RIP CPI

The news of the abrupt closure of CPI Corp.’s U.S. portrait operations isn’t really news to photo-industry watchers who have watched the portrait-industry challenges over the years. The chain store portrait market has struggled for years, as it struggled to keep approximately 3,000 Sears, Wal-Mart and Babys R Us studios afloat.

The misconception is somehow digital photography “did in” CPI. That’s an easy, knee-jerk assessment from drive-by analysts but it’s really more complicated than that. Some articles pointed out the rise of digital and mobile photography as the culprit, much as pundits have blamed the digital revolution for Eastman Kodak’s woes. But, like Kodak, CPI was an early advocate of digital photography. CPI wasn’t digital phobic; the company moved to digital capture and online proofing very quickly. When it had a one-hour photo processing business, CPI Photo Finish was among the first with digital scanning and color correction.

What impacted CPI is what has challenged every photography firm making the digital transition: The goal line of the digital imaging value chain has moved. At one time, every time a shutter clicked, someone was paid, whether it was Kodak for the film, paper and chemicals or the one-hour lab operator for producing prints. Today, while the number of shutter clicks has grown astronomically, the monetization points have changed or, in some cases, been eliminated.

With digital photography now ubiquitous, the “magic” of photography happens on an LCD, not in a darkroom tray. It’s neither “good” nor “bad,” it’s simply the way it is. Frankly, photography has never been more popular. In the heyday of analog, most family households had one camera, bought by dad and used by mom. Occasionally, a camera would be handed down but, for the most part, households were “single camera” households. Today, cameras are everywhere; the long-held dream of the photography industry was that everyone would carry a camera. Now that it has happened, however, the expected printing windfall never happened. Industry over-capacity has brought down prices very aggressively and those retailers who relied greatly on snapshot print volume have struggled.

The portrait market faces the same dilemma; over-capacity, in the form of affordable, high-quality DSLRs and smartphone cameras. But unlike the consumer print market, there is an opportunity for differentiation. The key to making portraiture succeed is to make it less cookie-cutter — stiffly posed kids in front of a generic background — and more personal. That’s will be difficult for a national chain to compete with, but this is what is driving the thousands for weekend warrior and pro-am shooters to get into the business.