Photo Retail - What is required
Photo Retail is a huge market sector employing thousands of workers across the UK. Businesses are typically involved in two main areas of activities:
1) The sale of cameras (including camera phones), film and photographic accessories - along with a wide variety of associated products, such as digital imaging software, home printing equipment, photographic albums and frames.
2) The ‘one-hour' processing of film, digital imaging, design and layout, and the production of photographic prints from digital images in high street minilabs. These offer the general public similar services to a professional laboratory but from a convenient location central to people's lives.
Some Photo Retailers combine both areas of activity, while others specialise in one area or the other.
Photographic Retailers and minilabs may form part of a chain of stores, be run as franchise, or owned by independent operators. Large department stores and electronic retailers may also feature a photographic department, while a number of supermarkets, chemists and department stores also operate their own in-house minilab facilities.
Minilabs also offer a wide range of value-added services such as ‘one-hour' printing, photo restoration, photo manipulation and basic graphic design services. They may also promote a wide range of specialist printing applications for personal and business uses. These typically include the reproduction of photographic images on a variety of culturally significant products such as T-shirts, mugs and posters, as well as promotional items for small businesses and social organisations such as cards, flyers, stretchered canvases and exhibition stands.
Most Photo Retailers also operate passport photo booths and/or self-service digital printing kiosks. Here customers can upload, manipulate and print their own images from the internet, camera phone, smart card, CD-ROM or iPod.
To work in the Photo Retail sector requires a keen interest in photography, a fair level of technical aptitude and excellent customer service skills. Managers will also need to show a keen head for business to stay profitable in this competitive area.
Larger Photographic Retailers offer a variety of job opportunities, such as Sales Assistant, Assistant Manager, Photo Retail Manager, Minilab Operator and Digital Imaging Technician. However, in smaller establishments, these roles often overlap.
We have therefore chosen to highlight three key Job Profiles:
Photo Retail Sales Assistant
Photo Retail Manager
Minilab Operator - Photo Retail
