From the Roundtable: Columbia Photo move rekindles memories of homegrown business

On June 28, 1967, I walked into Capen’s, a relatively small photography store at 1009 East Broadway, and found a business that was clearly in transition.
I bought an ancient record album, which perhaps was a remainder from the store’s previous existence as the Radio Electric Shop. My souvenir of the day was marked down to a dollar because the shop had been sold and excitement about a new direction was clearly in the air.
The late Roger Berg piloted the transformation, but the whirlwind backing of the Atkins family made Columbia Photo a regional retail attraction.
I remember dropping by 1009 East Broadway in 1976 — by then it was called Columbia Photo Supply — to purchase a camera and standing among dozens of customers who dangerously overloaded the tiny premises.
The move uptown to 310 North Tenth Street in the late 1970s was a response to the store’s enormous popularity and reputation as it expanded into the realm of virtually anything electronic. That also brought about  the new moniker, Columbia Photo and Video.
These folks were at the top of their game. One was at ease visiting with Roger, Chips, Dennis and dozens of others behind the counter. Aside from keeping us up to date on the latest and greatest in their expanding product line, Columbia Photo and Video’s reputation and good will was founded on the expertise and after-the-sale service of these fine folks.
Now the building where all this magic came together is empty, about to be taken over by another expanding institution, Columbia College.
It’s good that Columbia Photo and Video will continue operating downtown on South Ninth Street in the City Centre (originally called the Virginia Building before the unnecessary name change smudged the structure’s historic past).
Columbia Photo’s reputation and retail versatility will remain. Still, it won’t be quite like it used to be. For some of us, there was some silent pleasure a few weeks ago when Circuit City packed up its tent, an event marking still another failure in the fragile world of electronic retailing.
Combatively competitive after Circuit City burst onto the scene, Columbia Photo and Video fought a fantastic battle against it and later Best Buy. But the odds were overwhelming as other big boxes and specialty retailers moved into their territory.
The intense competition between big box and local retailers closely relates to the desperate struggle of media outlets such as ours during the huge transition in advertising sales now under way.
Columbia Photo and Video promoted itself heavily in the local media, spending hundreds of thousands of dollars annually on television, radio and print advertising.  Their sweep of informative promotions over the years brought tens of thousands of buying customers through its doors. Those of us who worked with them say thanks for their business, because their reputation as a locally owned advertiser meant so much to our locally owned business.
While the late Circuit City (and a bevy of other giant retailers) continues to advertise, its medium of choice — inserts nestled among the hodgepodge of stuffing in the Sunday newspaper — generates only a portion of the revenue newspapers used to derive from page after page of display advertisements. That’s one reason that revenue is down, staffs are reduced and the mass media is diminished. Some predict even newspaper inserts will eventually be supplanted as the maws of area mailboxes are increasingly receiving similar advertising fliers often bundled together.
Columbia Photo and Video’s presence on Tenth Street left many of us with one souvenir or another. Memories for me include a cold evening in 1986 when the store set up telescopes outside for people to watch the passage of Halley’s Comet. After my turn, I left shivering and disappointed by its faintness. I remember buying our first video cassette recorder and panting over the countless rolls of film the employees processed into prints.
Then there’s that first souvenir, the aforementioned record album — “Voices in Fun” by the Four Freshmen on Capitol Records — a piece of vinyl that’s almost 50 years old and still sounds just as good as the day I brought it home.