John Fitzgerald, who owns the Snappy Snaps store in Chiswick, tells his story:
I started out as the manager of Snappy Snaps Chiswick. I’m still here 24 years later but now I own it and employ a manager myself and have opened and run three other branches along the way.
I’d always been interested in the photographic business and went into it straight from school. For a time I worked for a company called One Hour Photo in Ireland while doing freelance photography on the side. I realised that neither of these was right for me, so I went on to work in a pro lab for a period of time and got a great insight into that side of the industry. But sitting in a darkroom all day with a red light on wasn’t really what I envisioned my life being either, so I decided to cast my net further afield.
At that time the opportunities in the photographic market in Ireland were limited, while in London there were things like Joe’s basement, which was open 24 hours a day. You could shoot a roll of slide film at one o’clock in the morning and go in and get your slides developed while you waited. It was a very vibrant and interesting market to be in.
I came across from Ireland in December 1987 to do a number of interviews – one of them at Snappy Snaps. At the time Helen was opening a new store in Chiswick and she asked whether I would be interested in managing it.
I started working here before the shop opened in May 1988 and really enjoyed helping to set it up from the bare bones – it was a very exciting time.
Three years later I decided that I wanted to take on a franchise myself. As it turned out, Helen was looking to move out to Marlow, so we came to an agreement. You could say the timing was perfect, however it was the year of Black Monday, so it was an interesting challenge!
Because I was there from the beginning I knew the business inside out and knew the customers. I’m now dealing with the sons and daughters of early customers, printing just-born photos of the next generation. We’ve just been processing GCSE Photography images for a little girl who’s no longer little, and I can remember the day her parents came in with photos of her birth to be developed.
At the time when I started people saw a Snappy Snaps franchise as a business you bought and matured to a certain level then you sold up and moved on to something else. I never imagined that I would still be running the same store more than 20 years later!
In the meantime I’ve opened other Snappy Snaps stores and sold them on. I opened branches in Shepherd’s Bush and Acton with fellow franchisees. I then opened the High Wycombe store with a view to moving out to the country with my family. In the end it didn’t work out because we just couldn’t bring ourselves to leave Chiswick. It’s funny because when I first came to London I never intended on staying. I thought I’d be here for six months or a year before moving on, probably to Australia.
One thing I’ve discovered over the years is that this is a constantly changing industry. When I started we were hand-developing reels of black and white film. Now we’re dealing with laser machines and completely digital interfaces. At each stage I had to recheck what my business was about and recalibrate.
Thankfully Snappy Snaps offers an environment in which experimentation is encouraged. Although I’m only running the Chiswick store now I also have an online business called Outlab, supplying photographic work to other Snappy Snaps stores as well as non-Snappy Snaps customers. This enables them to offer services that they can’t provide in-house because they don’t have the relevant equipment.
My brother-in-law Anthony has been managing the shop for the last ten years. He does a lot of the customer facing work, which frees me up to do the online stuff and more bespoke projects that can take up to three months to complete.
I like trying new things, whether that’s mounting onto MDF or glass, printing on acrylics, bookmaking or lenticular printing. We’re lucky to have a big base of artistic customers in Chiswick. They come to us with ideas and I’m happy to help develop those ideas and run with them. For me these longer brew projects are very satisfying.
One of the biggest things I get from being part of the franchise is the advice and support from head office and also the other franchisees, who act as a sounding board. Even when I’m helping another franchisee with their problems, I always learn something valuable.
I can see the franchise here operating well until the point when I’m ready to retire, but whether it will continue in the same guise as it is now, I couldn’t say. The store is completely different to how it was 20 years ago and even the product mix is completely different. We still process images that people have taken, but that’s probably the only part that’s the same. Everything else has moved with time.
This is one of the more interesting industries to get involved in and there are ample areas where you can develop a niche. But do your research and go in knowing what you’re taking on. It’s not like selling coffee where in five years’ time you’re still going to be selling coffee. You’re probably going to be doing something radically different, but that’s part of the joy of it!
