Announcement: Calypso Imaging is Closing

I received this this morning via e-mail...

"...The current business environment is tough in a way I have never seen before. The vast majority of our competitors are long gone from the market place, driven out by technological improvements and the ease of entry into inkjet printing, the rapid demise of film, constant downward pricing, and the general lack of discretionary income."

"Calypso closing schedule:

1. Our last production day will be February 5. Whatever work we have in house will be completed by Friday the 5th provided we have the materials on hand with which to produce it. If you would like any files returned to you please send us $10 and we will burn your files to DVD and ship them to you by ground. (Want them sooner and safer add $10 and we will send them FedEx saver.) We are working on an arrangement with a lab of comparable quality to transition your work to and will let you know the details when we have them."

If you have any pending orders, etc., you should make contact with them if you haven't already been notified.

This is really very unfortunate.

--P

Thats too bad to hear. This economy has been tough on a lot of businesses especially those involved in the arts. I know the Monterey/Carmel area has been hit hard as well. A good friend of mine was an executive with Thomas Kinkade and recently was layed off amoung many others. Forutantely he was able to land a job over here where I work with the DoD.

I have been happy so far with another Santa Cruz printer - Bay Photo. Hopefully they will survive this current downturn. I know most print houses have been offering all kinds of incentives, specials, etc... just to stimulate more sales and business.

Derek

That is unfortunate. They had great customer service and I liked their prints.

They are nice folks, and seem OK about retiring. Now, who's going to pickup that Tango Drum scanner?

Seemed inevitable after their classroom closed not too long ago. Too bad.

I saw David's post in the GD forum this morning on this Preston. Overall there's been plenty of down turn in the entire economy, and no doubt smaller personally owned businesses have a really tough time of it. Once again, this is sad & bad news to hear.

Yikes, I had no idea, and I work right next door to Calypso. I'll have to talk to my friend that works there tomorrow. Very sad.

For years they grew their fine art niche business at the modest building on Walsh Avenue. I used them for all my E6 processing during those years because of their very consistent quality and enjoyed dropping off and picking up my film directly without having to deal with possibly losing important film in the black hole of mail shipments. And later all my Lightjet 5000 printing because they were maybe the first years ago to figure out how to deliver consistent prints from digital files due to their very tight controls without requiring guide prints. After they moved to Santa Cruz in part to see how they were doing, I would occasionally pick up material by driving the 30 miles over the hill and it was obviously becoming a struggle to be profitable in their niche market. As Joe related, the increasing digital camera presence in imaging has increasingly made it difficult to make a profit processing film. And professional inkjet usage has continually dwindled what had been a considerable professional base of clients. I still prefer Fuji Crystal Archive prints to the new high longevity inkjet medias mainly because that media is so much more robust.

Best of luck Joe and Barbara!