Ben Berkey founded Berkey Photo in New York in 1933 and it grew rapidly after going into colour in the mid-fifties and going public in 1961. The expansion involved opening or purchasing a large number of plants all over the U.S. and, after rationalisation, the group ended up with nine plants covering most parts of the country. It became the second largest photofinisher in the U.S. after Kodak, by 1969 its sales having reached $53million.

Ben Berkey was an ambitious man and, in addition to finishing, started various manufacturing and importing businesses. For some years these were successful but things went out of control and some of these activities started making very large losses. In 1985 the finishing business, whose sales were by now around $125 million was sold for $40 million to Fuqua who merged it with Colorcraft based in Durham, N.C. The enlarged Colorcraft had about 40 labs and sales of $280 million, some 15% of the U.S. market, which was slightly more than Kodak had.

This represented a major concentration of the industry but a number of smaller finishers, such as Calev Photolabs in Long Island, carried on independently for many more years.

As the independent wholesale photofinishers grew, Kodak’s share of the market declined. Kodak was concerned not only by the loss of their share of the photofinishing market, but also, as Fuji and Konica became more active in the U.S., by the loss of the colour paper and chemicals market. In the early 1980’s Kodak opened a photofinishing subsidiary, Qualis Photofinishing Co. in Boston. This did not infringe the 1954 consent decree, as it was not selling film with prepaid processing. In 1986 Fox Photo was put up for sale and was purchased by Qualis to protect Kodak’s share of the paper and chemicals market.

In 1978 Steve Bostic, who had been with Berkey for seven years, having failed to become president of the group, left to run Nimslo who had developed a 3D process which they hoped would take the amateur photo market by storm. This did not happen, so he left and, in 1982, started the American Photo Group by buying a small finisher using some of his own money and borrowing the rest with the assets of the lab as security. He repeated this process a number of times and within five years had built up the lab group to sales of $78 million. He received a number of approaches from people who had unsuccessfully bid for Fox photo and in 1986 ended up selling to Qualis for $78 million. Kodak by that time were willing to buy labs so as to avoid them falling into the hands of Fuji or Konica and so they had a large number of labs all over the U.S., more than one in several cities.

Another change, which hastened the mergers, was that up to around 1961 most of the retailers had been single outlets. At that time the chains, such as Walmart, Kmart and others, began to grow and this created strong price competition, so that size and low-cost operation became vital for photofinishers.

OUT OF THE DARKroom
A short history of the Photofinishing Industry
By Peter L M Rockwell and Peter W Knaack.
Paperback 180 pages ISBN10  0-9554072-0-6 or ISBN13  97809554072-0-8
Published by 2P Press, London UK £12.99 US $23.99