Related stories

Stock Market Review Stock Market Review Demand Strong, Sales Market Warming Up Eliminating Confusion: Foreigners' Rights in the Chinese Property Market Photography Masters Probe Olympic Beijing

Famous Photo Studio Masters Market Survival Techniques

China Photo Studio hopes to set up new branches around Olympic venues and shoot free portraits of all the 2008 Olympic champions. The 69-year-old company has five branches, creating a total revenue of more than 25 million yuan (US$3.2 million) a year.

The 190 staff members are set to receive foreign and sign language training, as well as better knowledge of the practical needs of disabled customers.

Recently this year, the studio celebrated its 50th anniversary of moving from Shanghai to Beijing with an exhibition of the studio’s best work, the ebbs and tides of the company’s own story reflecting much of the vagaries of recent Chinese history.

Established in 1937 by Wu Jianping, China Photo Studio in fact began life as a Shanghai business. The brand gained fame two years later through an innovative promotion in which 50,000 pictures of a popular movie star were presented to people with movie tickets. The idea worked: the begininings of the China Photo Studio’s enviable brand reputation, synonomous with high-quality pictures and superior service to many Chinese people.

Responding to Premier Zhou Enlai’s call to “make the service industry prosper in the capital” in 1956 the entire staff of 16 workers, their equipment, wives and children moved to Wangfujing.

Here the China Photo Studio entered a golden age of state monopoly, with queues starting outside the door at 4 a.m. or 5 a.m. every day. The studio would stop handing out waiting tickets as early as 3 p.m. Even so, the staff worked until 10 p.m. every day.

China Photo Studio during the following years evolved into the number one service for shooting portraits of political leaders and model workers. Many of the most familiar pictures of Mao Zedong, Zhou Enlai and other Party leaders are the work of the Studio.

Reform and opening changed everything. By the early 1990s, like many other state-owned companies, the studio was facing enormous difficulties adapting to the new market. The problems reached breaking point with the remodeling of Wangfujing Dajie in 1992. At a time when new market-driven competitors were emerging, construction work made the Studio less and less visible. Frequent replacement of leadership didn’t halt the slide and by 1997, China Photo Studio was facing potential bankruptcy.

The turning point came when Sun Xiuzhen was made general manager in August 1997. She demanded a revolution in the staff’s state-owned mindset and rang the changes throughout the business, dispatching squads of photographers to shoot residential communities and retired officials during promotional events such as the “International Year of Older Persons” in 1999.

China Photo Studio in November 2001 was transformed into a limited company with an equity of 8 million yuan (US$1.02 million). Sun was appointed chairman and the company opened new branches in commercial areas.

Since then, China Photo Studio has mastered rapid advances in equipment, processing speeds and picture quality. Through its emphasis on high-tech facilities, the studio has expanded from traditional photo services to include more complicated shoots, developing and processing services.