Fox Photo Inc. was an American chain of photo stores, which sold

camera A camera is an instrument used to capture and store images and videos, either digitally via an electronic image sensor, or chemically via a light-sensitive material such as photographic film. As a pivotal technology in the fields of photograp ...

s, photographic equipment and developed film. The Fox company started as a small

photo studio A photographic studio is often a business owned and represented by one or more photographers, possibly accompanied by assistants and pupils, who create and sell their own and sometimes others’ photographs. History Since the early years of th ...

by a man named Arthur C. Fox in

San Antonio San Antonio ( ; Spanish for " Saint Anthony") is a city in the U.S. state of Texas and the most populous city in Greater San Antonio. San Antonio is the third-largest metropolitan area in Texas and the 24th-largest metropolitan area in the ...

, Texas. Carl Newton, a Canadian, moved to San Antonio and purchased the studio at the end of 1909 for $700 (), as amateur photography was in its infancy. Newton began what by 1920 was the largest mail order photofinishing business in the world. Through acquisitions and mergers Fox Photo became Fox-Stanley Photo Products Inc. when it merged with the Stanley company in 1961. Carl Newton Jr. along with Stanley Wurtz of Stanley Photo (St. Louis based) expanded their primarily photofinishing based company to 23 states and eventually traded the public company stock on the

NYSE The New York Stock Exchange (NYSE, nicknamed "The Big Board") is an American stock exchange in the Financial District, Manhattan, Financial District of Lower Manhattan in New York City. It is the List of stock exchanges, largest stock excha ...

.Harvard Business School, Baker Library,Lehman Brothers Collection, http://www.library.hbs.edu/hc/lehman/chrono.html?company=fox_stanley_photo_products_inc

Fox Photo operated retail stores and large commercial photofinishing plants where many large retail companies, including Wal-Mart, Target, K-Mart, and Walgreens along with many small drug stores sent their customer's photos to be processed. Perhaps the most visible consumer-level facet of Fox Photo was the chain of one-hour processing booths that were established in shopping mall parking lots in the early-to-mid-1980s. These competed directly with the photo booths of

Fotomat Fotomat was an American retail chain of photo development drive-through kiosks located primarily in shopping center parking lots. Fotomat Corporation was founded by Preston Fleet in San Diego, California, in the 1960s, with the first kiosk open ...

. In the chase scene(s) in ''

Back to the Future ''Back to the Future'' is a 1985 American science fiction film directed by Robert Zemeckis and written by Zemeckis and Bob Gale. It stars Michael J. Fox, Christopher Lloyd, Lea Thompson, Crispin Glover, and Thomas F. Wilson. Set in 1985 ...

'', the

Libya Libya, officially the State of Libya, is a country in the Maghreb region of North Africa. It borders the Mediterranean Sea to the north, Egypt to Egypt–Libya border, the east, Sudan to Libya–Sudan border, the southeast, Chad to Chad–L ...

n terrorists crash their van into a Fox Photo booth at the Twin Pines/Lone Pine Mall. Fox Stanley Photo Products Inc. was sold to

Kodak The Eastman Kodak Company, referred to simply as Kodak (), is an American public company that produces various products related to its historic basis in film photography. The company is headquartered in Rochester, New York, and is incorporated i ...

in 1986. In 1987 Kodak sold the retail stores to interests whose principal was Carl Newton III. The large photofinishing plants were retained by Kodak and spun off to a Kodak company named

Qualex Qualex Inc. was the largest wholesale and on-site photographic processing company in the world. It was formed in March 1988 as a joint venture between Eastman Kodak and Fuqua Industries, but became a wholly owned subsidiary of Kodak in 1994. It was ...

. Carl Newton III ran the retail stores branded as Fox Photo and continued the transition from camera stores and small drive up photo kiosks to Fox Photo One Hour Labs. In 1991, Fox Photo was sold to St. Louis based CPI Corporation. CPI ran a division of retail one hour photo lab locations named, CPI Photo Finish. CPI continued to operate locations under both names until 51 percent of this CPI division was sold to Kodak in 1999. The new company was named Fox Photo Inc. Kodak secured the remainder of the company from CPI Corp. one year later, only to sell Fox Photo to

Wolf Camera The wolf (''Canis lupus''; : wolves), also known as the grey wolf or gray wolf, is a canine native to Eurasia and North America. More than thirty subspecies of ''Canis lupus'' have been recognized, including the dog and dingo, though grey ...

Atlanta Atlanta ( ) is the List of capitals in the United States, capital and List of municipalities in Georgia (U.S. state), most populous city in the U.S. state of Georgia (U.S. state), Georgia. It is the county seat, seat of Fulton County, Georg ...

Georgia, in 2001. The name Fox Photo vanished, when all of the stores were re-branded to Wolf Camera. Wolf Camera went bankrupt in 2001 and was purchased by Beltsville, MD based

Ritz Camera Ritz Camera & Image (formerly Ritz Camera Centers) is a photographic retail and photofinishing specialty store, headquartered in Edison, New Jersey. The company owns and used to operate a chain throughout the United States under the names Wolf Ca ...

. Ritz Camera filed for bankruptcy and was sold to a group of investors under the name RCI (Ritz Camera & Image) in 2009 and re-organized to a fraction of their stores, which once numbered at well over 1,000.

References

{{Reflist Photographic retailers Photography companies of the United States Companies formerly listed on the New York Stock Exchange 1961 mergers and acquisitions 1986 mergers and acquisitions 1987 mergers and acquisitions 1991 mergers and acquisitions 2001 mergers and acquisitions 2009 mergers and acquisitions