Retro Camera: how father and son serve analogue photographers across Europe from Ypres

From photo studio to European webshop

Retro Camera's story begins in the eighties, when father Kurt finished his photography studies. He did reportage work, had his own studio and opened a store in Poperinge, which later moved to a bigger building in Ypres. When digital photography took off in the early 2000s, the store went along with it, but unlike many other photo stores there was always a range of film, chemicals and darkroom supplies on the shelves.

Around 2015 Jeroen, then in his early twenties, found an old Bronica, a medium format camera, in the cupboard of his father's studio. "The craft behind analogue photography really got to me," he says. "And when I went looking for supplies online, I saw there was a blind spot: a webshop where you could still find everything for analogue photography."

He started a webshop with a small range, right when instant photography was seeing a huge revival. Young people rediscovered the medium: the unique colours, the limitations, the craft of arriving at a photo. Today Retro Camera serves two large customer groups: a younger audience who occasionally get the camera out, and professional photographers and artists who deliberately choose analogue. "I think by now we can say we are one of the big players in Europe," says Jeroen.

The division of tasks between father and son has grown clear: Kurt takes care of purchasing, logistics and shipping, Jeroen builds the webshop, the product pages, the marketing and the range.

Before Tilroy: three systems that didn't talk to each other

Growth brought to the surface a problem many retailers will recognise. The POS and the accounting package Bob 50 were linked, but the webshop was completely separate.

"All orders that came into our webshop had to be processed manually again in the POS system, and from there booked through to the accounting," says Jeroen. "At some point you reach a certain size, and then that manual work has to go. Wherever there is human intervention, mistakes always happen. And you are stuck with duplicate data that doesn't talk to each other."

Inventory was a pain point too: what was sold in the store wasn't known in the webshop and vice versa.

One system, one inventory, one customer

The search for a solution had a clear list of requirements. "We really were looking for one system," says Jeroen. "One inventory for store and webshop. One customer profile, whether the customer comes into the store or orders online. And sales that flow automatically into the accounting. That was our biggest question, and we found the answer at Tilroy."

Today everything runs on that integrated foundation. "That is still one of your biggest strengths," says Jeroen. "A physical store and a webshop that are fully integrated, with a link to the accounting that is spot on."

A product is created once and is immediately available in the webshop and at the checkout. On the customer profile you immediately see all data, regardless of where the customer bought. "That saves a lot of time," says Jeroen. "The accounting hardly needs any manual intervention: from POS or online order to invoice to accounting, it runs automatically. Even the payments are reconciled automatically."

VAT for all of Europe, without headaches

Retro Camera delivers to photographers across the European Union. That means: local VAT rates per country under the OSS scheme, intra community deliveries to professional photographers with a VAT number, partnerships with schools in Belgium, France and the Netherlands, and even a different rate within its own range: 21% on almost everything, 6% on books.

Sounds complex? "It's not rocket science, but it has to be set up carefully once," Jeroen puts it into perspective. "You create the VAT rates per country in Tilroy, and then they are applied correctly and automatically, depending on the delivery address and customer type. Once that is set up right, hardly any intervention is needed. The regimes are recognised correctly and invoicing runs correctly."

A tight order flow with a team of two

The order volume demands a tight workflow: an incoming order appears in the tasks in Tilroy, the products are picked, partly from a second warehouse for larger volumes, packed and shipped via the Sendcloud integration, mainly with DPD.

The duo handles peak periods effortlessly. "Capacity has never been a problem," says Jeroen. And the beauty of their niche: there is a product for every season. In summer film sells, in September the developing supplies come, in the winter months people scan and print, and the school partnerships create peaks at the start of every school year. Promotions for Black Friday or a sale are set up quickly: "There are lots of options to set up campaigns quickly."

In the warehouse, too, Tilroy makes the difference: with the mobile scanners, stock counts and goods receipt are a lot more efficient. "When receiving goods you walk through the warehouse with the scanner: you scan a product and immediately see how many you have left and what you need to reorder. That is used a lot."

His advice to other specialised webshops that are hesitating?

Ready for the next step

Retro Camera's ambition is clear: to become even more of a household name in the small but lively world of analogue photography, and to keep growing in European markets. "There is certainly still room for growth," Jeroen concludes. "Here and there we can still optimise and fine tune. We know what we want, and we will keep doing what we are doing."