Printing & Archival | Rental | New & Used Gear Article about CameraMall featured on Amazon.com
Written by David Quigg, Amazon.com
It was springtime of Desmond Kolean-Burley's senior year when he and his mom drove down to a little photo lab to order graduation announcements. Desmond looked around the shop, liked what he saw, and asked the owner if he was hiring. Owner Craig Kufta said no, they didn't have any openings, and that would have been the end of it, but he second-guessed himself. There was just something about this kid. As a dad himself, Craig couldn't help paying close attention to the interactions between the parents and teenagers who passed through his doors as graduation approached. "The high-school students typically get kind of impatient," he says. So Desmond really stood out that day in 2010. "Basically, Desmond was nice to his mother, and you don't see that every day," Craig remembers. When Desmond returned to pick up his graduation announcements, Craig followed his instincts and handed him a job application. Desmond got hired, excelled on the job, enjoyed himself, and earned a standing offer to come back when he got home from his freshman year at the University of Michigan. Around this time, Craig read an article about small businesses reaching new customers by selling on Amazon. This fresh idea reached Craig at a time when the trend of people using phones, tablets, and other screens to look at their photos meant "there wasn't a lot of optimism abounding" for labs like his. Desmond says, "I came home for the summer, and Craig asked me if I would start an Amazon store for him." They named the store CameraMall and sold photo gear – both new and used. Amazon customers liked their offerings, and soon "we really saw that the sky was the limit," Desmond says. Best of all, CameraMall could be run from anywhere, so Desmond kept working his "summer" job all year. "I had to leave class sometimes to take customer calls," he remembers. "If it was during an exam, I'd let it go to my voicemail, with an outgoing message saying how important the call was." He managed to take great care of customers and make the Dean's List at the same time. As the end of college approached, Desmond and Craig realized that their online sales gave them such a solid base that they could afford to take the risk of opening a little brick-and-mortar CameraMall right in the University of Michigan's hometown. They went for it, officially became business partners, and got a warm welcome from Ann Arbor's photography-lovers. Their online business and their little camera shop are working in even greater harmony than they dreamed. Consider the couple who came in recently, bought a camera, and returned unsatisfied a full month later, right on the eve of leaving for a big trip to Ireland. "The husband was wound up, thinking he would have to argue with us," Desmond says sympathetically. "They were expecting us to give them a lot of trouble for returning the camera." After all, the camera had been used for a month. Craig and Desmond couldn't just shine it up, put it back in a box, and sell it as new. "But with Amazon, we have the confidence to know that we can accept a return and sell it in used condition, quickly. The husband and wife were so relieved that they decided to give us a second try. They bought another camera and left for Ireland two days later. This afternoon, the husband stopped in to show me some pictures from the trip. We earned two wonderful customers who will continue to give us business because they're confident we'll take care of them."
