Here goes...
I worked for Ritz Camera off-and-on for about 6 years through college and a little after (2002-2009, roughly). When I started, there were 5 stores in my area. Two mall stores, a strip mall store, an outdoor mall store and a downtown storefront. The downtown store went first, then the mall stores, then the outdoor mall and finally, they were left with one strip mall store in a higher-end shopping center near some high-end neighborhoods. I moved stores three times and finally was let go after being accused of theft and proving my innocence so that I could retain unemployment benefits.
David Ritz is an idiot. He invested tons and tons of money in Boater's World (his passion). I watched the two BW stores in my town fold as well (one was right next to one of the Ritz Camera stores). A funny side note is that while his stores were boarding up left and right, he had a multi-million dollar yacht parked in the Charleston harbor.
David Ritz tried to expand and start carrying televisions, net books, tablets and a plethora of cheap electronic gadgets. And don't get me started on his Verizon Wireless ventures (who buys a cell phone from Ritz Camera? No one, that's who). Their prices were unbelievably high, sans the occasional sale on a Nikon DXX or DXXXX. They forced their ESP (Extended Service Plan) on customers, which was a joke. It was very expensive, for one. Then, they promise that they will fix or replace any camera covered under the ESP, no questions asked. What they don't tell you is that a repair or replacement takes 6-8 weeks on average. I saw replacements take 6 months. You would think that if a camera comes in and is literally in pieces in a Ziploc bag (I saw that multiple times), that a replacement could be issued on the spot, but no. They required it be sent in to the repair facility. The facility would then issue a non-repair ticket and corporate would decide on an appropriate replacement camera (same model or a comparable model). The replacement would then be sent to the store regardless of whether or not the store had the camera in stock (typically not).
Their Quantaray line was cheap and unreliable. I returned hundreds of filters, bags, tripods and lenses that were defective.
They hired uneducated people to run their stores. They paid minimum wage, and had poor management. A couple of days in training and you could run the lab by yourself. I was a good lab technician. I understand photography, exposure, metering and color balance. I understand the limits of film and dynamic range. I was also a good sales person. I was far more knowledgeable than any customer that walked in the door.
Ritz Camera got away from photography. They tried to become an electronics giant. But, in towns with multiple big-box stores, they couldn't compete. They lost their hometown advantage by dropping educated, service-oriented workers for cheap labor and salesmen and they removed C-41 and E6 processing from the majority of their stores in favor of digital prints (can't blame them on that, really, but it would have been nice to retain their roots). Their lab technicians would be weeks getting repairs made which lost countless dollars in printing because machines would just sit idle.
Ritz tried and tried to come up with membership programs and money-saving opportunities, but for the average Joe, Walmart's prints were sufficient and were 1/3 the price of the Ritz counterpart. They offered video to DVD services at nearly twice the price of local competition. It was a no-win situation for them. They declared bankruptcy once, and had to jack up prices to try and recoup their business. I don't think they'll come back from it again. Canon refused to sell to them so they lost that. They were carrying Olympus, Panasonic, Sony and Nikon. The last store in my area shipped back all of the Canon gear during the first bankruptcy. I think they basically gave it all back and didn't pay anything else. Canon took like a $20M loss on that deal, if I recall. We then shipped all the Nikon gear back and they did some thing where Ritz re-purchased the gear at like 30 cents on the dollar or something. Nikon took a smaller loss than Canon, but became an exclusive manufacturer (their branding was all over the stores). Ritz didn't have enough invested in the other guys to really matter, but everyone took a loss. That anyone stuck with them is a miracle and they were foolish to do so.
I hate that I'm just bashing the hell out of Ritz, but I watched that company implode from the inside. Fortunately, I got out and was able to move on to other things. I'm sad for all of the people that will lose their benefits and their jobs. It's a tough economy and a lot of them won't find similar employment. David Ritz played roulette with the company his dad built and lost it not once, but twice. He was foolish and his employees will pay dearly for it in the coming months.
