Rosen Enterprises

Rosen Enterprises, Ltd. was an import business founded by David Rosen which ran from 1953 to 1965.

History

From 1949 to 1952, Rosen was deployed with the U.S. Air Force in eastern Asia for the Korean War, traveling to China and South Korea before being stationed in Okinawa. After the war, Rosen returned to New York for a short period of time, as he had actually established "Rosen Enterprises" in Japan before he was discharged and had the idea of furthering that company's interest in the United States. However, he returned to Japan before having such an opportunity.

Rosen Enterprises focused on art; he hired artists who were unemployed by the post-War recession in Japan to create portrait paintings based off photographs. A company in the United States was established to do this as a business whereby the photos would be sent back to Japan, the portraits would be done and the company would send the photo. That business met with mixed results. However, Rosen noticed a problem in the Japanese market: the need for identification photos.

Photorama

At the time, citizens virtually needed an ID photo for school applications, for rice ration cards, for railway cards, and for employment. Photo studios in 1953-1954 generally charged 250 yen and it took 2 or 3 days to have the photos taken. To contrast, in the United States, automated "photomat" studios where people could go sit in a booth and pay 25 cents for four photos were popular. In testing those photos, Rosen found that they would not be suitable for ID photos because after a year or two years, the photos would fade due to a lack of good temperature control. The machines didn't have the temperature control because people really weren't interested in getting a photo that was going last for two years. Therefore, he determined that if the process had better temperature control, a photo could be made that would last for several years. His solution was to make a semiautomatic photomat where the machine would take the photo, but would have somebody in a booth behind the photomat who would develop the film with the proper temperature controls.

Therefore, Rosen took some of the older photomat booths that were in the United States,redesigned them and brought them into Japan in the beginning of 1954. Called "Photorama," these booths charged from 150 to 200 yen—less than the 250 photographers charged, and had photos developed in two to three minutes. In Japanese, these booths were called "ifrum sashi," or "two minute photo." The Photorama booths were successful and within a year over 100 booths had been installed throughout Japan. It was not unusual at different times of the year—there were different times when people would go through school applications, etc.—that the line to get into the booth would be an hour long.

Photorama booths were successful to the degree that the conventional photo studios became unhappy about the success that they were having because it was affecting their business. One day, Rosen got a call from the American Consulate saying that there was a minor demonstration going on regarding what they considered to be American unfairness in this particular business. After this even, Rosen worked out one of the earliest franchising deals in Japan by agreeing to make the system that he had developed available. Rosen Enterprises would supply the film to them on a franchise basis and they could use the Photoramas. Roughly another 100 booths were opened on that basis.

Later, with increased competition in the photo booth industry, Rosen Enterprises shut down their Photorama division in the early 1960s.