Technological advances have made businesses more efficient and productive. But for some firms, those same advances forced them to adapt – or become extinct.

Ten years ago, photography stores were inundated with customers looking to get their negative film processed and printed. But since the advent of affordable and easy-to-use digital cameras, more people are printing their images at home. Photo paper and special photo printers that hook up to a computer or directly to the camera make it a snap.

For places like Jones Photo, the changes have been drastic in several ways, said president Teri Tavour. Fifteen years ago, she said, Jones Photo had 15 locations in metropolitan Tucson. Now there are four stores.

“This has helped us be more efficient in how we run our business, on the one hand,” Tavour said, “but it does reflect how much change has occurred. We have had to be more flexible and be able to anticipate changes and how we can incorporate our services to fit the new marketplace.”

Mary Findysc, owner of Photographic Works, 3550 E. Grant Road, said that the flexibility was in place years ago.

“We began changing our equipment to digital 10 years ago because we tried to anticipate where the industry would go,” she said. “We were a commercial custom photo lab, but many of our clients – fine art photographers, primarily – went to digital, so we had to change.

“It’s been really important for us. If we weren’t nimble, we would be gone by now.”

The flexibility and convenience of evolving technology has developed a new challenge for Tavour and Findysc’s businesses – the ability of places such as Costco or Wal-Mart to produce digital prints or create photo CDs at a low cost that could price out Jones Photo or Photographic Works.

Tavour said Jones Photo joined with several other developing businesses to create Independent Photo Imagers, a coalition that purchases resources and supplies at prices that allow them to be competitive with discount processors.

Bon voyage, less business!

The travel industry has seen changes, thanks to the Internet, which has allowed consumers to book and compare travel arrangements through Web sites such as Expedia, Travelocity and Orbitz.

Kenna Smith, vice president of marketing and advertising at Bon Voyage Travel, 1640 E. River Road, Suite 115, said it has helped the travel industry as a whole be more healthy, but it is apples and oranges in terms of business for her travel agency.

“The Internet has been great in general, but it hasn’t affected us because our agency is more geared toward a high-end clientele,” she said. “We do a lot of tours, cruises and vacation packages, not so much just booking flights or hotels.”

Ralph Cooper, Bon Voyage general manager, said the company prepared for the change.

“A few years ago we got out of the corporate travel market and saw that the market allowed us to concentrate more on leisure aspects of travel,” Cooper said. “We knew the direction things were going, so we repositioned ourselves. We have better-educated consumers; they do a lot of research in advance of coming to us, so they know what they’re looking for and we have had to be on top of that and be very knowledgeable about the options that are available for our clients.”

But Cooper doesn’t miss the everyday airline bookings that are now readily available online – and it isn’t just from the evolution of technology.

“Clearly the whole travel industry took a big hit in the wake of 9/11,” he said. “But right before that, in 2001, the airlines took away the commission for agents to book flights, so that work lost a lot of value for agents. It made sense to abandon that part of the business, even though it was a pretty good volume of business.”

Cooper admitted that the technology advances “have changed the way we work,” but that his company plans to incorporate the Internet by making its Web site a research tool for customers just as other Web sites that customers might use for their research. He is hopeful that it can become a one-stop shop for consumers, he said.

Reproducing business

Another key industry that has been affected by technological advances is reproduction and copying. But Keith Cooper, owner/manager of Alphagraphics at 4555 S. Palo Verde Road said the changes have generally been beneficial.

“There is a demand for better quality, faster and less expensive when it comes to getting copies,” Cooper said. “Business has increased in the last 10 years, but I’ve noticed that smaller print shops have closed because keeping up with technology has been too expensive.”

The flexibility, Cooper said, has had to come in knowing the timing of when to buy new equipment.

“The way things are, if we were to buy the latest equipment, we would never be able to enjoy it very long because things develop so quickly,” he said. “We have to be very sure that the equipment we buy is a quantum leap in speed or quality so we can use it for a while.”

Cooper said that the technological trend has been with the explosion of demand for color copies and copying digitally.

“The equipment we get is accommodating the change,” he said. “In order for us to stay relevant, we need to constantly look at the needs in the market.”

Different ways to stay relevant

Tavour and Findysc similarly acknowledge the changes in the photographic industry, but their similarities end there when the discussion goes to how the businesses evolve to stay current and viable in the marketplace. Both recognize that the evolution of the digital cameras and print-at-home technology has drastically affected both of their businesses.

For Tavour of Jones Photo, the company has developed new processes, but has also moved into other areas of photography.

“What we can do now is print from any media,” she said in discussing the evolution in processing to digital. “We also use top-end photo paper, including some from Fuji that has archival ability of 150 years. We also allow people to make orders online, including providing software for customers to send orders directly. Plus, we also are able to color-correct digital images like we hadn’t been able to do a few years ago. We’re finding in our experience that customers are coming to us when they learn that we can make their digital images look better and last a long time.”

Tavour also reached out to customers to help offset the effects of the digital revolution.

“We have recently started teaching classes in photography,” she said. “We teach beginning digital and classes about how to take a good photo. We keep these classes pretty small so they’re very interactive and helpful for everyone.”

Tavour also said that her business is starting to move into custom framing and is introducing hard-copy digital organizers.

“This will allow customers to keep track of their photos on compact discs or on their hard drive,” she said. “We provide a bound volume of proof sheets, basically, that has all of the photos listed by file name or number so that a customer could flip through that and find the photos they want quicker and easier than working through all the folders on a CD or hard drive.”

Tavour also said the company has the ability to restore and retouch old photos and scan slides onto CDs or DVDs.

Findysc’s Photographic Works has maintained its niche in fine art and fine art photography, but the challenge there has been the digital cameras more popularly used by professional photographers.

“We went digital 10 years ago,” she said. “We now have high-end digital equipment so that we can do some fine-art reproductions. We’re able to move from analog to digital. We are doing things now that we haven’t been able to do before, and the quality of the work has increased.”

And that has helped Findysc’s particular niche market.

“We really are geared toward the commercial artist and photographer,” she said. “So our first goal is providing the best quality in town, and that means keeping up on the technology.” For this, it can mean gold CDs for archiving (estimated to have a 300-year life and are not found at the “common office store,” she said) as well as pigmented inks for the best quality prints and providing additional archival support.

“We love what we do and when we love it, we want to be the best at it for our customers, because we want to be here for them for a long time,” Findysc said.

From photo stores to travel agencies, owners realize they must adapt to as modern methods take business away.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 7th, 2006 at 12:00 am and is filed under Edge. Tags for this post: David Woodburn, Edge-Government, Government. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.