#76 - The History of Department Store & Shopping Mall Photography Studios

Thank you so very much for tuning in to the Pop Culture Retrospective Podcast. This show is dedicated to the memory of my big sister Rebecca, a fan of all things pop-culture, particularly of the people, places, and things that defined the 80s, 90s, and early 2000s.  Welcome aboard this pop culture time machine, I'm Amy Lewis. This is episode #77 - The History of Department Store and Mall Photography Studios.  On today’s show we are going to take a look back at the infamous department store photography studios of yesteryear - we will focus on the Olan Mills and CPI Corp brands, as well as sharing the story of Glamour Shots.  So, grab your film camera, your prettiest dress and say cheese, here we go.  

Before we get into today’s show, I would be remiss if I didn’t share some devastating news. Don’t worry this isn’t current news, this is from 2013 I’m just being dramatic.  Let’s go back 10 years.

CAPS plays while reading:

CPI Corp., Which Ran Photo Studios At Sears, Wal-Mart, Shutters All Locations

April 5, 20136:04 PM ET

Eyder Peralta

The company that runs more than 2,000 photo studios at stores like Sears and Wal-Mart has gone out of business.

CPI Corp. announced its decision in a two paragraph statement posted on its website.

"We are attempting to fulfill as many customer orders as possible," CPI said. "If you've had a recent session, your portraits may be available at your Sears, PictureMe or Kiddie Kandids portrait studio."

The Wall Street Journal reports CPI notified retailers of the decision yesterday. The AP reports that digital photography has eaten into the company's business.

The Journal has the numbers:

"CPI's financials have been deteriorating. Through the first three quarters of its recently completed fiscal year, the company's loss quintupled to more than $60 million, while sales fell 24% to $192.7 million.

"Meanwhile, CPI's total liabilities rose 14% to $174.8 million, and its total assets dropped 41% to $56.2 million. These are the latest numbers publicly available from the company."

"CPI revealed last month in a Securities and Exchange Commission filing it had received a fourth forbearance agreement from its lenders and that it had until Saturday to meet its loan obligations," the AP reports.

If you were to have told the CPI Corp or the Olan Mills Company that they were going to go out of business a few decades ago at both of their peaks in the 1980s, they would have told you you were crazy.  After all, at one time CPI Corp, for example, was more successful than the department stores they were located in.  In order to get a full history of department store photography studios, we need to go back to 1932.  Olan Mills was founded in 1932 in Selma, Alabama by a married couple - Olan Mills and Mary Mills.  At first they just focused on photo restoration. And in 1938, they opened their first studio.  Olan would take the photographs and Mary, who was also an artist, worked on refining the photos he took and added color to them.  Olan and Mary would go door to door to attract new customers.  During WWII, the company was struggling as materials were in short supply so they had to think outside the box.  They set up studios near military bases so they could take photos of the active servicemen so that the military families could have photos to look at when they were separated.  In the late 1940s, the business started growing their sales via telemarketing which was an up and coming industry.  They would later innovate a club plan where customers could essentially pay a partial fee to cover a session to occur within the next 12 months, helping to keep customers more consistently.  Once the company survived WW II they continued to grow their business, opening more studios and moving away from the door to door sales tactics.  

In the 1960s, Olan Mills moved to color photography and upgraded their cameras.  Also, in the 1960s, the sons of Olan and Mary started to take over the company, they would have complete control by 1972.  They were on the cutting edge of technology which would serve them well.  At one time the vast majority of their business was baby pictures, but with the new leadership they started focusing on other customers.  And those new customers were students, yearbooks and the profit king - the infamous Church Directory! At one point, the business was growing so fast that they were opening a new studio once or twice a week and were generating $475 million dollars in annual sales.  

In the 1980s, Kodak did a nationwide survey in the United States and asked people what business they thought of when they thought of portrait photography and 60% said Olan Mills.   By this point there were studios all over the country in states like Alabama, Tennessee, Illinois, Ohio and Kentucky.  At their peak, Olan Mills had over 1,000 free-standing studios.

By the 1990s however, sales were starting to take a bit of a dip.  There were so many other studios in the portrait photography market that the company decided to make a big shift - they decided to open their studios in a department store, this time with K-Mart, moving away from the free-standing studios.  

One of their biggest competitors, CPI Corp who we talked about at the top of the show and will go into more detail about momentarily, pioneered this partnership in the 70s.  K’Mart was hoping that Olan Mills would rejuvenate the brand that was losing business to other big box stores like Target and Walmart. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j283HXvlGVw   Things were looking up for some time, but K’Mart was soon a sinking ship.  In 2002, Kmart filed for bankruptcy. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_asNhzXq72w   Olan Mills sold their school portrait segment to Lifetouch and they started opening portrait studios in other retailers like Toys R Us and Meijers.  

In 2008, Olan Mills closed all of their UK studios.  In 2011, Olan Mills sold their entire business, located primarily in the US at this point to Lifetouch.  It was the end of an era.  The Mills family said cell phones played a huge role in their demise.  Although I will say, we had many photos taken at Olan Mills studios when we were little kids in the 80s and 90s (hit JC Penny a few times) and the quality of those photos are lightyears ahead of cellphones and digital cameras of the time.  Even now I am surprised at how much I don’t care for cell phone photos.  TALK ABOUT BITE MARK HERE.  If you take a look at the cover art for this podcast episode, you will see some of me and my sisters photos from Olan Mills studios.  I’ll also post some on social media as well.  They hold up incredibly well. The quality of the photograph, the color rendering and the quality of the paper is spectacular.  I can see why families light mine wanted photos done there.  4 decades later and the quality is really unmatched. Sure the clothes and lighting is dated but the quality is very, very impressive to say the least.  For literally decades I have looked at these pictures of me and my sister and I always noticed a gold signature in the right hand corner.  In fancy handwriting are the worlds Olan Mills and the year is also noted.  It is so poignant to now know the origin of that name and how grateful I am, and my family is, that we had so many happy memories captured and preserved. 

Olan Mills may have gotten into the business of photography and portrait studios first, but the genius name behind the portrait studio within a department store concept is Rembrandt Studios or CPI Corp.

The business model of a photography studio within a department store dates all the way back to 1942, with a business named Rembrandt Studio which was located in St. Louis, MO. It was the creation of Milford Bohm, and started as just one solo studio.  Over the course of the next 20 years, Bohm expanded his studio and opened 20 chains.  In addition to the traditional studio photographers he also hired outside photographers who would travel to wherever clients wanted to be photographed.  They were dubbed “Traveling Photographers.”   

The business was sold in 1968 and the name changed to CPI Corp.  The Rembrandt Studio was just not able to grow without any financial backing. CPI Corp started out as a business called Chromalloy American Corp and they owned mens and womens clothing stores.  When CPI took over, they eventually phased out the traveling photographers component.  

In 1970, CPI started opening photography studios within department stores, this all started in Canada.  

Starting in 1973, CPI Corp Partnered exclusively with Sears and this relationship continued for 40 years.  

This was a brilliant move on behalf of both organizations because at one time about 90% of the US population was within a 30 mile radius of a Sears store.  In the 1970s, Sears was the largest retailer in the world.  By the late 1970s, CPI had over 400 locations within Sears department stores.   Sears Portrait Studio Commercial 1987

During this time, the company tried to offer other services including carpet and upholstery cleaning and telephone marketing.  This didn’t last all that long, but the idea of expanding services and offerings would become a staple for the company.  By the late 1970s, CPI was bringing in a ton of money; sales tripled between 1979 to 1983.

In the 1980s, CPI Corp diversified its services yet again and offered enhanced editing services and quick printing.  You could get wallet-sized prints and wall-sized prints all done by Sears.  They also operated tons of 1-hour print labs and by the mid-1990s, they were the largest operator of 1 hour photo finishing labs in the United States.  CPI Photo Finishing Commercial - 1990 They also decided to purchase mini labs to produce photos quickly and also offered print services like photo copying, book binding and more.  They operated under the Copy USA name. Also in the mid-1980s, the growth of CPI started to slow,but the profits were still significant.  In most instances, the photo studios earned more profit than the actual Sears stores themselves. 

By the late 1980s, other large retailers like Wal-Mart, JCPenny and KMart started opening their own photography studios like we talked about earlier.  This competition led to a lot of price cuts.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_t9XdcHfFWI&list=PLSqhoxMvfoThKprev806ronl545qFX4Bu&index=3   At this point, CPI invested millions of dollars in updating their equipment and would later offer digital preview for their customers.

In 1993, they acquired prints plus - a company that framed posters.  However, just as soon as they acquired some different arms of their corporation, they decided to get rid of a few as well.      

By the mid-1990s, CPI corp started to sell off their quick print operations and photo labs.  The company wanted to streamline their operations.  Eventually all of their outside photo labs were sold to Kodak.  They continued to focus on their Prints Plus poster and framing stores as well as their photography studios. Despite some pretty serious competition, they maintained 30% market share.  

They started to update their studios, investing in more digital equipment and creating more preview systems so customers could see their photos shortly after they were taken.  If you remember, having photos taken at a professional studio in the 70, 80s and even 90s could be a bit of a laborious process.  First, the customer came in to take the photos, then the proofs would have to be developed, then the customer had to come back in again to decide what to have printed after reviewing said proofs and then they would make a third trip to pick up the prints. Any system implemented to expedite this process I’m sure was a welcome addition to customers.    

In 1999, CPI put itself up for sale and was about to be bought out by an investment firm, but the deal fell through.  The late 1990s were certainly hard for CPI, however since they had invested a lot of money into updating their technology, by the early 2000s they were finally profitable again.

In 2002 the company launched searsportraits.com - on this website customers could order prints which helped with revenue.  And in case you are wondering, searsportraits.com doesn’t work.  

Here’s an excerpt from an annual report from CPI in 2004, under the products and services section:

We offer Sears Portrait Studio customers a wide range of choices. They may select a “package” sitting or a “custom” sitting. The package sitting includes a fixed number of portraits, all of the same pose, for a fixed, relatively low price and a sitting fee of $9.99 per person in the portrait. Package customers may purchase additional portrait sheets at an additional cost. Mothers of very young children who need a lot of portraits often prefer this kind of offer. A custom sitting offers portraits by the sheet, a variety of poses and backgrounds, and an unlimited number of people in the portrait for a session fee of $14.99. Families with two or more children or those who want a mix of group and individual poses frequently prefer this offer. Customers who enroll in the Company’s Smile Savers Plan® for a one-time fee of $29.99 pay no sitting or session fees for two years. We designed this plan to promote loyalty and encourage frequent return visits.

After the customer selects a package or custom session and their preferred backgrounds, the photographer captures images of multiple poses. Our Portrait Preview System allows customers to view each image as it is captured and accept or reject each pose while they are still in the camera room. After the image capture portion of the portrait session is completed, the images are transferred to a monitor at a sales table where customers can view each image and order portraits in the sizes they need, as well as other products, such as greeting cards. 

At the sales table, a studio associate reviews the images captured with the customer and describes product options, such as digitally enhanced products (black and white, sepia, color accents, etc.) and digital collages featuring multiple poses and a customized message. Customers may take the portrait collage home when they leave the studio on the day of the sitting. They may also purchase a full color proof sheet to take home as soon as the sitting is completed. Other products available from the studio are portraits on disk, passport photos and accessories such as frames and photo albums.

The customer’s order is transmitted electronically to one of our processing facilities in St. Louis, Missouri; Thomaston, Connecticut or Brampton, Ontario, Canada and the film is then shipped to the applicable processing facility.

As the early 2000s carried on, the advent of consumer digital cameras was on the rise.  Families could now not only take photos, but could preview them instantly and print them at home. The demand for traditional photo studios started to decline.  Also, the photography studio market started getting very saturated as indicated by this next piece from that same annual report under Industry Background and Competition.  

Through our relationship with Sears, we have been in the forefront of developing the now highly competitive professional portrait photography market. Although our primary portrait subjects are pre-school children, we also attract families, school-age children and adults. Since approximately 1990, the mass-market professional portrait studio industry has grown increasingly competitive in the United States as the number of permanent studios grew from approximately 2,555 (including 867 Sears Portrait Studios) to approximately 4,805 (including 902 Sears Portrait Studios) in 1996. As of February 7, 2004, there were approximately 4,363 studios. Despite the net decrease of approximately 442 studios from the 1996 peak to the February 7, 2004 number of 4,363 studios, the competitive landscape has intensified with the entrance during that time period of new competitors, including, among others, Target Stores operated by Life Touch and the freestanding Picture People studios.  SIDE NOT ABOUT PICTURE PEOPLE HERE. In addition, during the same time period, Wal-Mart studios operated by PCA, have grown dramatically while there have been substantial declines in the number of K-Mart studios (operated by PCA until late 1999 and then by Olan Mills continuing to date) and Olan Mills freestanding studios.  I talked to my mom as I was prepping for this show as she (and my dad) were both really great about having photos of me and my sister taken as we were growing up (and adorable).  She mentioned that we had photos done a few times at JC Penny, but there was an Olan Mills studio near our house which we had photos done at several times.  

The rapid expansion has been supported by very competitive offers featuring large packages of portraits for a small, fixed price. 

We responded initially with promotional pricing to maintain market share and shortly thereafter with technological advances to distinguish our products and services and studio expansion and remodeling. By the end of the nineties, we had invested approximately $150 million, primarily to support new technology-based products and to remodel and expand more than 600 studios in the U.S. from an average of 800 square feet to approximately 1,400 square feet. Studios operated by competitors range from one camera room with a small waiting and sales area to more spacious locations with multiple camera rooms and sales areas, such as ours.

In 2013, CPI Corp closed 2,000 portrait studios without much warning.  

Allegedly, the rise of digital cameras and cell phones were to blame for the demise. CPI, gone but not forgotten. 

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And that leaves us with our final photography studio, once located in malls all across the country much to the delight of many a middle aged insecure woman, Glamour Shots. 1995 Glamour Shots Commercial | Yes You Can 

The company was started by a man named Jack Count Jr in Oklahoma City.  He had actually got into photography as a young man, he used to go around Fraternities in the 1960s.  He would take pictures there and would then trademark the photos and sold them under the name “Party Pics.”   He had heard of a store in Hawaii that offered makeover services and photo services combined into one.  First the company was called Fantasy Faces but eventually was renamed Glamour Shots and that’s when the business really took off.  The first store opened in Dallas, TX in 1988.  The second store opened in Houston, TX later that same year. 

When customers came in for their appointment, they had to fill in some information and pick what type of style they wanted for their photo session.  They had 6 choices to pick from on the Glamour Shots Style guide:

Spontaneous, Can’t Wait to be Touched, Tailored, Elegant, Bold and Other - please describe. Can you imagine how incredibly awkward it would be if you asked someone, like maybe your Mom for example, what theme she decided to go with for her photo session?  Oh dear, of course I went with can’t be touched theme! You know, your father and I have been divorced for 5 years now and Mommy is single and ready to mingle!”  Gross, Mom.   

Women could pick up to 4 outfits - jackets, bustiers, dresses, leather jackets and the like.  The photos were shot from the waist up so it could be sweatpants on the bottom and fancy on top. 

Women wore a black tube top and most of the outfits had slits in the back so they could fit all different sizes of people. Filters were used on the cameras so wrinkles and blemishes could be hidden.  The photos and makeover were all included for just 29.95.  Makeup artists were part of the staff, they were taught how to contour to help emphasize people’s cheekbones.  Customers were also encouraged to poof up their hair as high as possible if they wanted.  As the saying goes, the higher the hair, the closer to god.  Amen.  

After the session, customers could view the photos on a screen.  Glamour Shots created an innovative system where customers could see their images right away.  A video camera recorded the photo session and still images could be pulled from the video footage.  Customers left with a contact sheet so they could get a sense of which photos they would ultimately want to order.  

Glamour Shots were most popular with female customers, men made up just 5% of their customer base.  Some of these female patrons also included a lot of teenaged girls who wanted to try and get their makeup done for the prom for a reasonable price.  

However, the makeup that was used was more like theatre or stage makeup so it was very thick, had an odd texture and would easily come off with sweat.  Glamour Shots were also incredibly popular with Realtors.  During my research, I learned of two rivalry real estate offices who ran into each other at the same Glamour Shots studio.  Awkward.  I swear they could make a whole movie out of the Glamour Shots phenomenon.  

GS Peaked in the mid-1990s.  At that time there were 350+ stores, with international locations in places like Japan and Venezuela.  Revenue was upwards of $100 million dollars and there were 6,000 employees. Tonya Harding was allegedly a huge fan of Glamour Shots. This led to many Glamour Shot knock-offs like Hollywood Portrait Studios, Pizazz Photography, Freeze Frame, etc.  

When the recession hit in 2008, Glamour shots really started to struggle.  People saw Glamour Shots as being very outdated and it was sort of a joke to go there.  If you remember, in the 2004 movie Napoleon Dynamite, a character in the movie has a photo business called “Glamour Shots" by Deb. I read a story about someone buying up GS gift certificates and giving them out as xmas gifts as a joke.  Stores that ditched the outdated clothing were able to survive a bit longer.  The same could be said for the photo studios that shifted their focus to more boudoir type photos.  How awkward is that?  Trying to get all sexy as you walk through the mall, passing Auntie Anne’s Pretzels. By 2019, there were just 5 stores left - at that time they were in Louisville, KY, Staten Island, 2 in New Jersey and one in El Paso, TX.  Sadly, by the time of this show’s release there are only two Glamour Shots locations left in the United States.  They are all too far away from me so I guess my dream of having Glamour Shots done is never going to come to fruition.  

I hope you have enjoyed this look back on some of the most well-known and beloved photography studios that ever graced a standalone store, a department store or stood next to the food court at your local mall. 

I wasn’t sure how much information I was going to find about such a niche topic, but I am so glad that I moved forward with doing a show on it because I find it to be a bittersweet topic. To this day, JCPenny continues to operate portrait studios within some of their locations, you can book photo sessions online.  Picture People is also still in operation, with locations across the United States.  And, the little engine that could, Glamour Shots still has 2 locations open.  One is in New Jersey and the other is in Texas.  I saw an interview with the owner of the GS in Texas and part of the reason why she has been able to stay in business is because she has forged relationships with nearby school districts and does a lot of class pictures.  If you have been listening to this show for any length of time, then you probably know that I am self-employed as a photographer and it’s because I really and truly value the art of photography and capturing memories.  My parents were so good about having our photos captured, taking pictures with their own cameras and filming silly moments with me and my sister.  And sometimes, when you lose someone, that’s really all that is left.  So, make sure you take pictures with your family, your friends, or even your dog.  Print it out and have something tangible to look at, I promise you won’t forget it.  Pictures cannot live on our phones or on our computers.  They need to be looked at, even if it’s hard to do so. 

There will be a little bit of a gap between this episode and my next few episodes due to a busy schedule.   In the meantime, now is a great time to look back at some of my older episodes and you can check out my guest appearance on a fabulous podcast about growing up in the 90s and 2000s called Generation S.  In my guest spot I spoke with Dan the host about the Disney Channel Original Movies or DComs.  Check out this episode and the Generation S Podcast in general - you won’t regret it!  I want to thank Protocol Labs for sponsoring the show.  You can find out more about them and everything Pop Culture Retrospective Podcast related at my website:  popcultureretrospective.com 

For some reason the topic of photography studios in the 80s reminds me of a song that played in an original Epcot Attraction called Journey Into Imagination.  There was a pre-show for the attraction and at one time the pavilion was sponsored by Kodak.  So of course, they milked the pre-show for all it’s worth.  The song was written by the dynamic duo that is the Sherman Brothers who have written every memorable Disney song you can think of. So I will leave you with that song to close out the show.  I have a busy schedule coming up so I’ll be back in a few weeks with some exciting episodes of the podcast, featuring some spectacular guests!  UTBKBSAHOTYM.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7bWuzzW07DA