Photoclubalpha

Predictable but sad. I have never used a Ritz camera when traveling in the US, only B+H and some small independent stores.

David

Drat. I've got a store right across the street from me and another adjacent to my favorite coffee house. I guess I'll be able to watch for good deals more easily, but I'll lose a friendly store that's handled all my printing for the past few years.

I too make most of my photo purchases at BH Photo or Adorama. The one notable exception was my first A700 purchased online from Ritz.

I live a couple of miles from the headquarters and biggest retail store in Beltsville. In fact, I bought my a350 there in a misguided attempt to support "the local" camera shop. I can't say I'll miss them and suspect the reason they're going out of business is they forgot what made them successful.

Instead of catering to pro and serious amateur photographers they tried to go head to head in the snap shot realm. But they cannot compete with Best Buy and Wal-Mart. You can get prints while you wait at the grocery store now. And they cannot compete in the on-line arena with B&H.

Here is an example of what I mean. An 8 x 10 print from Ritz costs $4.99 and the only way to get "auto correction" turned off is to go into the store. "Auto correction" is some type of automated averaging. And if you go in and ask to have it turned off they are very surly, as it means more work for them. And this is at the corporate headquarters.
An 8x10 from Nations Photo Lab, with no color correction is $1.65. With color correction, where someone actually looks at the print and adjusts it is $1.90.

They missed the boat and tried to compete with Wal-Mart for 9 cents 4x6 snapshots. It takes a bazillion 9 cent 4x6 snapshots to turn a profit and you can't make money having people sit in your store and edit their vacation pictures .

P.S. The store at the corporate headquarters does not a a700 on display let alone an a900.

Sonolta wrote: For me, the only memorable purchase I made from Ritz was a pair of DPS-9000 power pack systems for my Minolta 7Hi.
...
-Sonolta

Me too!
The 7Hi was really battery gourmand.
I think Ritz was the only people selling the DPS-9000 in the USA -I went to the store in the upper West side and bought the last one they had in stock.

Regards

Mike wrote: Instead of catering to pro and serious amateur photographers they tried to go head to head in the snap shot realm.
...
Here is an example of what I mean. An 8 x 10 print from Ritz costs $4.99 and the only way to get "auto correction" turned off is to go into the store. "Auto correction" is some type of automated averaging. And if you go in and ask to have it turned off they are very surly, as it means more work for them.

Well, Ritz's lab target consumer level clients, not really professionals (what implies not just different sort of technicians in the lab but a different approach at the customer service department)

I think it worked well for them for a while until their target almost stop printing regular/small size prints.

I'm not sad about them. More business for the people like us that remain in the market trying to do a good job! We hired 3 technicians from Ritz a couple of month ago. I hope the rest of their employees will get new jobs soon.

The only thing I ever bought from Ritz was in 1988. I bought my first AF SLR from them, a Minolta Maxxum 7000i, 35-105mm f3.5-4.5i, and 3200i flash. I had just returned from a 9 week trip to Japan carrying a backpack and shooting with a Minolta X-700. I had seen quite a few AF SLRs while I was traveling, as they were becoming popular, so soon after getting back to California I started investigating Nikon, Canon, and Minolta. At the time it seemed like the new 7000i was the best of the bunch. Very unusual for me, I didn't shop around and check mailorder. I just went down to the store after work one day and paid full retail.

I got my a700 + 18-70 kit at Ritz, price matched against Circuit City's sale price at the time, and got close to $40 back with the Ritz Image Rewards Club. They really weren't a bad place to shop, considering, but their limited selection was a constant frustration. They can order most anything they don't have in the store, but it takes them weeks, so why bother?

I think all the ones around me have already closed up.

Still, few of them ever carried much stuff, and even if they had something, it would be hard to get a deal with the Sales tax currently.

I suppose I should have cruzed one to look for a 16-80 before ordering mine, but if anything went south on it, could be a hassle.

Besides, starting with high mark up, waiting for it to come down, factoring in sales tax, and stopping by every other day to check on things just doesn't become worth it.

I only ever went in them pre-digital. It was actually the cost of film development that caused me to look into DSLRs. I hadn't paid attention to them. Then I went on a long weekend trip. The cost of the film development (prints) cost me over 100 bucks. That's when I looked into DSLRs and how much they cost.

Oh well, no loss. They were the anti-camera shop far as I was concerned. No knowledge there, small, with little to offer in a store. And worse they were mainly 3rd party stuff and worse still house brand stuff. I would have respected them a lot more if there never existed Quantary.

It might be wise to overhaul the store's format to make it competitive again, though if they're closing all but the most successful stores, they might not want to mess with those that were working.