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mats and frames to choose from. Framing is represented as a craft, requiring skill and
experience, and the shop employees who perform this service have gone through
special training. The greater degree of choice and reliance on specialized skill raises
the quality of this product – the individually framed print – and distinguishes it from
the standardized mass production of Gallerix’s other offerings. Elsewhere in the shop,
employees were reluctant to offer customers advice on their selections, but they felt
free to make suggestions on the choice of a frame or the colour and width of matt.
Whereas selecting a card or print was seen as a question of personal taste, and was
therefore outside the employee’s remit, framing a print required expertise, and in this
area the trained employee was seen as more knowledgeable than the customer.
Still, there were obvious limitations to the degree of individual service offered.
Frames in prefabricated formats and styles dominated, and even if it was possible to
order customized variants, the stock of profiles was considerably smaller than in the
largest specialized art-framing shops elsewhere in the city.
The individualized services available in the photographic shops had a somewhat
different character. Many communications and public relations companies are
located in Solna, and according to the manager of the local Kodak shop, these
provide a substantial part of their business. When a ‘pro’ (the term reserved for these
key customers) entered the shop, the manager stopped whatever else he was doing to
talk to him. The individualized service this customer received could include ordering
of special products not available in the standard assortment, or advice about the latest
products on the market. The ‘pro’ might also show or describe some new product or
development to the shop manager. It was significant that all the customers identified
as ‘pros’ were men. These conversations had the character of an exchange of infor-
mation between equals, mutually confirming each other’s status and shared enthu-
siasm for new techniques with joking references to ‘toys for boys’. Other
individualized customer services, such as advice about buying a new camera, or
handling complaints about print quality, could be carried out by other shop
employees; only the ‘pros’ were on a first-name basis with the manager.
The clearly identified group of photographic ‘pros’ was, nevertheless, an exception
to the shops’ descriptions of their circle of customers. All identified their customers
as a broad, even all-encompassing group – ‘everyone from a relative of the royal
family to a homeless guy’, according to the Fuji Photo Gang shop manager. Gallerix’s
target group is defined as both women and men, from teenagers up through middle
age. On closer inspection, however, the majority of customers in all of these shops
were women. Women accounted for the largest number of purchases, if not for the
largest volume of sales. The ‘typical’ photographic shop customer was the mother
who dropped off her film and ordered triple prints, one for each grandmother and
one to keep for the family album. Gallerix’s display of ‘trend artists’ to the exclusion
of classic prints is intended to appeal to the younger middle-aged target group, and
we assume, primarily to women who often carry the main responsibility for home
decoration. Retired customers’ purchases are almost exclusively confined to greetings
cards for special occasions.

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