Published April 2004

Clear Image developing digital markets

Snohomish County Business Journal/JOHN WOLCOTT Clear Image Photo owner Joe Gogal and his sister, Marge Gogal, who operates the digital lab equipment at the Marysville headquarters, have had to learn the new digital photography market in depth and respond creatively to replace their shrinking traditional film-based business.

By John Wolcott
SCBJ Editor

Clear Image photo finisher Joe Gogal narrowly missed the digital bullet that shut down a small Oregon chain of one-hour photo shops like his and still threatens the existence of hundreds more film-processors across the country.

“We’ve been able to diversify,” Gogal said, “but it hasn’t been easy. Digital cameras turned our business upside down. Our business is completely different than ever before.”

The digital industry’s waves of change first lapped gently at the shores of his four-store business, then left him suddenly awash in a sequence of devastating tidal waves of market shifts.

Over a two-year period of adjustment, digital cameras cost him 30 percent of his business with commercial clients, who used to bring photo work to him daily.

“They bought digital cameras, dumped their images into a computer and printed their reports with the photos. That took us out of the picture completely, no pun intended,” Gogal said.

Then computer people and advanced photographers bought digital cameras and saw what they could do with them.

“'Look,’ they said, ‘I can take lots of pictures of the family and print them myself.’ We lost more film and photo processing there. Next, ... a large part of our business — mothers with cameras — turned to digital,” he said.

To make matters worse, when many mothers and others decided to have Gogal print their digital photos, they only printed two or three favorites instead of the whole roll of 24 prints he used to process for them.

Being an innovator, Gogal remained competitive for years by installing expensive film processing and printing equipment and building local markets. Now, mass marketers of cameras, computers and photo editing programs are driving the market, not print film processors, and his once secure local market is changing and shrinking.

So how does Clear Image cope with damage control, particularly in the face of new push-button digital printing machines in high-traffic convenience locations such as Wal-Mart and Bartell Drug outlets?

“We’ve found new markets by installing more expensive equipment to handle digital printing — $150,000 was invested in the Marysville lab alone — and added a lot of training to provide new services that only a professional lab can offer,” he said, noting he and his staff have to stay familiar with all of the new digital consumer cameras, not just professional cameras.

His advantage now, he said, is his knowledge of the photo business, in digital as well as film media.

“One way has been to find new markets. We recently did a whole trade-show booth for a local firm, printing digital signage large enough for a 24-inch-by-8-foot display, full-color vinyl banner,” he said.

Gogal has expanded his supply of picture frames by four times and added more accessories and services for high school and college photography students who are still learning the basics with print photography. He has his own in-store push-button digital printing machine, linked to the store’s printing equipment, to process photos customers bring in on memory cards and discs, and he also transfers home movies, videos, photos, slides and other images to digitalized CDs.

And, since the clear advantages of digital photography already have won the hearts and wallets of millions of fans, Gogal has profited by focusing on bringing people back down to earth and helping them with the new issues created by their digital media, “downside” issues that are helping to keep the doors open for innovative old film processors like Clear Image.

“People are learning that photos printed on paper with inkjets don’t last like 100-year photos printed with photo paper, so our Clear Image One Hour Photo shops in Marysville, Smokey Point and Lynnwood can take care of that,” he said.

One other pitfall with digital photos, Gogal said, is that people take so many pictures they never get a chance to print all of them and many simply leave them on their computer to viewing.

“My friend’s computer hard drive ‘crashed’ and was not recoverable, which cost him eight months of photos of his new daughter because he hadn’t printed any of them. That’s hard. When people go for the shoebox full of photos these days, there may not be anything there to rescue when you’re running from a fire or flood. People need to think about that,” he said.

For digital help and advice, Gogal and his staff are proving to be a valuable resource for newbies in digital photography and for special digital printing needs and products. But he’ll still do posed family, pet and child photos in his professional studio or simply run a roll of old-fashioned print film through photo-chemicals — those are still important segments of his business, too.

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