Anna Strauss poses in her Violet Photo Shop by photos of her young son, Michael Wayne. Click to enlarge.
photo by John Wilson
Chattanooga was temporarily without a downtown full-service photo shop, but Anna Strauss is bringing it back to life.
She said the customer base is returning to the long-familiar site at East Seventh between Market and Cherry.
Ms. Strauss, who was manager of the store when the Ritz chain closed it, decided to leave Ritz and strike out on her own.
She said, "I knew the store's potential and I knew my customers.
"It was really a shame to close the store. There was no place left downtown to go to get quality pictures."
Ms. Strauss said she crafted a business plan and found some investors. Then she "worked my heart out" to get Violet Photo Shop back open.
It opened July 1, though the official grand opening will be held later.
Ms. Strauss is not a native Chattanoogan - far from it. She was born at Strzegom, Poland. Her father, Ted Kornecki, is an environmental engineer who went to America on a work visa when she was a child. That was when the Solidarity movement broke out in Poland, and the family was separated from the father for five years.
She and her younger brother were finally able to join the father in the U.S. They lived all over - West Virginia, Kentucky, Oklahoma, Louisiana, Florida.
She took a position with Ritz in Louisiana, then got transferred to the Chattanooga store.
As she drove into town, she said, "I saw the beautiful mountains, and I said this is where I want to live. I love Chattanooga."
She had earlier gotten an associate degree at a community college in Orlando. She heard about the Covenant College Quest program and signed up for it.
She said getting a business management degree through Quest "was the best experience of my life."
Ms. Strauss says she has regained about half of the former photo shop customers.
She has big plans for improvements, including a system whereby customers can order photos over the Internet though the Violet Photo Shop website that is now being built.