As heavy snow pummeled the North Shore last winter, repeatedly closing BVS Imaging in Albertson, the store’s owner Mike Brody embraced the Internet.
He found a competitor was charging $12 per tape to transfer a customer’s home movies to DVD — so he began offering to do the job for $7.
“Most of my business today comes from eBay and Groupon,” the East Hills resident said.
Brody is 82, soon to be 83, and works seven days a week with his wife Bernhardine out of the garage-turned-workshop at 1167 Willis Ave. where they’ve been since 1994.
In an age of camera phones and selfie sticks, Brody seems unlikely to still be in business. His days of selling cameras and developing film have all but dissipated.
But he’s endured, he said, due to an innate desire to adapt with the evolution of his industry.
“You have to know your business, that’s the most important thing in any business. You have to know what you’re selling,” he said. “And, of course, you have to want to do right by your customers.”
Brody took over the business in 1966, following the death of his stepfather, who ran the former Brody’s Camera in Brooklyn for more than three decades.
Mike moved the business to Long Island in 1971, to a strip mall not far from BVS’ current location, running the full gamut of imaging needs: selling cameras, developing film, doing repair work.
By the 1980s, Brody said BVS was the second highest-selling camera store on Long Island, doing $12 million in business one year that included roughly $9 million in orders placed by mail.
As imaging technology advanced, BVS’s business became more specialized.
Case in point: Once developing film for up to 12 one-hour photo providers in the area, Brody said BVS is rarely tasked with such a job these days.
Instead, Brody said, he has embraced a new role as a filmmaker of sorts, restoring home movies from VHS format to DVD.
“When I do a movie, I do it as if it were my family’s movie,” he said. “I get rid of the black cut screens, I edit it down and add titles. People really seem to enjoy it.”
The shop resembles more of a disheveled museum than retail space, with video and audio tapes stacked about work benches and rows of televisions with the sound cut playing loops of baby’s first steps and summer vacations.
“I’ve seen so many bullfights, you wouldn’t believe it,” Brody said, pointing to one playing out on a screen in the corner of the store. “That one there is probably 50 years old.”
