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AUSTRALIAN PHOTO HISTORY - Chapter 2
1980 -1986
Notes by Les Brener
The Festival of Sydney saw the 1980 year start with the PIC participating and producing newspaper supplements as well as a large equipment exhibition at Centrepoint. The Photography in the Park concept was once again well received at the centrally located
The then newly formed camera technicians organisation the Photo Service Guild took part in the exhibition with free testing of consumers’ cameras. The first president was Royston A Wallis of Tasmanex.
Events which will be covered in more detail later, whilst the author was not employed by the Chamber of Commerce or the PMA, included the photo industry’s participation in the Melbourne Moomba Festival, the Photographics ‘81 and ’83 Conventions and exhibitions in Sydney and Melbourne, the change of ownership of Hanimex, Rabbit Photo and the early attempts of KIS to set up in Australia,
On January 2nd 1984 Les Brener started work in the new PMA office in the dining room of his home unit. He was the only member of staff but conceded that he had the luxury of having PMA Australian president John Paxton popping by frequently and assisting. In fact the issues of Photo Marketing Magazine (at least six of which had never been sent to members due to problems which the previous director had to contend with) were carried by John and Les and members of Paxton’s city store staff to the post office.
This was also the time for his first visit to the PMA convention in
Amongst the initial services PMA Australia obtained for its members were the photo retailer industry specific insurance cover by Guild Insurance and known as “Photopak” and special low rates for credit cards were negotiated as well as the “Telechek” – cheque verification service. These initiatives were responsible for a considerable increase in membership.
PHOTOGRAPHICS ’85 was held at CentrePoint I Sydney May 31st - June 2nd and considered to be a great success - this was organised by PIMA with Bill Hargreaves, Chris Riches and Phil Jacobs running the programme and the show. Over 4500 consumers visited the exhibition.
Due to its success the organiser Bryan Humphris and his company Exhibitions & Trade Fairs were appointed to organise the next 3 exhibitions in ’87, ’89, and ’91.
“Passenger Concessions” was one of the problems facing the industry. Under the umbrella of the
In August 1985, PMA office was transferred from Les Brener’s home unit to a terrace in Edgecliff, Sydney, just as PMA signed its 350th member – there were 99 in January 1984)
Photo-Regatta ’85 brought a bit of fun to the industry when Photo Forum and “Kaptin Curtis” organised a picnic day with boats and sporting games while picnicking at Pittwater – quite surprising how many sailors there were. These “regattas” carried on for a few years.
KIS Australia went into top gear with the arrival of Paul-Armand Flouzat as MD and Swainson Hawke (from the
A conference by Hawke and ex New Zealand provincial rugby player Waka Kele was attended by over 100 delegates (introduced by a brass band and the delegatres later found to be salespeople who sold labs for the company on commission.) They claimed sales of 280 minilabs. Kis did not last long in
RABBIT PHOTO as wholesale photo finishers and guided by founder Neil Cottee and Richard Uechtritz went public in October, with all shares having been offered by firm reservation and being fully subscribed a week before the lists were due to open. Cottee stated that the company had 28 minilabs in NSW and Victoria and that they would have 48 by the end of the year
The Minilab Boom:
Here we found entrepreneurs from other professions and industries foreseeing the ability to “make easy money” and we had veterinarians, businessmen, chemists, accountants and eventually photo retailers (who at first appeared to be reluctant).
Photo Express which had a number of franchised and company owned specialty retail stores, started putting in minilabs into them at an early stage, then went on the interstate trail from
Gary Connely a financial entrepreneur from
Other groups who were building their presence in the minilab world were, Replace-a-Film headed by Jim Southcott in
We saw the expansion of the ColourCare franchised group of minlabs with
ColourCare members included Barry Larter (in
Sony arrived with 8mm video and quietly pipped all its competition in
The Perth Electronics show was joined by photographic wholesalers and left 10 percent of
The unions – specifically the Federated Miscellaneous Workers Union of Australia – went on the move to attempt to force minilab staff to join their
Bill Cutbush who was the MD of Hanimex Corporation announced significant changes, amongst which were Des Franklin Australian MD adding New Zealand and manufacturing to his portfolio. Martin Hannes MD of Colour Services added Colour Services UK. Peter Watt, Director of Finance and Administration became Director of Operations with responsibility for day to day operations. John Cashmore MD U.K and Europe continued to be responsible for
HANIMEX management under Bill Cutbush were extremely active when senior management and a number of unrelated institutions and their clients entered into an agreement with Burns Philp for the latter’s majority shareholding.
Palcolor, after a one million dollar loss was, after being in existence for 21 years, was acquired by Hanimex, who then closed the Palcolor processing laboratories in
"Palcolor and Hanimex joined forces – Palcolor being one of the countries largest independent wholesale labs with Managing Director Ross Adair was purchased by Hanimex. Eventually this would lead to the complete absorption by Hanimex."
Around the same time Hanimex acquired Vivitar in the
ELMAY MARKETING were put into receivership and closed its doors on January 17th 1986. One of the casualties was NSW sales manager Kevin Aston, a former editor and writer of photographic magazines and who later joined BCS Photographics and where he remained for a few years before retiring.
KONICA broke off from long time agents R.Gunz Photographics early in 1986 and Satoshi Sakamoto arrived from
GUNZ filled the gap by securing the
PACIFIC FILM LABORATORIES was sold by the then holding company of
Larry Tyler of Kodak was appointed as Pacific’s National Retail and Marketing Manager with Haroon Mohamed coming from Amcal as his assistant.
People and Places
Nov 1984 - The PIC (Photographic Industry Council) elected Peter Terry of Polaroid as its president with an executive consisting of Don Hogarth (Kodak), John Swainston (Maxwell Optical Industries), Claude Martin (Agfa Gevaert), Rolf Barmé (R.Gunz Photographic), James Coleman (Photo Publishing), Derek Plante (Swift) and
IRIS PUBLISHING had outgrown its original premises and expanded to larger premises in
PIMA (Photo Industrial Marketing Association) elected Chris Riches (PICS) as chairman with Brian D’Arcy (Adeal) as vice chairman.
1985: The
Later in the year the name was changed to APIC (Australian Photographic Industry Council) with Jens Carsten-Petersen appointed as the Photographic Industry Officer. He was responsible for organising an industry seminar with government departments in
PMA had John Paxton as its Australian President.
PIMA (Photographic Industrial Marketing Association) at its Annual General Meeting elected the following: President: Brian D’Arcy (Adeal), Vice President John Swainston (Maxwell Optical Industries), Treasurer: Zoard Kulley (Goodman Bros), Immediate Past President: Chris Riches (PICS), Board members: Phil Jacobs (J&P), John Koens (Kayell), Peter Terry (Polaroid), Bill Hargreaves (Filmlab Engineering). PIMA put forward a resolution to wind up the PIC and APIC. Members of PIC would then join PIMA and the registered PIMA company would later change its name to PICA
Walter Reuter one of the industry’s great characters, an excellent retailer was the Camera Craft/Photo Forum Dealer of the Year. Reuter had come to
Photoworld Magazine (published by Gary Cutler and edited by Neil Sudbury) featured a PMA page in its magazine directed at consumers and
Australian Camera Craft produced its Photographic Handbook for 1985.
This was the year when a photo retailer was fined $2000 for losing customer films and caused PMA to offer insurance for all photographic stores.
PSPA (Professional School Photographers Association was formed as a division of PMA and most of the school photographers in Australia joined up immediately and the association was later to assist and clarify privacy issues in school portraits in schools.
Fletchers Fotographics became solvent again with Neil and Irene Fletcher buying back their shares from API Fletchers. Neil then started up the Fletchers Fotographics franchise scheme which signed up quite a few franchisees in their first year and eventually grew to over 80 stores. The first two franchisees were George Smith in
Pacific Film Labs sold a number of their stores to
AUSTRALUX, stated to be the country’s largest manufacturers of stand-alone (and boardroom ) projection screens was sold by long-time owner Kurt Mandl to Russel Lyons who immediately started to expand the company.
FILMLAB ENGINEERING headed by Bill Hargreaves were able to state that their Australian manufactured film processing machines were used in 26 countries including
PMA Membership growing rapidly with groups adding their branches (as branch members) such as Gary Connely’s Speedi Colour, Paxtons Photographics, Rabbit Photo, Stallards (
Bruce Watt, a well known
Norm Inder general manager of Camera House since it’s rebirth left the company to set up his own import- wholesale operation Barcond Promura with George Slamer .
Roger Hart succeeded, Inder who had been involved in the industry for many years in roles at Chem-Mart and in Joe Mitchell’s Milversons organisation. Camera House chairman for this and for many years was Alan Small of Camera House Ballina.
GEORGE’S Camera Stores celebrated their 25th anniversary. George Weiss started his first business in 1960 in
Dr.Ziggy Switkowski (Manager Consumer, Professional and Finisher Markets, KodakAustralia) moved to Kodak,
America’s Cup Challenge brought together Kodak and Alan Bond’s
Joe Mitchell was now in photographic wholesaling and his company Novaco introduced a complete accountancy package (similar products claimed to sell for $2000 to $5000) for less than $100 – the computer world was arriving in the photo industry and Joe had a brief stint at importing and selling computers
