In the days when business was booming Zhuang Chao owned two photo processing shops. He closed one shop early last year and the other one is having problems making ends meet. "The photo printing business is in its last days," Zhuang said, as he pondered whether to leave the business for good.

As Eastman Kodak, the international giant that dominated photography in the 20th century, filed for bankruptcy protection last month, small businesses that relied on traditional photography found themselves struggling and on the verge of collapse. The photo printing business is one of the most affected.

Photo printing had its heydays in China in the early 2000s. In 2003 there were 8,000 Kodak photo labs in China and now there are about 3,000, the Shanghai Business Daily reported, citing sources from Kodak.

The Shanghai Trade Association of Photography Profession could not say how many photo labs there still were in the city. But an expert from the association said that digital photography was the prime cause of the business collapse.

"Digital photography has totally changed the way people view and store photos. People now do not need to print pictures to see them. They get a preview on their digital cameras as soon as they click the button. They can delete bad pictures immediately. Many people are now storing and looking at their pictures on digital devices to save money and effort," said Wei Pishen, the secretary-general of the Shanghai Trade Association of Photography Profession. He said that home printers are now sharing the market with the photo labs that remain.

Closing down

Though the yellow and red logo of Kodak photo labs was seen everywhere in the city in 2003, many have now closed.

The Global Times found a 2006 list of Kodak photo labs in Shanghai on the official website of the company. In those days the city boasted around 160 Kodak photo labs. There were seven stores in the then Luwan district (Huangpu district now) and six in Jing'an. But when the Global Times called or visited these shops, only one of the seven labs in Luwan is still operating and just two of the six in Jing'an are open.

The owner of a photo lab on Yanping Road in Jing'an said that he plans to close by the end of this year. "People are not printing photos any more. There is no way to survive with rising rents and a falling number of customers," he said.

Other shops also reported a slump in business. Zhuang Chao opened his photo processing shop on Nujiang Road, Putuo district, in 1994 and the shop is still there today.

"I keep the store running because it is like a son to me. I've put a lot of effort into this store and many of my old customers still come here. But the turnover cannot match what it was in the early 2000s," Zhuang said.

Zhuang recalled that in the good old days he could always look forward to a good profit but for the past two years he has struggled.

"Though some old customers still come to me, they want fewer prints. One customer visited Europe and took more than 1,000 pictures, but he only wanted to print about 20 pictures. When people were using film cameras, they printed a whole roll of film (36 pictures) and some would have two to three rolls printed at a time," Zhuang said.

"The total sales revenue these days is way below our net income in the good old days," he said.

An assistant at another photo lab said that few young people asked to have pictures printed these days. "Most of the customers, who come to have their photos printed, are elderly people. They can't handle looking at pictures on screens and want the prints," said Xiao, from a Kodak photo lab on Wanhangdu Road, Jing'an district.

Though he works in a photo lab, the young man seldom has his own pictures printed.

For grade-three photography major student Wu Xiaoxia, digital cameras are preferred even though her teacher insisted that the class use film cameras for the course. "Whenever I am doing my course work, I use film cameras. But when I take pictures for myself, I always use digital," she said.

The photo lab Xiao works for prints about 400 pictures each day and they cost between 1 yuan ($0.16) and 1.5 yuan depending on the photo sizes and the amount needed. The shop also takes passport and identity photos and sells photo albums and frames although these do not add much to the turnover. "But we are still doing a lot better than other shops," Xiao said.

 

Processing stopped

To cut costs, many shops have stopped processing film and some have even stopped printing digital pictures themselves.

"Though we provide a film processing service, we do not do it ourselves. The films are taken to larger shops and returned two days later," Xiao said.

Xiao said that a few older customers, who have not adapted to digital cameras, occasionally drop their films into the store but these days only a few stores in the city have darkrooms and film processing equipment.

Ying Ninggang, manager of a photo lab in Jing'an district, said that many shops have purchased secondhand equipment to print digital pictures.

"It costs 1 million yuan to buy a commercial digital photo printer. Small stores that cannot afford this buy second hand. Some have even bought reconditioned printers on the grey market. The print quality does not compare with the new printers so many of my customers come a long way to have their pictures done in my store," Ying said.

Ying has two commercial digital photo printers in his shop. "I am probably the only person in the city, who owns two such printers," he said.

Still, the future is not promising. "National holidays and the Spring Festival used to be the busiest times for printing. In 2004 we printed 20,000 pictures a day after the Spring Festival period - digital cameras were still a new product and people wanted lots of prints. However last year the figure was 8,000 and this year it further dropped to about 6,000," he said.

"In the 1990s the rent was a few hundred yuan. Now the rent is 40,000 yuan a month. Salaries are almost three times what they were in the 1990s. But the price of a photo has not changed," Ying said.

The shop owner in Putuo district Zhuang said that he had just sold his digital printing equipment. "I sold it for 200,000 yuan. There was no way we could balance our budget if we kept it."

Zhuang said that many photo shops like his now send their pictures to labs with printing equipment to be printed. "These labs do not have to be official shops - they can be in an apartment in a longtang (lane), so the rents are lower. It is nearly impossible for a shop to survive if the owner has to maintain a printer and pay staff to operate the printer," he said.

Though Zhuang's lab used to be a franchised Kodak shop, he has long lost contact with the company. "To be a franchised Kodak store, a shop needed to purchase Kodak products. But Kodak has dismissed its distributors here so shops have to buy their stock themselves," he said, adding that many shops were using cheaper products to cut costs.

But Kodak has said that the company's filing for bankruptcy protection would not influence its business in the Chinese market. "The company is in the transitional period towards digitalization. Key focus will be given to printing paper and digital products like digital cameras and digital videos," Li Qiang, the president of Kodak China, told the China Enterprise News.

 

Going it alone

Business is also turning away from the friendly local photo labs. Jin He, a photography lecturer at the Shanghai University of Engineering Science and owner of a photography studio, started to print his own pictures several years ago. "I found the printing quality of local photo labs unsatisfactory and bought my first printer in 2007. From then on I printed at least half of my work in the studio myself," he said.

Jin bought another two printers and now prints all of his work himself. Unlike the chemical processing equipment in photo labs, the printers in Jin's studio are inkjet printers, ranging in cost from 15,000 to 30,000 yuan.

"Though it is expensive for individuals or families to buy this equipment, more and more studios and photographers are now printing pictures themselves," Jin said.

But Jin does not think this is the end of photo printing labs. "The stores have to be more customer-oriented. There will always be people who want their pictures printed. Just like the development of online reading cannot replace books and other publications, digital devices cannot completely replace printed pictures."

Kodak proposed a franchise upgrade for its shops in China last year and a campaign to target a younger market if the shops paid 148,000 yuan last year. Many shops rejected the offer.

"It is impossible to save the store. The influence of digital photography is overwhelming, and customers won't come back even if we upgrade the store," Zhuang said.

 

On the slide everywhere

The photo printing business is declining throughout the world. The Australian Broadcasting Corporation reported last July that more than 1,600 photo printing shops had been put out of business by the digital revolution in Australia over the past decade.

According to InfoTrends, an international market research company, the photo print market in the US is still declining though the decline is not as severe as in the past few years. But there are still some active printers. Nearly half of US consumers still want photo prints nowadays.