Private | |
Industry | Photographic products and services |
Fate | US operation purchased by C&A Marketing in bankruptcy auction. EU operation still active. |
Founded | 1939 |
Founder | Kenneth Becker |
Headquarters | Bahrenfelder Straße 260 22765 Hamburg, Germany |
Number of locations
|
18 |
Area served
|
UK, Germany, Netherlands, Belgium |
Key people
|
Christof Bergmann, Managing Director |
Products | Cameras, video, film, accessories. |
Number of employees
|
200 |
Website | www.calphoto.co.uk |
Calumet Photographic, Inc. better known as Calumet Photographic or Calumet Photo and formerly known as Calumet Manufacturing Company is a photographic retail and photofinishing specialty store, headquartered in Chicago, Illinois. In 2012, the company owned and operated a chain of 32 locations worldwide. The company had 15 locations in the United States, 8 in the United Kingdom, 6 in Germany, 2 in the Netherlands and 1 in Belgium, with 200 employees and an annual revenue of $10 million.
On March 12, 2014, Calumet Photographic Inc filed Chapter 7 bankruptcy. C&A Marketing Inc., the New Jersey-based owners of a number of retail photo brands including Ritz Camera, Wolf Camera, Inkley's, Camera World, and RitzPix, purchased the US-based assets on May 1, 2014 for $4 million.
On May 7, 2014, the company announced that it would reopen its Oak Brook, Illinois, retail store location, and did so on May 11; it served as the anchor for the brand. The final three stores closed in January 2016.
In 1939, Kenneth Becker founded the sporting goods store Calumet Manufacturing Company that sold an occasional camera in Chicago. After several years of manufacturing darkroom equipment, in 1955 the company bought the rights to Kodak's Master View 4x5 camera, enabling Kodak to leave the view camera business. In the 1960s, the company innovated the Caltar large format lens line, the C-2 roll film holder and the nitrogen burst film and print processors.
In 1980, the company transitioned from being a large format proprietary product vendor to being a full-line photographic product supplier. In 1983, the company left the view camera manufacturing business and outsourced production to the Netherlands. In 1989, Calumet made a notable improvement on Polaroid instant film technology. In 1992, the company leased 85,000 square feet (7,900 m2) of office space in Bensenville, Illinois, and relocated its corporate headquarters. The current headquarters are on West Bliss Street in Chicago.