Ritz Camera and Proex stores to shut down

Minnesota's four remaining Ritz Camera and Proex Photo stores will be closed amid declining consumer demand and a court-approved bankruptcy liquidation of the 94-year-old retailer.

The decision out of U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Wilmington, Del., followed the inability of parent company Ritz Camera & Image to find a buyer for its 137-store chain, based in Beltsville, Md.

The affected Minnesota stores are in Eden Prairie, St. Paul, Woodbury and Rochester.

Minnesota was once home to as many as 26 Ritz and Proex stores before the consumer shift from film cameras to digital cameras doomed its film-processing business.

"We were disappointed that we couldn't find a bidder to continue the business as a going concern," company attorney Irving Walker told Judge Kevin Goss, according to Bloomberg News. The founding family failed for the second time in three years to turn around the struggling photo chain.

Ritz and Proex suffered a "double whammy" when consumer tastes in photography changed with technology, said Lynn Franz, director of strategic planning for the Minneapolis advertising agency Campbell Mithun.

"When market shifts happen, you have winners and losers," Franz said Tuesday. "Even as consumers went digital and stopped processing film, Ritz still had cameras to sell them. But now the smartphone has become everyone's all-in-one device."

Managers of the Minnesota Ritz and Proex stores said they could not talk to a reporter about a timetable for closing and referred questions to the company's Maryland headquarters.

Ritz headquarters referred inquiries to a independent communications company, which did not immediately respond to e-mail messages seeking comment.

On Sept. 6, Ritz held an auction that was designed to either sell the company as a going concern or sell the right to liquidate the chain through going-out-of-business sales. A partnership of two liquidation companies that have helped close down several U.S. retailers -- Hilco Merchant Resources and Gordon Brothers Retail Partners -- won the auction.