The Chelsea Standard
A Heritage Newspaper
Weekly Publication
Huron Camera closes its doors at Chelsea site
New photo technologies cutting into sales, says co-owner Campbell
By Steve Ricci, Staff Writer
PUBLISHED: September 8, 2005
Late last month, Huron Camera closed its South Main Street store in Chelsea, and the future of the Dexter-based company's business on East Michigan Avenue in Saline is unclear.
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Although the company has seen decreased print developing business with the advent of digital photography and home printing systems, Milton Campbell, one of Huron Camera's three owners, said last week that the business provides enough services to keep it afloat.
Campbell's partners in the company, which opened in Dexter in 1970, are Robert Clouse and Gerald Schmidt.
The Chelsea store opened in 1994, purchased from the owner of a photo lab who went out of business.
The company leased the Chelsea store, and owns stores in Dexter, Saline, Jackson and Battle Creek.
Campbell said the Chelsea store closed because it primarily handled film developing and didn't have enough space for retail sales.
"The Chelsea store was too small to accommodate any cameras to speak of," Campbell said. "The Dexter store is six or seven times bigger and the Jackson store is even bigger than that. The Chelsea store was more or less just a processing lab.
"We just couldn't stock very much retail to make it work."
Campbell said last week that Huron Camera would sell the building on East Michigan Avenue that houses the Saline store, and close that operation.
But he called later in the week and said the owners would not close the Saline store, which contains retail and developing space, or sell the building because the Dexter store has become too busy.
Campbell said all of the partners are considering retiring within the next few years, which played into talk of closing the Saline store.
Huron Camera has 15 employees, and only one employee staffed the Chelsea store.
Campbell said there wasn't enough business at the Chelsea store to support another employee who knew more about cameras.
Since the closing, Campbell said the Dexter store has picked up about 50 percent of the clientele who patronized the Chelsea location.
Campbell said Huron Camera customers are still relying on professional film developing, despite technological advances, and that the stores' retail operations are robust.
Nevertheless, Campbell said newer technologies have resulted in 25 to 30 percent less film processing at Huron Camera over the last three years.
Huron Camera stores develop digital pictures with the same silver halide process that is used with traditional film.
Pictures printed on home inkjet printers last between 15 and 20 years, while silver halide film can last up to 100 years, Campbell said.
Campbell said 80 percent of digital pictures are never printed, and that most are stored on hard drives, which can crash, or on aluminum-plated compact disks, which have lifespans of less than 10 years.
"That's the bad thing about the whole digital revolution," Campbell said.
Huron Camera sells gold-plated compact disks with 300-year lifespans, Campbell said.
He said the business does a better job developing film than big-box stores because Huron Camera analyzes each picture individually before printing.
The Dexter store sells a wide variety of film, film cameras, digital cameras and photo accessories, and also repairs cameras.
Sixty to 70 percent of the cameras sold in the Dexter store are digital, Campbell said, adding that last year Huron Camera's five stores sold about 1,000 cameras combined.
Campbell said camera sales at the company are down about 20 percent because people are increasingly buying cameras on the Internet, adding that many of those cameras are "gray market" products, meaning they are refurbished products.
Campbell said some retailers sell "gray market" cameras, offering in-store warrantees because manufacturers will not cover used cameras.
He said film cameras are still popular with purists because their pictures offer more "depth" and "life" than digital images.
Digital cameras are more useful for rapid distribution of photos and for amateur photographers who can see images immediately, he said.
Campbell added that digital photo taking is easily manipulated, rendering it more of an art form than true photography.
As for Huron Camera's future, Campbell said the owners would either sell the business to someone or, if good managers run the locations, they could keep the business indefinitely.
Campbell said the Dexter store draws customers from as far away as Howell, Fowlerville and Brighton.
"(New owners) would be crazy if they didn't do what we're doing. This is still a good business," he said.
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