Ritz Camera & Image is a photographic retail and photofinishing specialty store, headquartered in Beltsville, Maryland. The company currently owns and operates a chain of approximately 300 locations throughout the United States. While the company has maintained the names of other retailers it has acquired such as Wolf Camera, Kit’s Camera, Inkley’s, The Camera Shop, Inc., Cameras West, and PROEX, the stores are all owned and operated by Ritz Camera (officially now known as Ritz Camera & Image, LLC). Ritz Camera & Image (the retail stores) were affiliated with marine and boat supply store Boaters World, until the chain was liquidated during bankruptcy.

History

The family-owned company (Ritz Camera Centers, Inc., predecessor in interest to Ritz Camera & Image, LLC) was founded as a portrait studio in 1918 by Benjamin Ritz, in the Ritz Hotel Atlantic City, New Jersey. In 1936, Benjamin and his brother Edward opened the first Ritz film-processing lab in Washington, DC. Ritz Camera is currently headed by Edward's son, David Ritz.

Ritz Camera Centers, Inc. owed much of its expansion to the acquisition of its competitors. Ritz Camera's largest acquisition was Wolf Camera, which it acquired out of bankruptcy in 2001. Wolf Camera's financial difficulty was largely due to its own unprofitable $64.5 million acquisition of the 450-store Fox Photo chain from Eastman Kodak.

Wolf Camera had grown to approximately 700 locations, half of which had been closed by the time it was acquired by Ritz.

After the acquisition of Wolf Camera, Ritz Camera Centers claimed nearly 1,200 camera store locations. Due to the decline of film and with the strained economy, the company closed a number of stores between 2002 and 2005. The company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on February 22, 2009.