Youth Sports Portrait Business Makes a Pretty Picture

Some people fill their shelves with cute photos of kids in Little League uniforms and prom dresses.

John McLaughlin fills a warehouse.

As president and owner of Group Photographers Assn. in this Spokane suburb, McLaughlin operates one of the nation’s largest wholesale processing laboratories of youth sports portraits, kids’ trading cards and other photographic products.

The San Francisco 49ers fan employs 75 people year-round--and another 90 during the peak of spring sports--who annually process 1 million negatives of fresh-faced kids.

“We do magic,” McLaughlin says as a 500-foot roll of photographic paper with portraits of the next Michael Jordan, Kerri Strug and Alexi Lalas cascades toward a finishing table.

McLaughlin’s 24-year-old company expects to reach a record $6 million in sales this year, despite spinning off its retail photo studio, Leo’s Photography, early in 1996. Group Photographers posted $5.3 million in revenue last year, paying out $2.4 million in wages.

The brusque, 56-year-old McLaughlin says he has recruited more than 60 new clients this year, boosting his customer list to 450 photo studios from Hawaii to Maine. The growth has McLaughlin and his vice president and wife, Wendee McLaughlin, considering a move out of their 25,000-square-foot plant into a larger building.

Future plans call for acquisition of an $800,000 digital press, which would handle a growing demand for personal trading cards, magazine covers and other products that require computer-generated images. Group Photographers’ staff uses 10 high-priced Silicon Graphics Inc. computers to scan photo negatives into the computer and reproduce a clear, lifelike digital image.

“The next step we take has to be a quantum leap to separate us from the rest,” McLaughlin says.

Group Photographers combines two of the things which McLaughlin loves--sports and business.

As a first baseman in 1958 for Hingham High School south of Boston, McLaughlin caught the eye of professional scouts who invited him to try out for the Washington Senators and Boston Red Sox.

But, convinced he would languish in the minor leagues, McLaughlin declined the offer and pursued a career in finance. Settling in California, McLaughlin got the idea for a photo-processing business while coaching youth football. He and a friend created a photo plaque to give to the players at the end of the season, and an idea was born.

“Everybody loved them, so I pursued it,” McLaughlin said. “But I didn’t know anything about photo processing.”

From an 800-square-foot office, McLaughlin founded Group Photographers in 1973 and learned the trade on the job. At first, there was plenty of time to learn.

“We took naps on the couch, waiting for orders to come in,” Wendee McLaughlin recalls.

But as youth sports organizations began to make team photos an essential part of their program, Group Photographers’ business boomed. Photographers discovered it was easier to ship their negatives to a wholesale processing lab than to handle reams of negatives themselves.

“Photographers send their negatives here,” McLaughlin says, “because we can capture more dollars per kid.”

Against his family’s wishes, McLaughlin moved the company in 1993 from Ventura, Calif., to Spokane when he acquired Leo’s in a venture designed to expand his retail business.

Leo’s, McLaughlin says, was his biggest failure and has done much better under owner Jim Nelson, former marketing manager at Group Photographers.

“John was not a people person, whatsoever, but he took risks and wasn’t afraid to go out on the edge,” Nelson says. “That can be both a strength and a downfall.”

The McLaughlins made the adjustment from sunny skies to ice storms in part by clinging to some of their old interests.

McLaughlin still holds 49ers season tickets and attends nearly every home game. The South Hill couple vacation in Hawaii in the winter and retreat to their Priest Lake cabin in the summer.

McLaughlin serves on the Spokane Community College Foundation board; Wendee McLaughlin is on the Civic Theatre board.