H-E-B’s photo departments are the latest casualty of the digital age.
The grocery giant said it plans to phase out all of its remaining photo departments at 20 stores across the state and also will shed a feature on its website that allows customers to order prints online.
Photo departments at all 20 stores — including five in the San Antonio area and one in the Houston area — are scheduled to be removed within “a couple of months,” H-E-B spokeswoman Dya Campos said.
H-E-B already had been quietly closing photo labs in the past few years.
Construction crews will start renovating the store sections in the coming weeks, Campos added. The store plans to use the empty space for more electronics, adding a wider assortment of mobile phones, MP3 players and accessories. Photo employees at the stores will have a chance to fill other positions.
“H-E-B is known to be a very innovative retailer, we are very much in the business of always changing the way that we do business,” Campos said. “Our customers demand more innovation, more technology, and they want to see products in the entertainment section that are more relevant to their lifestyle.”
Some stores that have photo kiosks where customers can digitally upload photos and print copies will not have those, either.
Clearing out the photo labs makes good business sense because it uses store space more effectively, said Chuck Siegel, who specializes in retail as president of Rohde, Ottmers and Siegel Realty.
“They’re going to expand into other services that could become more productive for them,” Siegel said. “That’s just very typical of a good business, and particularly H-E-B.”
Siegel said H-E-B also may be phasing out the photo departments to avoid competition with drugstores like Walgreens and CVS.
A Walgreens spokeswoman said the store has been keeping up with the evolving consumer segment by playing up other services — many photo departments can print images on items like mugs, T-shirts and mouse pads.
Photo specialty stores have been disappearing nationwide as consumers turn to digital photography.
Amateur photographers who once took rolls of film for processing to photo labs now are just shooting images with their phones and digital cameras.
In fact, Americans are expected to take just 1.4 billion photographs with film cameras this year, according to market research company InfoTrends Inc. That’s just a fraction of the 26 billion they took 10 years ago. By contrast, they’ll take 80 billion digital photos this year.
When John Segovia began working for Wolf Camera at the Alamo Quarry Market nine years ago, the store had about seven locations in San Antonio. Today, it operates only two.
“I can tell you that in my store, imaging sales have been up two months in a row,” said Segovia, the store’s manager. “Some days we see surges of people dropping off old rolls of film they’ll find in a drawer.”
But thriving photo developing stores are an anomaly, Siegel said, and Wolf’s Quarry location likely is doing well because it attracts affluent customers who purchase high-end cameras. Segovia said cameras at the store range from about $100 to $1,700.
“It’s the only way to survive,” Siegel said. “It’s a dying business.”
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