Originally Posted by Wheatfield 
At some point, mass merchandisers such as Wal-Mart, Costco and various grocery stores decided to move into the photofinishing business.
Since they were treating the picture business as a loss leader designed soley to bring people in the door, their prices were somewhat lower than what we were able to offer and stay profitable. The first mass market lab in my area was a Superstore grocery store, priced at about 50% of what we were selling printing for.
That put a lot of us out of business, especially the full service camera stores that had expensive slower moving stock. It didn't help us that the grocery store was also selling cameras at below our cost as well.
Which is one of the main reasons why I don't shop at Wal-Mart. That and the fact there have been over 700 suits filed against them for shorting their employees pay.
