Jon, why do you say that the labs survive only because they are not also running a studio?
That's not quite my meaning. What I'm saying is that in smaller markets most labs are also studios - so as a professional photographer they are your lab (if you use them) but they may also be your competition. While that may not cause them to do anything overt, it creates a conflict of interest and my experience has been that it always leads to poor service.
Around here, the labs may not directly compete with you on skills or service (depends upon how your market yourself, differentiate your business) but they certainly try to compete on price. They also don't tend to be very sophisticated when it comes to image use or rights.
So, while these smaller market labs may start adding services, as has happened here (e.g. large format printing for corporate clients, mounting, etc.,) I can't see them adding digital post-production for photographers as Doug described (editing, color correction, contacts, retouching, archiving) and pro's being comfortable with it. I'll go into the "why" of that below.
Also, who is the lab's "our client" if your're not?
Labs that also have their own in-house photo studio tend to view their photo clients as
their clients, not the pro photographers who come in.
There were three local labs, all touting custom professional service, when I moved here from NYC. All three also had their own in-house photography studios (still-life, architecture, corporate, to adv. work.) I tried each one and suffered through missed deadlines, stupid mistakes on their part which never should have passed the production person, etc. - and when confronting them would be told, "we got backed up with our own clients, sorry," or "our clients' deadlines take priority."
It was the complete opposite of the attitude of the labs in NYC. They knew the photographers were their clients.
