Dealing with the Client Pyramid

I know that many readers of this blog and books are aspiring professionals, so every now and then I like to present a few business-related tips that you might like to try for the rest of this year and into 2024. I haven’t written many business-oriented posts lately, mainly because these tend not to be popular but I’m going to try to push a few of these out on the occasional Sunday. Please let me know if you find these of interest—or not.

Today’s Post by Joe Farace

Some men are like pyramids, which are very broad where they touch the ground, but grow narrow as they reach the sky.”—Henry Ward Beecher

There’s at least one reason why there’s a McDonald’s on every street corner in America and not a Ruth’s Chris Steak House: And that’s because Ray Kroc and the McDonald brothers wanted to sell lots of hamburgers to lots of buyers. The average diner isn’t going to eat Filet Mignon each week but no matter what the economic climate may be, he or she can afford a hamburger from Mickey D’s. Many small photo studios ignore this reality when they fall prey to “carriage trade” envy, which happens when they disregard one of the oldest business realities: The customer income pyramid.

Some photographers—and it doesn’t matter the their size of their operation—make the mistake of chasing big dollars while ignoring smaller sales that are available (by comparison) in greater numbers. I saw this when I lived in Maryland and later when moving to Colorado and openly confess to making this same mistake in both states!

How I Made this shot: Don’t let chasing the almighty dollar stand in the way of remembering why you got into photography in the first place—you love making photographs. I made the original photograph when I was driving through the Old Town section of Albuquerque. I saw these mannequins outside a boutique and knew I had to photograph them. When I got home I realized I needed to create something from the original image file. It turned out my as-captured image wasn’t as great as my previsualization, so I created this version. It was originally shot with an Olympus E5 DSLR and Zuiko Digital 12-60mm f/2.8-4 ED SWD AF lens with an exposure of 1/640 sec at f/10 and ISO 320. You can see the before and after images here and learn how I made the final version,

When competing for the tip of the pyramid, the competition is small but fierce, often with entrenched businesses that hold sway in the market not because of their photographic skills but just as often because of their political and social connections. One trend helping the independent photographer and small photo studios is the gradual disappearance of mall and “store” photography operations that used to siphon bread-and-butter business from the small studio. They’re still out there bit in greatly reduced numbers.

I know a photographer who once dumped most of her smaller customers because she was “embarrassed” to admit to her peers that she was servicing a less prestigious, less affluent clientele but one that happily paid for her services. When her business floundered, she desperately tried to get these same customers back because she was more embarrassed about being broke. It took her three years to build her client base back to a level she destroyed in just a few months by simply cutting these customers loose.

Another studio I know who specialized in Fortune 500 clients created a school photography division that had its own, separate staff. It provided recession-proof income and when tight economic times caused cutbacks from corporate clients; the school division boomed and eventually became more successful than its parent studio. Ray Kroc, it appeared, was right.