5 photo job. There are only a tiny number of “staffers” in Canada. Most photographers are self-employed.
Portrait companies (baby, school, department store, etc.) go through a lot of photographers. There must be a reason why.
Make sure all your friends, neighbours and relatives know that you are looking for paying photo jobs. Seriously. Let them be your word-of-mouth for now.
Having good ol’ business cards still works as does having a web site. I’ve given out business cards while waiting in a dental office and while sitting in a car dealer’s service department. And I got a few nice paying jobs from those. But don’t just hand out cards blindly. You have to know your customer.
Try to define your type(s) of customer. Your customer must be someone more specific than “anyone who has money.”
Now figure out why these customers should hire you rather than another photographer. What’s the big deal about you?
Someone will hire you only if they can’t, or won’t, do the work themselves. So what can you do for them that they can’t do themselves? (Hint: It has little to do with photography).
Check out PPOC and CAPIC for information, workshops, etc.
You are a business person who works with photography, not a photographer who dabbles in business. Camera clicking will occupy only 10%-20% of your time. The rest is all about business marketing.
Figure out those things and the rest is easy :-D
Just wanted to add a few comments regarding this article which has this condescending attitude toward companies who sell with added value. As a former photographer with this company years ago. They were a pleasure to work for and treated me very professional. I did very well with the company and worked hard to accomplish my goals for the company. There were days when I would go into my studio and the line ups would never end. I loved my job and my customers and serving them was a pleasure. I left the company eventually because most of my shoots were all required road travel. They eventually went into permanent studio locations. I am not sure why they made this decision, it could have been one of the reasons it went bankrupt. This thought that you can compare a professional picture to a cell phone camera is absolutely untrue. One of the reasons is because the company placed it’s emphasis on the individual having the picture taken, and not the camera. There is more to photography than just snapping a picture with a camera. This is what separates the professional from the amateur. It’s pretty obvious you know nothing about professional photography or you would not of made those comments. It’s equivalent to saying an Olympic athlete is equal to another person who just plays the sport occasionally. We know how untrue that statement is in reality.
I wholly disagree with your emphasis on their reason for going bankrupt. Companies don’t go bankrupt because they offer value for the consumer. On the contrary it is the opposite. Walmart is a prime example of this scenario. There are often a myriad of reasons for bankruptcy. Companies are always facing challenges in their daily operations. For some reason things were happening that only they know why. You tend to forget that many U.S companies in the last ten years have battled the economy and all were not bailed out. I suggest the next time you would like to assume (ass u me) . You present the truth to the public regarding why a company fails, based on truth. Generally you get this based on inside information and not standing on the outside knowing nothing about the bankruptcy.
Thanks for your reply but either you completely misread what I wrote or perhaps I wasn’t clear enough.
No company goes bankrupt because business is good and they’re making too much money. As for the details of the bankruptcy mention above, please reread the post carefully.
But you said it yourself: “Companies don’t go bankrupt because they offer value for the consumer.” What you may not understand is that value is not always measured in dollars. Many customers do not want cheap, they want good (although “good” is relative) at a price they’re willing to pay.
A company can go bankrupt because its marketing failed or because its marketing succeeded. When a department store advertises that it does cheap photography (family portrait for $29.95, child portrait for $7.95, etc), it will get what it deserves – cheap customers. Low priced studios and photographers paint themselves into a corner from which it’s extremely difficult to escape. Cheap studios and photographers shoot themselves in the foot and they have no one else to blame.
How many “years ago” did you work for one of those chain portrait companies? Back in the 1960s, 1970s and perhaps early 1980s, some of those companies did very well because they concentrated on photography and customer satisfaction rather than today’s overall strategy of high volume and low price. I suspect the switch to digital greatly accelerated the move to high volume. Digital also lowered people’s appreciation for photography.
[As I write this, Loblaw is looking to hire photographers to work in some of its grocery store photo studios. No photography experience is required but you should have sales experience. That pretty much sums it up.]
From speaking with people who used to shoot for department store photo studios, someone who managed such a studio, and people who actually built in-store studios for a Canadian grocery store chain, I learned that the emphasis was on using the lowest priced equipment and shooting a high volume of customers.
An in-store studio can, in theory, do high volume if they have a number of people working for them. But this means the photographers become a commodity. A portrait should also say something about the photographer, otherwise the photographer is just a button pusher. All the store studio pictures I’ve seen looked the same – there’s no photographer in the picture (so to speak).
You wrote:
I didn’t make those comments. Again, please reread the post.
But here’s what photographers often fail to understand: customers do not care what equipment you use because it’s not about the gear. When you call a plumber, do you ask what type of tools they use? Customers care only about results.
Many people are very happy with their own (low quality) pictures shot with a cellphone or point-and-shoot camera. Focus, exposure and composition don’t mean much to these people! And that’s what professional photographers are up against. It. is. not. about. the. money. As soon as photographers and department store studios learn this, they can better market themselves.
This week I did a corporate environmental portrait, two business headshots, and a job for a PR agency. None of these three new customers asked about my fee when they booked me. One company said it hired me based on two (environmental portrait) pictures they liked on my web site. The two other companies were referred to me by previous customers of mine. I sent each company a quote, of course, and each was immediately accepted. (If you care: $800 for one environmental portrait, $620 for two business headshots, and $520 for the 15-minute, 1-picture PR job).
It’s about the money only if you make it about the money. And if you do make it about the money, you will always lose.