Camera World
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| Industry | Retail |
| Fate | Acquired by Ritz Camera, becoming a brand of Ritz |
| Founded | 1977 |
| Founder | Jack Shin |
| Headquarters |
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Area served
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North America |
| Website | www |
Camera World was a retailer of photographic equipment and photofinishing services based in Portland, Oregon, United States, and founded in 1977. Since 2002, it has been a brand of Ritz Camera & Image, but prior to that time it was an independent company. In the mid-1990s, it was one of the largest mail-order retailers of photographic and audio equipment in the nation. The company's revenues totalled $80 million in 1998, of which $16 million were from online sales. Revenues grew to $115.7 million in 1999 (equivalent to $166.3 million in 2016), and the company relocated its administrative offices and inventory to a new facility in Beaverton, Oregon, the following year. The company's only brick-and-mortar store, in downtown Portland, as well as its Internet business were sold in 2002 to Ritz Camera, which continued to operate them under the Camera World name. Ritz, in turn, was acquired by C&A Marketing in 2012, but has retained the Camera World name as a Ritz brand, for both the store and the Internet business. The store closed on January 21, 2016.
Camera World was founded in Portland in 1977 by Chung Doo "Jack" Shin (often identified as J. D. Shin), a Korean-American who had emigrated to the U.S. from South Korea in 1973 and moved from New York to Portland in 1976. The business was originally a single store, located in the ground floor of the Swetland Building, at SW 5th and Washington in downtown Portland. It never opened any additional stores, but expanded into mail-order sales and, later, Internet sales. The mail-order business was launched in 1982. The company had 45 employees in 1990. Sales reached $53 million in 1993.
By the mid-1990s, Camera World had become one of the nation's largest mail-order retailers of photographic and audio equipment. In 1995, around 75 percent of Camera World's business was in mail-order sales, and the company employed 65 people. The company's headquarters and mail-order operations were located in the same building as the store, the Swetland Building, at 5th and Washington. The entire seven-story building was owned by Shin, who had acquired it in the late 1970s.
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Wikipedia