Welcome to the Photo Boutique

Being like Starbucks may be every storeowner's fantasy. The dream may not be of having a successful store on every corner--but enticing customers to both stay a little longer and spend a little more is probably a universal goal among specialty retailers.

While there are several facets

Creating a comfortable space is an idea some photo retailers are using to attract more customers and earn more business from existing customers. Kiosk users have a home-away-from-home at Cafe Click, a section of Elm City Photo Service, Waterville, Maine (www.elmcityphoto.com), where customers use the store's Lucidiom APM and Fuji Aladdin kiosks.

John Goodine, president, says he came up with the idea of creating Cafe Click in August 2004, as a way to differentiate his two stores from big box retailers. Cafe Click opened at Goodine's main store in Waterville the following October, and at his Augusta location on Jan. 1.

"People often bring in their [media cards] with 300 images on them. That's a lot like having a shoebox full of prints that have to be sorted. To stand at the counter and do that is impossible," Goodine says. "My competition puts their machine in an aisle, where there is no privacy and there are people walking behind you as you use it. But if you were at home sorting through a shoebox full of photos to put into an album, you wouldn't stand at your kitchen counter with your neighbor standing behind you. You would get comfortable. You might hunker down on the living room carpet or on your couch in front of your coffee table. We have attempted to recreate that comfortable atmosphere."

Making the space

The first step in creating Card Click was finding the space.

"The Cafe Click area in our Waterville store is about 200 square feet," Goodine says. "Lots of stores aren't willing to lose that much floor space. But when you build a cafe, you're freeing up a lot of counter space, because you're not putting the machines on the counter. Those counters can be eliminated. When you eliminate a counter, you also eliminate the walking space behind it, so you've freed up that amount of space.