A business that is still developing

The young woman needs a slide projector, and Patty Zacks takes her right to the two she has in stock.

Quickly she determines that one machine will serve the customer’s needs better. She pulls it out, sets it up with a carousel and slides, and shows her how to use it.

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Zacks explains that it’s best to let the projector sit with just the fan on for a while, to save the lamp. And when the customer asks for slide film, she warns that the Kodachrome will take a week to get developed these days, but another type can be processed in a day.

When the young woman leaves, minutes later, she has everything she needs for her project and the basic knowledge to use it all.

That’s how Zacks runs her business: one on one, with plenty of hand-holding, support and advice. She hand-delivers and accepts special orders, too.

[Editor’s note: On Tuesday, March 20, The Pawtucket Foundation named Zacks the winner of its 2007 Persons of the Year Award. READ MORE.]

With CVS/pharmacy up the street, a rival camera repair shop within a block and big-box stores that can beat her prices easily, Zacks stays in business by being more caring, more personal, than the competition.

“You treasure the customers you have,” she said, “and you bend over backwards to give them what they need.”

Zacks knows the stakes: In the 20 years that The Camera Werks has been in this small shopping district on upper Hope Street, she said, she has seen more than 100 businesses close – from short-lived upstarts, to neighborhood icons like the kosher Kaplan’s Bakery.

“It’s really, really sad,” she said. “You feel like part of the community, but the community has to support small businesses to keep us here.”

How The Camera Werks itself has kept going is a case study in adaptability. It started as a home-based business, in the basement of the South Attleboro home she shared with her then-husband, Michael. He fixed camera equipment and she helped him.

“We were pretty much doing camera repairs for all the stores in Rhode Island and some in Massachusetts,” she said. As the business grew, they found a location in Pawtucket, then moved soon after to Hope Street, where they sold used gear, supplies and basic accessories – but fixing equipment was still their main source of income.

“It was much different then,” she recalled. “Photographers used film, and cameras could be repaired, so you really needed our services. Now we’ve really become a disposable world. You used to have a camera and hold on to it for 20 years.”

Along with industry trends, the store’s camera repair business was affected by the Zacks’ divorce in 1993. Patty kept the store (though also the debts they still had to pay off, she said); Michael opened a competing store, Zacks Camera Repair, at 791 Hope St. The Camera Werks now outsources major repairs, while Patty Zacks takes care of small, simple jobs.

Another aspect of the business that has virtually evaporated, Zacks said, is photo developing, which used to be a major source of income but has “really zeroed out.”

To partially compensate, she has set up a digital photo printing station. But mostly, The Camera Werks relies on other revenue sources.

Zacks shoots passport photos right in the store for $8.95 apiece. She has hosted photography classes with well-known Rhode Island artists.

She handles the photo developing for several doctors, hospitals and nursing homes and hand-delivers for free.

And she continues to sell supplies for photo developing and printing, as well as used high-end cameras and new camera bags, tripods, lenses and other often hard-to-find items, such as the slide projector she sold to the young artist. If she doesn’t have something in stock, she will hunt it down through catalogs and wholesalers and put in a special order.

Best of all, from Zacks’ perspective, she has a strong custom framing business. She stocks everything from old-fashioned, ornate golden frames, to super-modern frames in bright yellow, pink and green. She does the matting and framing herself in the back room. That’s her small art form, and she enjoys it thoroughly and takes pride in doing it well.

It’s the pleasures of the work and the personal interactions every day that keep Zacks going despite the long hours, the challenges of running a store alone and the slim profits.

“I like what I do, and that’s my problem,” she said. “I meet such interesting people. I look forward to coming in to work. … I don’t have $1 million in the bank, but I like what I do.”