I had an ad hoc meeting with Freestyle's Senior VP of Merchandising and Marketing, Eric Joseph, last March at the SPE national convention and he made it clear that Freestyle will remain committed to continuing their support of sensitized photographic supplies as their primary business strategy, simply because that is their niche and that business segment is their strong suite of product sales. He also added it would be irrational and very difficult for Freestyle to try and compete in the digital product arena.
So if you like Freestyle keep supporting them with your purchases.
Freestyle is a great company with excellent products at good prices. However, when you add in the shipping and handling charges to Canada, there is usually no cost advantage compared to buying locally. So now I buy from Freestyle when they have something I can't get locally, and will usually add in some film and Arista paper since it doesn't add much to the original shipping charge. However, I can only buy "locally" when I have another reason for visiting that city, a 5 hour round trip.
Cheap B&W film, that's why I keep coming back!
I have used Freestyle for years. When I am on the West Coast, I use them for paper and chemicals. On occasion I have them ship to Virginia, but I found that Adorama and B&H are more price competitive for film.
Nothing beats a great piece of glass!
I leave the digital work for the urologists and proctologists.
Yeah shipping expenses have become a major issue for buyers and sellars in the past few years, ever spiraling upward. Having their operation HQ'ed on the left coast probably impacts their sales.
Still they have good prices on some products and products other vendors don't supply so as always I've tried to spread my purchases around as appropriate.
I think these days I am about evenly split between Freestyle and B&H. Freestyle I find better for darkroom supplies. For me B&H has the advantage that UPS ground is basically next-day service, and the UPS guy always leaves a box without signature. Expensive stuff I have shipped to my office. There's a Calumet store a couple of blocks from my house, but I hardly ever buy anything there; their in-store inventory isn't that great. They're supposed to be moving to a bigger space, but I'd guess that'll mean more digital stuff.
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