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Pulling
out all the f-stops
Edited
from a feature article in The Dallas
Morning
News
Competitive
Cameras is the pro's answer to high-gloss
retailers
It's hard
to imagine a store with less glitz than
Competitive Cameras, a
5,000-square-foot-strip-center
establishment unceremoniously wedged
between a sandwich shop and a diner on
Irving Boulevard.
Floor-to-ceiling
boxes give it the ambiance of an auto
parts dealer, while refrigerated cases of
film add a touch of convenience store
élan. The main display case is so
etched by daily abuse that it's difficult
to see the array of natty Nikons beneath
the glass. In a world dominated by
high-gloss, big-box retailers, Competitive
Cameras is definitely matte finish. But
for many professional shooters, this is
photography heaven, and owners Ramsey
Jabbour, his wife of 26 years, Mary, and
their son, Eugene, are the attentive
keepers of the gate.
Since its
humble beginnings in Garland in 1982,
Competitive Cameras has weathered two
decades of industry upheaval to become one
of the last major specialty camera stores
left in the Southwest and among the
largest in the country. Early on, Ramsey
Jabbour figures there were two dozen
independents around town. Almost all those
names have vanished, including Barry's
Camera, the largest and most formidable of
the lot, which sold out to Atlanta-based
Wolf Camera & Video in 1992.
"We've
stayed alive by keeping our overhead very
low, working extremely hard, knowing what
we sell and concentrating on volume, not
big margins," says the patriarch. "We've
built that volume one customer at a
time."
Core
customers include retailers, colleges,
hospitals, advertising agencies, catalog
publishers and newspapers - names that
include J.C. Penney Co., Baylor (the
university and the medical center), The
Dallas Morning News and the Fort
Worth Star-Telegram. But the customer
mix also includes rank beginners who've
simply been urged by someone to "go see
Ramsey".
They come
for everything from a $200 point-and-shoot
camera to an exotic $9,500 600mm f/4.0
Nikon lens that can capture the grimace of
a football player 50 yards away.
Mr.
Jabbour says he wants to help customers
avoid buying the wrong equipment, and
that's hard to do online. Besides, if he
sold on the Net, he'd have to list prices,
and that's another thing about this shop -
there's not a price tag on anything.
"With
Ramsey, it's all about the sale," says
professional photographer Scott Keith. "He
keeps a formula in his mind: 'I paid this
much for it. I need to sell it for this
much. Are you going to buy it or
not?'"
Personalized
service
Mr.
Jabbour, who was born in Lebanon, admits
to friendly Old World negotiating, but
draws the line at calling it haggling.
"Our price is earth-bottom, so there's
nothing much left to
negotiate."
Mr. Keith
has bought $100,000 in cameras in the last
eight years, not to mention routine
supplies. "I've checked. You can't beat
him on price for equipment. Soft supplies,
sometimes," he adds. "But even then,
Ramsey's always very close."
In the
three years John Pippar has been coming
into the store, the 58-year-old real
estate executive has worked his way up
from entry-level gear to a top-of-the-line
Nikon digital and a slew of expensive
lenses. In the process, he's discovered a
hidden passion and now makes his living as
a sports photographer.
"It's all
because Ramsey recognized the value of a
novice customer and gave me the help,
support and guidance that made me want to
come back," he says.
Mr.
Jabbour got his start in the camera
business nearly 30 years ago in
Minneapolis with his brother. But when
Mary became pregnant with child No 2, the
couple decided to plant roots elsewhere.
They spent their vacation in 1980
traveling the country looking for the land
of opportunity. They thought the shining
skyline of Big D looked a bit like Emerald
City.
"Dallas
was looking new and booming," recalls Mr.
Jabbour. "Growing up in the Middle East,
everything was antique ... you know,
2,000, 3000 years old. Having all these
modern buildings was very, very impressive
to me."
The next
year, the Jabbours put 2-year-old Eugene
and 3-month-old Georgina into the family
Cutlass station wagon, loaded their
worldly belongings into a 24-foot U-Haul
and headed to a place where they knew
absolutely no one.
"We
believed in the good God, or maybe we were
just naïve," says Mr.
Jabbour.
For the
next six months, he worked in the camera
department of the Valley View Mall's
Sanger-Harris department store in North
Dallas while Mrs. Jabbour drove around
looking for retail space. Rents were
running a hefty $18 to $20 a square foot,
so it took a while to find an affordable
shoebox location in Garland (a suburb of
Dallas) on Forest Lane.
"It wasn't
that we chose Garland," says Mrs. Jabbour,
"We chose Forest Lane. I looked at the
Mapsco and saw that it runs all the way
across town. Everyone knows how to get to
Forest Lane." Well,
yeah, but the store was way the
thunder out on Forest.
"People
would joke that they had to pack a lunch
to get there," says Mr. Jabbour, who spent
several years as a one-man operation.
"When I had to make a delivery, I'd put a
sign on the door and go."
The
big break
The
store's big break came in 1985, when the
Dallas Times Herald called looking
for a hard-to-find $3,000 Nikon lens. Mr.
Jabbour had several in stock, closed the
store and delivered downtown that day. The
newspaper, which had been buying its
equipment and film from various sources
around the country, shifted its business
to him. A similar scenario played out in
1987, when The News needed a
specialty lens for the papal visit to San
Antonio.
Plano-based
J.C. Penney Co. buys almost all of its
film and camera accessories from
Competitive Cameras because of reliability
and pricing, says Ray Parker, manager for
marketing photography. "First and
foremost, Eugene and Ramsey are real pros
who understand the needs and requirements
of a professional studio. They follow up
with real-time speed to make it happen for
us."
The
Jabbours moved to their current location
four years ago - taking the advice of a
first-time customer. A planner for the
city of Grapevine said he would have made
it to the store a year earlier but it had
taken him that long to decide to drive
that far. He went next door to a
Stop-N-Go, made a copy of Mapsco's page
44, drew a circle that included Irving
Boulevard and said, "That's where you need
to be."
They wish
they'd made the move years
ago.
Family
operation
Competitive
Cameras is now a mom-and-pop-plus-son
operation. Eugene, who earned a business
degree in finance from Southern Methodist
University in 2000, has joined the family
business as a partner in charge of
digital. Proud parents say he's a natural.
"He's our missing link," says Mary.
"Eugene grew up with a Commodore 64 when
he was like 4 years old, so here was the
master of digital stepping through our
doors."
Eugene is
equally gushy about his folks. "No teacher
in school could ever teach what I learned
from my parents growing up in the store,"
he says. "They gave 1,000 percent to make
sure everything was perfect for the
customer."
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