Creating community with a camera store, with Mark Comon, Paul’s Photo

Gary Pageau of the Dead Pixels Society talked with Mark Comon, Paul’s Photo and Creative Photo Academy, Torrance, Calif. In this interview, Comon talks about being a second-generation camera store owner, building relationships in a community, and using creativity as a Paul’s Photo in Torrance, Calif., which has been an area fixture in since company founder Paul Comon started selling cameras in 1961. Today, the store offers top camera brands and accessories, photo printing, workshops, classes, and events for photographers of all skill levels.

Creative Photo Academy has been a hub for photographic inspiration, learning, creativity, and fun since 1988. The academy offers online classes, workshops, photo walks, day trips, and photo adventures that appeal to photographers of all skill and interest levels. The educators are award-winning, internationally recognized photographers, authors, teachers, lecturers, and more.

Energize your sales with Shareme.chat, the proven texting platform. 

ShareMe.Chat 
ShareMe.Chat platform uses chat-to-text on your website to keep your customers connected and buying!

Mediaclip
Mediaclip strives to continuously enhance the user experience while dramatically increasing revenue.

Buzzsprout - Let's get your podcast launched!
Start for FREE

Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you.

Transcript

Erin Manning  0:02  
Welcome to The Dead Pixels Society Podcast, the photo imaging industry's leading news source. Here's your host, Gary Pageau. The dead pixel society podcast is brought to you by Mediaclip, Advertek Printing, and IP labs.

Gary Pageau  0:17  
Hello again, and welcome to The Dead Pixels Society Podcast. I'm your host, Gary Pageau. And today we're joined by Mark Comon from Paul's Photo in Torrance, California. Mark has an amazing photography business, and he's here to share how they built the business and are in constant reinvention. Mark, how are you today?

Mark Comon  0:37  
Hey, Gary, what's up, dude?

Gary Pageau  0:42  
We're just talking before I started how long we've known each other. It's been a while. Yeah, I've been wanting to get you on the podcast for a while. And it wasn't until I was at the recent PRO convention that we finally saw each other after a few years. Yep, I was COVID and whatnot. So for those people who don't know the history of Paul's photo, obviously, who was Paul,

Mark Comon  1:00  
Paul was my dad. Paul started the business 1961. I started working in the business in 1974. We're in our third location, our third physical location. So we moved to this building in 1987. My dad retired in 2011, and passed away last year. So since 2011, my wife and I have been running the show. It's been it's a great business, and we have a lot of fun. We have a great community of photographers here, both professionals and hobbyists and family photographers, were a good local resource. And it's a lot of fun being here. So.

Gary Pageau  1:44  
So talk a little bit about the store itself, how big is it? And what do you do on segues, I know you have a lab, you're not just cameras only.

Mark Comon  1:51  
So the camera store is about 3,500 square feet. Total. We have three business units, the cameras store Paul's pPhoto, which is the corporation. Then we have the lab run by Jeff, who's our lab manager. He's got about eight part-time employees plus himself in the lab, and they have about 1,200-1,400 square feet. And then we have the Creative Photo Academy, we have our building is divided into three sections, we have two of the three sections, the Creative Photo Academy has about 2,000 square feet. And that's where we do our classes. And really not much anymore. So we'll talk about that as we go on. But our class business has grown quite a bit. In-store classes are now about 10% of our total class volume.

Gary Pageau  2:46  
So this isn't just a way to get people in the store, it's actually a revenue generator for the business, right?

Mark Comon  2:53  
It makes a little the classroom makes a little bit of money, but not a lot. And it was never designed that way. So we started teaching classes in 1988. Because I saw a need and this was you know, research from PMA back of the time said the average camera, took two rolls of film and then ended up in the closet or under the bed brand. And I knew that that was not good for our industry. And granted, most of those cameras were bought at, you know, the big box stores, but people couldn't figure it out, they could never catch the fire on the passion. So I wanted to help people build that fire, build that passion and be able to make pictures and have fun doing it. So we started with classes 1988. We grew from a couple of classes, up to a full slate of classes in 1991. And then in 1991, we started adding our off-site things we did our first LA Zoo photo day, we did our first Eastern Sierra adventure. And in 1995, we did our first overseas trip to Germany. In 2005. We did our first safari to Africa. And it's just grown since then. So nowadays, we have 250 to 300 students a month at the creative photo Academy. And roughly 30 of those come actually into the building anymore. So everyone else is either on location or online. And that's one of the things that I have to thank COVID for, you know, the technology to do an online class was always there. But it wasn't accepted by the customer. You know, why am I going to pay for a class and stay at home? Well, nowadays people, they're comfortable on the Zoom, we use Zoom platform. I know that there are other platforms out there, which may be better technically. But customers aren't comfortable with them. They don't know how to log in. It's a constant problem. We've stayed with Zoom. Everybody knows how to get on a Zoom meeting. Everyone knows how to behave now. Yeah, And so people actually are preferring Gary to stay at home in their pajamas on a zoom class, rather than schlepping down here to the classroom at night, but there, but you're still doing in person events. And a lot of in person events, a lot of live events, I think people

Gary Pageau  5:19  
tend to think you have to do either or when you can do gotta both

Mark Comon  5:23  
we do both. So one of the things that we've learned is, customers are not willing anymore to drive in less they need to be here. So, you know, for a photo walk, of course, they need to be here, for a for a photo trip, they need to be here. If we have a touch and feel event, you know, like, you know, Canon, try the new lens or Nikon try the new camera, then they'll want to come for that. But to just sit and be talked to in a classroom environment, how to do this how to do that they don't need to be here anymore. Right? And they don't they really don't want to, I find that our online classes are far more successful. Better attendance, better homework, better participation, than the same class given in the classroom. And why do you

Gary Pageau  6:15  
think that is? I mean, it seems to me like if you're doing the in person, you're more engaged, because you've made the effort.

Mark Comon  6:23  
Sure. But when 25% of the people don't show up, because they were late at work, you know, the dog was doing this, the kid was doing that. So they don't come tonight. Okay, you know, that's the thing, you know, we have always believed here at the camera store. And this is one of the changes we've made when Cheryl and I took over in 2011, every customer who walks through the door has made a superhuman effort to walk through the door, right? And that's not something that happens easily, or all the time, right. And so you have to respect the customer's time and effort. They've come to realize that, you know, geez, they'd rather stay home and take a class. But there are some people who still want to live class. So we offer the live classes, just, you know, it's usually about three to one, three online for everyone live class we offer.

Gary Pageau  7:16  
You also do I mean, you're obviously aren't teaching all the classes, but you are you are have quite the video presence. If anyone follows your Facebook feed and all that, where you know, there's a new camera body out, you're holding it up, you're smiling, you're saying come see it. Yeah, when did you decide to do that piece of the marketing, because that really does push the effect, you do have the latest equipment, and you should go there to see it. 

Mark Comon  7:47  
We started with that. I don't know, with you know, when Facebook and Instagram took off, like in the 2010s 20 fifteens area, I can't remember I could go look. But really, with COVID is one that started as COVID was coming in, we needed a way to reach out to our customers and still keep them active. You know, I started March 17 2020 was the darkest day the day I had to fire all my employees and we closed. And that day, I started doing a video a day. And I did that for 500 days, right during COVID. And people responded to that they wanted to still be part of the Paul's Photo community, even though we couldn't get together. And luckily, we were only closed, you know, about three months, but still kept, kept the team together, kept everybody going kept everybody shooting and making pictures. And that was that was a lot of fun.

Gary Pageau  8:44  
So you've mentioned COVID A couple of times. It's really been a seminal event. I think for a lot of people in various segments of the industry in terms of You bet. It's It's an event that shook people up to their core. And they realized that they had the opportunity, though, to make some changes different outside of the classes where you've kind of split between in-person and online classes. What's another change you've made to enhance your business post-COVID.

Mark Comon  9:17  
We reduced our hours. I've heard that a lot from people. It was just a stressor on the team. And I think my team is happier now we cut down one hour each day, we cut down two hours on Saturdays and we eliminated Sundays. Wow. And so that now you know my full timers only are missing one day a week. We're all off on Sunday. Everybody has one day off during the week. It's just made the team better. I don't think we were worried about losing business. The customers have responded to our new hours. And you know, a lot of the restaurants around us here are now closed two days. All right. And you just have to pick you got to remember that oh Jeez, Gary, if we want this, we can't go there on Wednesday and Thursday. They're

Gary Pageau  10:02  
closed, right? Next Monday, Tuesday or Sunday, Monday. Oh, but see people have

Mark Comon  10:07  
now started taking other days. Because if everybody's closed Monday and Tuesday, there's an opportunity now on Monday and Tuesday. Right, right.

Gary Pageau  10:14  
But I think that's interesting. You raise a great point on the on the hours, because I've known several retailers who have done that. Because the feeling always was I've got to be open all the time. Right, right. And there's almost like a likies of fear. What am I going to miss? Because I'm not open on Sunday, or I'm not open till eight or whatever the rationale was? Why do you think that's changed? That has become more more acceptable? Was it just the staffing standpoint? Or do you think customer expectations have changed?

Mark Comon  10:44  
I think people were willing to accept it. People are more understanding. One of the things that COVID has done for us is, you know, the communities have come together. People want to shop locally, they understand that we are people, right, right. The guy who brings you your breakfast in the morning is a human being he has a family, he has to get up and he has to come to work, right. And if you want to be in the restaurant at seven, that means he has to get there at four. Right? They realize that we are at the camera store, we're just individual where people and our customers are, we're more understanding. But then again, we have to work harder to make that trust work, we do a better, we try to do a better job at having items in stock, where it's really a trouble, we try to be better at explaining things over the phone, so they don't have to come in, you know, all of those things that we've worked really hard at with training and experience and practice here in the camera store has aided us and right. You know, one of the things that I'm so happy about is we haven't we haven't forgotten that. So as we're going forward, we have a new set of tools in our tool chest, which is really important for me, the out of stock issues, I think are something that people are still wrestling with even years later. Yeah.

Gary Pageau  12:05  
 Why do you think that's still continuing to be a problem?

Mark Comon  12:14  
Because COVID is not over in Asia? Okay. So some simply stated that, you know, manufacturers cannot make everything they want, right? So because of labor shortages, parts, shortages, whatever, you know, you're a camera company, you can make, and I'm making up numbers, Gary, right? I can make 1000 cameras a month, which 1000 cameras you're going to make? Right? Well, number one, you're going to make the $3,000 cameras, you're not going to make the $300 cameras, because you can't make enough money, enough money, selling $300 cameras as you can selling $3,000 cameras, you can't, you know, there's all kinds of issues as these companies have had to make decisions about what they're going to do. Because, you know, we don't have the labor to build everything. We don't have the labor to staff everything. So I'm just glad that I don't have to make those decisions. You know, being in the camera store. You know, people always ask me about this. Listen, guys, I'm sorry, I don't make it. We just sell it. We try to make it easy for you. But we don't design it. We don't build it. You know, it's just up to us to sell it.

Gary Pageau  13:29  
i But also, we're not gonna before we get back to the reinvention piece, I'm just curious about kind of the used and market and the film market. I've been hearing from a lot of dealers that this is just booming and going crazy. Do you think this is a, an ongoing trend? Or just a blip?

Mark Comon  13:48  
I don't worry about stuff like that, you know, hey, while the sun shines, right? And so it just kills me because we threw away hundreds of film cameras in the early 2000s 2015 ish timeframe. Right? Because in order one of them, yeah, right, we've, you know, we recycled them, we crushed them, we did whatever. And now those cameras, people want them and I feel bad because we don't have them. We have a pretty good supply. Our customers, you know, we remind every single customer that walks in the door, bring us your old cameras. And we get you know, a box of cameras a couple times a week from somebody cleaned out the garage, and they've got this and that and the other thing. And, you know, most of the time, they're just, you know, run of the mill, you know, garden variety cameras, and sometimes we get some pretty cool stuff. It's really fun. That's one of the fun parts of the business.

Gary Pageau  14:48  
So one of the things that is intriguing about the way you've approached your business is the focus on local right your you've gone to your community, and I really think for The future of not just photo retail but all specialty retail regardless of type of businesses, including restaurants and things like that. Is the focus on local. What do you think? Are some of the Gary Wait, wait,

Mark Comon  15:11  
stop. It's not local. Its relationship.

Gary Pageau  15:15  
Right? Well, that's the question was going to be how do you build relationships then

Mark Comon  15:21  
right? You got to build relationships, you have to, you know, you talk to the guy at the florist shop, when I go to buy flowers for my wife, I talk to the guy and maybe he'll come and buy a camera, right? Everybody, when I go to a restaurant knows that I'm the place where they come to buy a camera, when you're at the thing, you talk to the the policeman who's there directing traffic, you talk to the, you know, the whoever you got to, you got to talk to people, you have to build these relationships, you have to shake people's hands. And some people aren't comfortable with that. I understand that. But yeah, that's what it takes. And then once you shake somebody's hand, you have to back it up. Right, you have to take care of them. Sorry, cuz I think that

Gary Pageau  16:01  
is part of the challenge that people are having post COVID is I think there was a certain amount of, you could count on a certain amount of business coming in. And you didn't have to, you know, do what you're the type of business you've been doing for years, which is, you know, making those deposits, right. And people's relationship banks, if you will, if you're going to use that.

Mark Comon  16:21  
I call it farming, I'm planning, you plant the seeds, you water it, you rake it, and hopefully one day you get something out of it.

Gary Pageau  16:29  
So and of course that does translate into the creative photo Academy, which I want to talk about is sort of per entity. What was the thought process about making it a separate? I mean, it's not a separate entity in the sense. People don't know it's Paul's photo, but it is has its own website, it has its own curriculum, if you will.

Mark Comon  16:48  
Right. So we did that on purpose. For a couple of reasons. Number one, we ran into problems with some some venues, credit photo Academy sounds like a school. And we get a little more more leeway because we're a school. Right, we get a little bit more, we get a little bit more street cred from the world. Because we're a school. It's not, you know, classes at Paul's photo. Right? So, you know, it was a branding move, but it's really paid off. Right? Because people know of the creative photo Academy. They want to come and be part of what we do. They like our logo, they like wearing the stuff. Once again, it's more fun, and it gives people something to talk about and be part of which I think is really important.

Gary Pageau  17:43  
And it's not just you, you've got other people helping out educators.

Mark Comon  17:47  
It's funny, because our greatest source of educators is to our students. Okay, we just did a class last week on Nikon annex software. And one of our students who is a professional computer trainer in her job, she works for a law firm, and she teaches lawyers and lawyers assistants, how to use PowerPoint, Word, all that stuff. Right? I asked Heather, a couple months ago, hey, Heather, do you want to teach this class? She says, Well, I don't know how to do that. And they said, Yes, you do. Just like teaching, you know, word, right, you're teaching another piece of software. You know, we just promoted I mean, one of our advanced students to teach one of our advanced exposure class. And then I mind my relationships with professional photographers and people around the world. And one of the great things that COVID did for us was allowed me to make relationships. Well, not. I already had the relationships. But you know, Gary, if I would invite you to teach a class, take a huge effort and a lot of money to get you to teach a class here in Torrance, right? Right. Because you'd have to fly to California put you up and hotel done. It makes the economics really rough. But if you can log on and do a zoom class for me. Number one, you're a lot more reasonably priced. And you're a lot more likely to do that. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. So we've got some of the biggest names in photography teaching for us when they can so it's pretty awesome.

Gary Pageau  19:18  
Now that's like the local classes. But then you have all these excursions, which you call ventures. You can talk a little bit about how that started. Was this, like your bucket list of the places you want it to experience and share with other people? Because I'm looking at the list here. These are some pretty amazing destinations.

Mark Comon  19:37  
It comes from two places. Number one is what people ask for. So I'll tell you about our first safari to Africa were in 2003 in Munich, Germany, we had just finished a trip to Germany, and I had a dozen students around a table in a bar drinking beer in Germany and said where do you guys want to go next? And Bev God lover said I want to go to Africa. And tell me about what you want to do. I want to see the animals, I want to make pictures that ended up and I went around the table. And half the people at the table said, I, if I put it together a trip to Africa, are you guys gonna go? And they said yes. And that was probably one of the scariest things in my life, because I had to write a purchase order for $125,000 for the trip to Africa for the first time. But we had 15 People go and, you know, in July and August will be my 16th and 17th safaris to Africa. Wow. The group, you know, so that's how, you know, the Northern Lights trip started. We were in Churchill doing the polar bears in November, and heard them talking about their opportunity to photograph Northern Lights in in Churchill, Manitoba. So I asked the group, you know, there were 20 of us, how many of you want to come back and photograph the Northern Lights? And, you know, six or eight people raised their hands. So I booked it for May of 2024. You know, my job is to take their ideas and turn it into a trip that will work and offer the best photo opportunities possible. It sounds

Gary Pageau  21:10  
like a lot of what you're doing, of course, is like a good retailer. Should you're listening. Yeah. Listening to what people are doing and responding to what they're doing. Still took a leap of faith to do that first Africa trip. What else? COVID? Because like you said, people's behavior has changed.

Mark Comon  21:26  
Yeah, our trip schedule has grown because people want to travel, right? People are more conscious with their money, which most people thinks that they want to do lower costs stuff, which is not true. They want guarantees, right? They know that if they come with the creative photo Academy, they're gonna have a great experience, it's going to be a great trip, right? They would rather spend a little bit more money and come with us, then roll the dice on somebody they've never been with before. Right. And that's been one of the secrets to what we've done is always building an amazing experience for people. And I'll tell you, just two quick stories are. So in June of 2022, we went to Italy. And that's a trip that was delayed twice due to COVID. We finally went in June, and had an amazing time with 20 photographers. And they said, we want to do it again. And I asked him, Do you want to do this and this and this. And 18 of the 20 photographers signed up for going back to italy and doing a similar trip that's a little bit different in June, July of 2024. Okay, we had a trip to Vietnam in 2019. And I got together with the same leader, and we're now doing a trip to Thailand and Cambodia. And that trip never even was launched. All the people from the Vietnam trip heard about it, and they all signed up, and now it's full. So

Gary Pageau  22:57  
how do you determine like the optimum size for a trip? It sounds like most of them are 15 to 20 people

Mark Comon  23:02  
depends on the location. Every location has, you know, for example, the Thailand trip, we're limited to 20 individuals, because the tour company has two vans, the whole 10 Okay. I mean, that's just that's why, you know, so the trip to Italy, we are group is 24. Because they have three vans that hold eight. Now that's 24 with spouses and me and all that, you know, that's all the seats that are in the van.

Gary Pageau  23:30  
Right. So you may have X number of students plus you have instructors, and like you said, people browsers,

Mark Comon  23:35  
and so that's how we limit. So it's always about as you know, trips to the National Park, are now limited to 12. Right, can't take any more than 12 to a national park. So

Gary Pageau  23:47  
is that still still the case even though?

Mark Comon  23:51  
Yep, for groups? Yep. And that's for that's not COVID That's for being responsible, you know, and ecologically friendly to the environment.

Gary Pageau  24:01  
Yeah, because I think that's probably a big concern, too, is you know, these days are traveled people are very eco conscious, right? So you want to know and so as much as possible, if you

Mark Comon  24:12  
come with me to the net to a national park, you have to be Leave No Trace certified. So there's an online class takes about 45 minutes or an hour to do you have to take that class before I'll let you come on and trip to a national park with us. Okay, so just so that you don't We don't want to damage it and we want to be good citizens do vendors

Gary Pageau  24:32  
want to partner with you for these are these basically vendor agnostic people bring what they have?

Mark Comon  24:38  
Well, they're vendor agnostic. Every now and then we get a vendor who will want to partner with us. Unfortunately, right now the vendors don't have the manpower really too bright, to send, you know, their tech rep their sales rep for four days or a week. I would love to do that. Talking to a couple of vendors right now about trips and the We're just trying to be able to have, you know, Mark, we you have to pick a time when these people don't have anything to do. Well, we can't do it that way. But you want to go here, this is when you go. Right? Exactly. You have to make the time for the person

Gary Pageau  25:14  
to go see the northern lights, you got to go see the northern lights when the Northern Lights are

Mark Comon  25:18  
correct. Exactly. You can't just Yeah, do it whenever.

Gary Pageau  25:22  
Exactly, oh, my goodness. So obviously, not everyone has got the decades of experience doing this kind of thing like you folks you do. But what would be some advice to a dealer who wants to, let's say they're building relationships in the community to do this, which most dealers are, but they want to take it to the next level, what is like the one or two things you'd advise them to do

Mark Comon  25:46  
when I started doing so first of all, start small. Start with Photowalks in your local community. Number two, learn from people who know what they're doing. You know why before we did one photo workshop, before we did one adventure, I went on half a dozen photo workshops with other photographers. And I would invite any of the dealers, you know, anybody at the pro show knows that I've always invited our pro brothers and sisters to come on one of my trips, if they want to come, I'll give you whatever deal I can. Sometimes it's a little bit sometimes it's not much, because we don't make a lot on the trips. But you got to see how it's done. And, you know, for years, I taught classes at Pro on how to do these workshops. And I said right up front, I want you to learn that if this is not for you, you learn that today, not 25 people standing in front of you and you're not comfortable and you don't want to do it.

Gary Pageau  26:47  
Or you're in Vietnam and you're not you're and you got 20 V one, right? You don't want to learn at that point that you don't have the skills or the right, or the temperament to deal with that. Right. Exactly. So great mark. So if somebody wanted to learn more about Paul's photo, and create a photo Academy, where do they go for more information?

Mark Comon  27:08  
Paulsphoto.com Creativephoto.com You know, I get emails all the time, Mark@paulsphoto.com And you can write to me and I'll you know, help help however I can.

Gary Pageau  27:21  
Well thanks Mark. You're you've been an inspiration to the industry for years. Thanks, Gary willingness to share these ideas and help people grow their business. So I truly appreciate that. And thank you for spending time with us today.

Mark Comon  27:33  
Thank you and to all those Dead Pixelers. Keep making dead pixels baby.

Erin Manning  27:43  
Thank you for listening to The Dead Pixels Society Podcast. Read more great stories and sign up for the newsletter at www.thedeadpixelssociety.com

Transcribed by https://otter.ai