Lifetouch

Lifetouch Inc.

Type	Private/Employee Owned
Industry	Professional Photography
Founded	1936 (1936)
Founder	Bruce Reinecker and Eldon Rothgeb
Headquarters	Eden Prairie, Minnesota
Key people	Paul Harmel: Chairman of the Board Michael Meek: President & CEO[1]
Website	Lifetouch.com

The sculpture, Generations, was created for the 70th anniversary of Lifetouch by sculptor Nicholas Legeros.

Lifetouch Inc. is an American employee-owned^[2] photography company headquartered in Eden Prairie, Minnesota.^[3] It was founded as National School Studios (NSS) in 1936 by Eldon Rothgeb and R. Bruce Reinecker, and incorporated in March 1948. The company provides photography for families, schools and places of worship, with operations in all 50 states, Canada and Puerto Rico. Through Lifetouch Media Productions^[4][5], video support is provided to internal and external customers. Business units under the corporate umbrella include:

· Lifetouch National School Studios Inc. provides student photography from preschool to high school graduation, sports, prom and dance, and yearbooks.^[6][7]

· Lifetouch Preschool Portraits Inc. provider of infant and toddler photography.^[8]

· Lifetouch Portrait Studios Inc. is represented in the retail market by some 800 photographic studios, including JCPenney Portraits, Target Portrait Studios, Cilento Photography, and Lifetouch Business Portraits.^[9][10]

· Lifetouch Church Directories and Portraits Inc. is an on-site family photography business for faith communities and other organizations, providing portraiture and printed directories.^[11][12]

· Lifetouch Services Inc. produces high-quality yearbooks and memory books.

Company photography labs are located throughout the United States and Canada.

Company History

Company Beginnings: 1936-1949

Two traveling salesmen, Eldon Rothgeb (1916-1972) and R. Bruce Reinecker (1910-1987), had worked together for a couple of years for a school photography studio in Kansas City, Missouri. In 1936, in the midst of the Great Depression, they raised $500 and initiated their plan to open their own school photography company and set up business as National School Studios (NSS), “School Photography of Distinction,” in Minneapolis. They chose the Upper Midwest to launch their business, a predominantly rural area with fewer professional photographers; thus, potential for greater opportunity.^[13][14]

In 1939, the National School Studios had more than a dozen salesmen selling to schools—Reinecker in charge of production and Rothgeb supervising sales—and introduced its first new products, the 3x5 enlargement and 3x5 display folder, neither of which had ever been offered by a school photography company.^[15]

Unusual for the era, salesmen for NSS were paid employees of the company rather than independent contractors.

Following World War II, in 1945, the founders mortgaged their personal property and stretched the company’s credit line to offer approximately 80 percent of their salesmen (returning veterans) no-interest financing for cars and down payments to buy homes. This drove the company into the red and the bank canceled its line of credit, but Rothgeb and Reinecker persevered. In 1946, NSS was one of the largest school photography firms in the country.^[16]

That same year (1946), the National School Studios moved to a new plant in Minneapolis and began using the first continuous processing equipment in the industry, eliminating hand-processing. The system was adapted from the US Government's "V-Mail" system, which printed from a continuous roll of paper, and eliminated the slower single-cut sheets.^[17] The new equipment enabled them to add hand-tinted and sepia-tone prints to the product line, which stimulated sales. In 1948, 5x7 enlargements were introduced, the first in the market.^[18] By 1949, the sales force was at work in all 48 states.^[19]

Expansion & Transition to Employee Stock Ownership: 1950-1979

In the early 1950s, Stanley Merz of the Photo Control Company, Minneapolis, began development of the National School Studios’ Model 10 camera, and in 1952, NSS opened its first plant outside of Minneapolis in Winnipeg, Manitoba. During that same year, Eastman Kodak developed a new negative process and new photographic paper that streamlined color photo development. With the help of Kodak, NSS developed the school photography industry’s first cluster lens printer making it possible to print multiple photos from a single exposure. NSS was first to offer full-color (hand-colored) school photos starting in 1956.^[20] Package printing and the Model 10 camera, a replacement for the original box camera, were introduced in 1957, the chief advantage of which was a separate film magazine, better lighting control and better film metering.^[21] The company’s first color print processor was installed in 1958.^[22]

During the next decade, the Model 10 evolved into the Photo Control Model 5 camera, which remained the industry standard for the next 20 years.

By the 1960s, the National School Studios' markets had expanded to include all 50 states, Puerto Rico, and Canada. New offices and production facilities were built in Bloomington, Minnesota, in 1968. That same year, the 8x10 school portrait was introduced to the school photography market, becoming vital to NSS’ success in the late 1960s and early 1970s.^[23]

Upon the sudden death of founder Eldon Rothgeb in 1972, Richard P. Erickson, a NSS territory manager, was named vice president of sales and marketing to develop plans for consistent growth and profitability.^[24] Erickson integrated the company’s first two acquisitions—Universal Publications, Kansas City, Missouri, a company specializing in school yearbooks (1973); and Prestige Portraits, Muncie, Indiana, senior portraiture (1974).^[25][26] NSS also released "Select-A-Pack" in 1974, offering choice of three different school photo packages rather than one.

Erickson was appointed executive vice president in 1976 when Reinecker prepared to become less active in day-to-day company operations.^[27] Paul Harmel, who joined NSS in 1977 as controller, introduced long-range financial plans that moved the company forward, further propelled by Reinecker’s decision to reward his employees with an Employee Stock Ownership Trust, "ESOT," in 1977. The ESOT was unusual in that it gave employees 100 percent ownership of the company and transferred ownership without requiring contributions from individual employees.^[28][29]

Rebranding to "Lifetouch": 1980-1988

The National School Studios introduced a prototype of its Micro-Z camera at the July 1980 sales meeting, a system that Richard Erickson had brainstormed with the company’s chief design engineer, Tal Hopson, for handling NSS’ information and sales volume. Despite innovations, photographers were reluctant to accept it after using the Model 5 for 15 years. Redesigned four times in five years, Erickson was committed to making the camera work. The major advantage was that data could be applied to negatives in barcode, which Micro-Z printers recognized, automatically printing the correct photo package. It became the camera of choice in 1982. A key component of the company’s success was its ongoing dedication to the design and construction of its own cameras.^[30][31]

Erickson was named president of NSS in November 1980. As part of a new corporate development program, Kinderfoto International, a studio photography company, was acquired in 1983, which pushed NSS into retail marketing and promotion.^[32]

On August 1, 1984, Erickson announced a new name for the corporation—Lifetouch—saying that the new logo in script “looks like we’re signing our work.” Business units, each with separate identities, were rebranded: NSS became Lifetouch National School Studios; Kinderfoto became Lifetouch Portrait Studios; Prestige Portraits became Lifetouch Senior Portraits (now Prestige Portraits); Universal Publications became Lifetouch Publishing (now Lifetouch Services).^[33]

In 1986, Lifetouch celebrated its 50th anniversary with sales of nearly 200 million photos annually. Richard Erickson became chairman of the board and CEO of Lifetouch Inc. and Paul Harmel was named executive vice president and chief operating officer of Lifetouch National School Studios in 1987.

Acquisitions & Expansion: 1988-1997

The 1980s were marked by numerous acquisitions for Lifetouch: Video Creations of St. Paul, Minnesota was purchased in 1988, followed by Enterprise School Photos, Inc., a school picture and yearbook vendor in Tulsa, Oklahoma, in 1989.^[34]

Lifetouch then initiated acquisition of School Pictures Inc. and Portrait World. Max Ward-Delmar, the leading supplier on the East Coast of undergraduate and senior portrait services, was purchased in 1990, giving Lifetouch an office and lab in Chesapeake, Virginia. Portrait Industries Corporation, a division of Max Ward-Delmar, gave Lifetouch a stronger presence in the preschool photography market.^[35][36] Portrait Industries, Inc. a company based in Mobile, Alabama that specialized in preschool photography with national accounts such as Kindercare, La Petite, and Childtime, owned by Mike Ward was acquired in the 1990s.

In May 1995, United Photographic Industries Galion, Ohio, a church directory and commercial printing business, was purchased. The following year, Lifetouch celebrated its 60th anniversary and broke ground for Phase I of a new Lifetouch corporate campus in Eden Prairie, Minnesota. Phase II was completed in 2004.^[37]

Olan Mills school division was acquired in 1999, as was a major competitor in school photography, T.D. Brown, of Cranston, Rhode Island, which had been in business since 1929. The Richard P. Erickson Scholarship was initiated in 1998 to honor Erickson’s decades of service to the company and to benefit the children and grandchildren of Lifetouch employees.

Current Events: 1997-present

Paul Harmel, who had been appointed CEO in 1997, was named chairman of the board in 2002.

Michael Meek was named CEO in July 2016, with Paul Harmel retained as chairman of the board.^[38]

Flash Digital Portraits became a branded retail concept in 2000.^[39] Flash as a brand is not longer operating, and the higher-end studio photography brand now operates as "Cilento Photography," with eight studios in the United States. ^[40] Joining the Lifetouch family in 2006 was the photography business of Jostens, and in 2011, the photography division of Herff Jones.

In December 2010, the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History received a donation of historic materials from Lifetouch as part of its effort to record the history of photography. The donation included two cameras, a Micro-Z and a TruView, patent drawings and interview with the inventors that complement the museum's collection of some 15,000 pieces of photographic apparatus and more than 200,000 photographs.^[41] A Micro-Z and TruView camera were also placed in the collection of the International Museum of Photography in Rochester, NY.

On November 9, 2011, Lifetouch Inc. announced that it had purchased the remaining assets of Olan Mills Photography, both its church directory and retail studio businesses.^[42] In 2013, Lifetouch purchased many of the assets of shuttered competitor CPI Corp., who had operated retail portrait studios in Sears and WalMart stores.^[43] These assets included the brand PictureME, which has been relaunched as a chromakey-based background replacement family photography concept in some of its retail locations. ^[44]

Philanthropic Partnerships

The Lifetouch Memory Mission® is an annual volunteer trip that provides humanitarian aid to underprivileged communities around the world. Its first venture in 2000 was to war-ravaged Kosovo. Missions have since traveled to Appalachia, Jamaica, land of the Navajo, Haiti, Dominican Republic, and have assisted with Hurricane Katrina, floods in the Dakotas, fires in California and tornadoes across the Midwest.^{[45][46][47][48][49][50]}

Lifetouch and the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC) announced in 2004 a joint national effort to enhance child safety through the Lifetouch SmileSafe Kids® program. Photo identification cards are produced free of charge for every school student Lifetouch photographs. Lifetouch maintains a 24/7 response team to provide images of missing children to NCMEC within minutes. To date, the card has been credited with the safe return of children in 23 states.^[51][52][53]

Additional Lifetouch partners include the Canadian Centre for Child Protection,^[54][55] American Association of School Administrators, National Association of Elementary School Principals,^[56] National Association of Secondary School Principals, and National PTA.^[57]

References

External links

• Official Website