A sign of the times?

[Medley]

As of Feb 1st, the largest Costco Wholesale in the world no longer does film processing. Sources indicate less than 10% of their processing sales came from film. Is this a sign of the times, or just a corporate maneuver to improve the bottom line?

I have no idea if this policy is company-wide or not. I just thought it was worth mentioning.

-Joe U.

[masdog]

Probably some of column A and some of column B.

[another view]

Agree that it's probably both. It costs a lot of money to keep the chemestry going and machinery properly maintained, so if they're losing money on it then it will go away. They may not have been losing money on it overall yet, but when they look at their sales steadily declining for a long time then it's pretty obvious what'll happen.

There will always be places to have film developed. It'll just get more difficult to find them and you may pay a lot more for it to happen. Look at what happened to Kodachrome, although for different reasons. Eventually it'll probably become specialized to the point that most people needing it done will have it done by mail order.

[Photo-John]

This isn't off-topic! It's right on the topic of photography. In fact, I'd call it news. That being the case, I'm moving this to the news forum.

Thanks for posting!

[SmartWombat]

No signs of our local CostCo dropping film processing.
Though volumes seem to be decreasing, and they only sell digital cameras in-store.
I'll ask when we go in to pick up my glasses.

[poker]

Our Costco still takes film but I noticed they moved from 2 to 4 digital stations. People are now starting to wait in line to use it. I guess once they figure out how to to upload their images to their near by Costco it won't be a problem. It's a great service. They even give you the color profile of their printing machines online.

Truly a sign of the times....

[Greg McCary]

K-mart here in my home town has closed it one hour developing, all film is sent to Kodak. The lab tech where I get my film developed told me developing was down to two or three rolls a day. I was their biggest customer until I went digital. I think that I have had two rolls developed since I went digital. If it wasn't for my Canonet I might not be using film at all.
Greg