RitzCamera (USA) now completely gone

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alfredian

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It's official - Ritz Camera (American outfit) is gone. This last Monday was some sort of tipping point, and my visit to their corporate HQ store/outlet was greeted with plastered-up signs "GOING OUT OF BUSINESS. Smaller signs sold me camera bags at 20%-off. The clerk who rang me up said the "liquidator came through earlier in the week" and if I wanted one of the (nice wooden) chairs in the video-show viewing area, or a glass display cabinet (for your bowling trophies) I should put in a bid. I can still have pictures developed/printed, but only until the chemicals or paper are gone. Will they be open a week from now? Yes. How long altogether? They will liquidate everything until it "isn't worth their while." Then they lock the doors.

The clerk, a veteran, said that the Ritz mantra had always been "imaging is our lifeblood" and that gear, etc. was only a second-rank adjunct. A shame - their "machine" is nice and the techs who did my printing, scanning, etc are (were?) great. There are, apparently, other locations within driving distance that "have the exact same machine" and can do my negs, prints & scans.

Rough couple of weeks - first Efke, now Ritz. I used to get one-hour, then 24-hour, but now (I was told) a two-week turnaround.

Plea: anybody in the DC Metro/Maryland area know of other film/paper/print finishers? An outfit called "U-Photo" ("You-Photo") was mentioned. Need a lead, thanks, alfredian.
 
Try Penn Camera. They went out of business but were purchased by Calumet. Fewer stores now, but they still exist. 🙂

I guess this means that the Ritz on route 1 will be gone...Sigh.
 
I see a future where if you don't want to do home developing there will be a thin smattering of pro labs available who will specialise in mail order.

Amazingly my local Kodak one hour still processes c41 though he only gets a couple of rolls a day at most and of course it's now no longer one hour service. He won't crank the machine up until there are a few to do so you can wait a couple of days to get a film processed. When the machine breaks or needs service beyond a reasonable cost he's out he told me!

We haven't reached the plateau yet but we're getting there.
 
Route 1 is where I was

Route 1 is where I was

The Route 1 location ("showroom" up front, corporate headquarters out back) is where I was. They folded most/all of their other Maryland/DC locations back in early Summer. Shifted the merchandise to the Route 1 shop, dumped into a heap. A couple of the more talented staff were shifted over.

The "technical" staff who did the developing, scanning, etc were very good, understood requests and did them. Don't know about the opto-electronic (digital cams) sales end of it, though the people who staffed the counters were saints - spent huge amounts of time explaining just WHY the impossible was, in fact, impossible to clueless, yet demanding suburbanites.

I have haunted Penn Cameras "Used" cases for several years, even after they shut down the Route 1 shop. By coincidence I'd shopped the Calumet in Philadelphia, PA the day after Christmas last year, lured in by their mega-billboard up above on I-95. Bought out all their Plus-X. Do I have the magic touch, or what? - alfredian
 
I was in the route 1 shop a few weeks ago. I hadn't been there for several years despite living fairly close by. It was in a pretty sorry state at the time in terms of inventory.

The route 1 penn camera store closed and that location won't be back, unfortunately. 🙁
 
so sad. I used to hate people following the trend and being hip on stuff i liked .

now i wish all those people trying to be hip would be intrested in a film trend instead of dslr
 
This is from an email I received two days ago from Ritz:

RitzCamera.com, WolfCamera.com and CameraWorld.com will reopen under new management on Nov. 1, 2012.
RitzPix.com is not going out of business and continues to operate as usual.

*These 5 locations plan to reopen under new management: Homewood, AL; Riverside, CA; 6th Ave, Portland, OR; San Antonio TX; S. State, Salt Lake City, UT.

I'm glad the one here in Riverside will reopen under new ownership. Until the chapter 11 filing it had been a good, full-featured camera store. Hopefully it will return to its former
goodness.
 
It's a shame, but in some ways amazing they lasted so long. Kind of like the corner drug store competing with walgreens...

The only way to survive was the B&H approach to go large and online.
 
Well all I can say is boo hoo! Ritz sponged up nearly all of the smaller shops over the last couple decades. Now that they draw all this water, they can't make enough money selling it!
I'm sorry for all those that will lose a job or others who may have to stretch to find services. Not too sorry for ritz/wolf/ whatever who will likely re-organize after screwing their vendors.
 
The new management will not be related to the current owners who happen to be liquidators. Once the liquidation sales currently going on in the stores are completed the above named 5 stores will reopen with completely new ownership!
 
alfredian said:
It's official - Ritz Camera (American outfit) is gone. This last Monday was some sort of tipping point, and my visit to their corporate HQ store/outlet was greeted with plastered-up signs "GOING OUT OF BUSINESS. Smaller signs sold me camera bags at 20%-off. The clerk who rang me up said the "liquidator came through earlier in the week" and if I wanted one of the (nice wooden) chairs in the video-show viewing area, or a glass display cabinet (for your bowling trophies) I should put in a bid. I can still have pictures developed/printed, but only until the chemicals or paper are gone. Will they be open a week from now? Yes. How long altogether? They will liquidate everything until it "isn't worth their while." Then they lock the doors.

The clerk, a veteran, said that the Ritz mantra had always been "imaging is our lifeblood" and that gear, etc. was only a second-rank adjunct. A shame - their "machine" is nice and the techs who did my printing, scanning, etc are (were?) great. There are, apparently, other locations within driving distance that "have the exact same machine" and can do my negs, prints & scans.

Rough couple of weeks - first Efke, now Ritz. I used to get one-hour, then 24-hour, but now (I was told) a two-week turnaround.

Plea: anybody in the DC Metro/Maryland area know of other film/paper/print finishers? An outfit called "U-Photo" ("You-Photo") was mentioned. Need a lead, thanks, alfredian.
Click to expand...
Can you put a bid in on the developing machine? 🙂
 
Thanks, furcafe

Thanks, furcafe

Thanks for the lead. The Ritz clerk mentioned "U-photo" or "You-photo" - totally phonetic. I will check out the Silver Spring location, given that's where I am. I was Googling around about "Ritz" and there was some business-lingo stuff about how "Ritz Imaging" - a 'totally separate entity' was not involved in the latest frolic. Nope. That seems to be because they went bankrupt-er soon-er. I sort of understood the part about $600k in assets, $7.X million in debt.

Amazingly, even the people chimping the DC sights & scenes ask me "is it a Leica"? Half the time they're right, the other half it's a Nikon S. Something seems to be deeply ingrained in the popular mind. A "meme" is it?
 
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