CBI websites generally use certain cookies to enable better interactions with our sites and services. Use of these cookies, which may be stored on your device, permits us to improve and customize your experience. You can read more about your cookie choices at our privacy policy here. By continuing to use this site you are consenting to these choices. Show This article needs additional citations for verification. (March 2018) Lifetouch Inc. is an American-based photography company headquartered in Eden Prairie, Minnesota, with its Canadian operations based in Winnipeg, Manitoba.[2] Eden Prairie, Minnesota United States Key people It was founded as National School Studios (NSS) in 1936 by Eldon Rothgeb and R. Bruce Reinecker and incorporated in March 1948. A subsidiary of Redwood City, California-based Shutterfly Inc., the company provides photography for families, schools, and places of worship; has over 22,000 employees; and operates in all 50 states as well as in Canada. Through Lifetouch Media Productions,[3][4] video support is provided to internal and external customers. Company photography labs are located throughout the United States and Canada. Business units under the corporate umbrella include:
Defunct business units:
Former logo of Lifetouch from 1986 to 2017. Two traveling salesmen, Eldon Rothgeb (1916 – 1972) and R. Bruce Reinecker (1910 – 1987), had worked together for a couple of years for a school photography studio in Kansas City, Missouri. In 1936, in the midst of the Great Depression, they raised $500 and initiated their plan to open their own school photography company, setting up business as National School Studios (NSS), "School Photography of Distinction", in Minneapolis, Minnesota. They chose the Upper Midwest to launch their business, a predominantly rural area with fewer professional photographers and thus potential for greater opportunity.[9][10] By 1939, the NSS had more than a dozen salesmen selling to schools—Reinecker in charge of production and Rothgeb supervising sales—and introduced its first new products, the 3x5 enlargement and 3x5 display folder, neither of which had ever been offered by a school photography company.[9][11] Unusually for the era, salesmen for NSS were paid employees of the company rather than independent contractors. Following World War II in 1945, the founders mortgaged their personal property and stretched the company's credit line to offer approximately 80% of their salesmen (returning veterans) no-interest financing for cars and down payments to buy homes. This drove the company into the red and the bank canceled its line of credit. Nonetheless, by 1946, NSS was one of the largest school photography firms in the country.[12] That same year, NSS moved to a new plant in Minneapolis and began using the first continuous processing equipment in the industry, eliminating hand-processing. The system was adapted from the U.S. Government's "V-mail" system, which printed from a continuous roll of paper, and eliminated the slower single-cut sheets.[13] The new equipment enabled them to add hand-tinted and sepia-tone prints to the product line, which stimulated sales. In 1948, 5x7 enlargements were introduced, the first in the market.[14] By 1949, the sales force was at work in all 48 states.[15] Expansion and transition to employee stock ownership, 1950–1979In the early 1950s, Stanley Merz of the Photo Control Company in Minneapolis, began development of the National School Studios’ Model 10 camera, and in 1952, NSS opened its first plant outside of Minneapolis in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. During that same year, Eastman Kodak developed a new negative process and new photographic paper that streamlined color photo development. With the help of Kodak, NSS developed the school photography industry's first cluster lens printer, making it possible to print multiple photos from a single exposure. NSS was the first to offer full-color (hand-colored) school photos starting in 1956.[16] Package printing and the Model 10 camera, a replacement for the original box camera, were introduced in 1957, the chief advantage of which was a separate film magazine, better lighting control, and better film metering.[17] The company's first color print processor was installed in 1958.[18] During the next decade, the Model 10 evolved into the Photo Control Model 5 camera, which remained the industry standard for the next 20 years. By the 1960s, the National School Studios' markets had expanded to include all 50 states, Puerto Rico, and Canada. New offices and production facilities were built in Bloomington, Minnesota in 1968. That same year, the 8x10 school portrait was introduced to the school photography market, becoming vital to NSS’ success in the late 1960s and early 1970s.[19] Upon the sudden death of founder Eldon Rothgeb in 1972, Richard P. Erickson, a NSS territory manager, was named vice president of sales and marketing to develop plans for consistent growth and profitability.[19] Erickson integrated the company's first two acquisition in 1973 and 1974, respectively—Universal Publications, based in Kansas City, Missouri, a company specializing in school yearbooks; and Prestige Portraits, based in Muncie, Indiana, specializing in senior portraiture.[20][21] NSS also released "Select-A-Pack" in 1974, offering a choice of three different school photo packages rather than one. Erickson was appointed executive vice president in 1976 when Reinecker transitioned to become less active in day-to-day company operations.[22] Paul Harmel, who joined NSS in 1977 as controller, introduced long-range financial plans that moved the company forward, further propelled by Reinecker's decision to reward his employees with an Employee Stock Ownership Trust (ESOT), in 1977. The ESOT was unusual in that it gave employees 100% ownership of the company and transferred ownership without requiring contributions from individual employees.[23][24] Rebranding to "Lifetouch", 1980–1989The National School Studios introduced a prototype of its Micro-Z camera at the July 1980 sales meeting, a system that Richard Erickson had brainstormed with the company's chief design engineer, Tal Hopson, for handling NSS’ information and sales volume. Despite innovations, photographers were reluctant to accept it after using the Model 5 for 15 years. Redesigned four times in five years, Erickson was committed to making the camera work. The major advantage was that data could be applied to negatives in barcode, which Micro-Z printers recognized, automatically printing the correct photo package. It became the camera of choice in 1982. A key component of the company's success was its ongoing dedication to the design and construction of its own cameras.[25][26] Erickson was named president of NSS in November 1980. As part of a new corporate development program, Kinderfoto International, a studio photography company, was acquired in 1983, which pushed NSS into retail marketing and promotion.[27] On August 1, 1984, Erickson announced a new name for the corporation—Lifetouch—saying that the new logo in script "looks like we’re signing our work." Business units, each with separate identities, were rebranded: NSS became Lifetouch National School Studios; Kinderfoto became Lifetouch Portrait Studios; Prestige Portraits became Lifetouch Senior Portraits (now Prestige Portraits); and Universal Publications became Lifetouch Publishing (now Lifetouch Services).[28] In 1986, Lifetouch celebrated its 50th anniversary with sales of nearly 200 million photos annually. Richard Erickson became chairman of the board and CEO of Lifetouch and Paul Harmel was named executive vice president and chief operating officer of Lifetouch National School Studios in 1987. The late 1980s were marked by numerous acquisitions for Lifetouch: National Video Recollections of St. Paul, Minnesota was purchased in 1988; followed by Enterprise School Photos, Inc., a school picture and yearbook vendor in Tulsa, Oklahoma, in 1989.[29] Lifetouch then initiated acquisition of School Pictures Inc. and Portrait World. Acquisitions and expansion, 1990–1999Next in line was Max Ward-Delmar, the leading supplier on the East Coast of undergraduate and senior portrait services, which was purchased in 1990, giving Lifetouch an office and lab in Chesapeake, Virginia. Portrait Industries Corporation, a division of Max Ward-Delmar, gave Lifetouch a stronger presence in the preschool photography market.[29][30] Portrait Industries, Inc. a company based in Mobile, Alabama, that specialized in preschool photography with national accounts such as Kindercare, La Petite, and Childtime, was acquired in the 1990s. In May 1995, United Photographic Industries, a church directory and commercial printing business in Galion, Ohio, was purchased. The following year, Lifetouch celebrated its 60th anniversary and broke ground for Phase I of a new Lifetouch corporate campus in Eden Prairie, Minnesota. Phase II was completed in 2004.[31] Olan Mills' school division, based in Chattanooga, Tennessee, was acquired in 1999, as was a major competitor in school photography, T.D. Brown, of Cranston, Rhode Island, which had been in business since 1929. The Richard P. Erickson Scholarship was initiated in 1998 to honor Erickson's decades of service to the company and to benefit the children and grandchildren of Lifetouch employees. 2000s–presentFlash Digital Portraits became a branded retail concept in 2000,[32] but was eventually discontinued.[33] In 2006, Lifetouch purchased the photography business of Jostens, and in 2011, the photography division of Herff Jones. In December 2010, the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History received a donation of historic materials from Lifetouch as part of its effort to record the history of photography. The donation included two cameras, a Micro-Z and a TruView, patent drawings and interview with the inventors that complement the museum's collection of some 15,000 pieces of photographic apparatus and more than 200,000 photographs.[34] A Micro-Z and TruView camera were also placed in the collection of the International Museum of Photography in Rochester, New York, and in the collection of the Minnesota History Center in Saint Paul, Minnesota. On November 9, 2011, Lifetouch Inc. announced that it had purchased the remaining assets of Olan Mills Photography, which included both its church directory and retail studio businesses.[35] In 2013, Lifetouch purchased many of the assets of shuttered competitor CPI Corp., who had operated retail portrait studios in Sears and Walmart stores.[36] These assets included the brand PictureME, which has been relaunched as a chroma key-based background replacement family photography concept in some of its retail locations.[37] In 2012, Lifetouch patented[38] a new school portrait camera technology called "X1,"[39] which used a custom mirrorless camera and rapid lighting strobes to allow digital replacement of portrait backgrounds without using colored chroma key backgrounds. On January 28, 2017, Lifetouch closed all of the portrait studios that were present in select Target stores.[40] The company was acquired by Shutterfly in 2018 in an all-cash deal valued at $825 million.[41] The Lifetouch Memory Mission is an annual volunteer trip that provides humanitarian aid to underprivileged communities around the world. Its first venture in 2000 was to war-ravaged Kosovo. Missions have since traveled to Appalachia, Jamaica, land of the Navajo, Haiti, Dominican Republic, and have assisted with Hurricane Katrina, floods in the Dakotas, fires in California, and tornadoes across the Midwest.[42][43][44][45][46][47] Lifetouch and the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC) announced in 2004 a joint national effort to enhance child safety through the Lifetouch SmileSafe Kids program. Photo identification cards are produced free of charge for every school student Lifetouch photographs. Lifetouch maintains a 24/7 response team to provide images of missing children to NCMEC within minutes. To date, the card has been credited with the safe return of children in 23 states.[48][49][50] Additional Lifetouch partners include the Canadian Centre for Child Protection,[51][52] American Association of School Administrators, National Association of Elementary School Principals,[53] National Association of Secondary School Principals, and National PTA.[54]
Page 2The contiguous United States or officially the conterminous United States,[1] also known as the Lower 48,[1] consists of the 48 adjoining U.S. states and the District of Columbia on the continent of North America.[2] The terms exclude the non-contiguous states of Alaska and Hawaii and all other offshore insular areas, such as American Samoa, Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands.[3][4] These differ from the related term continental United States, which includes Alaska (also on the North American continent but separated from the 48 states by British Columbia and Yukon of Canada) but excludes the Hawaiian Islands and all U.S. territories in the Caribbean and the Pacific.[1][5] The greatest distance (on a great-circle route) entirely within the 48 contiguous states is 2,802 miles (4,509 km) between Florida and the State of Washington;[6] the greatest north–south line is 1,650 miles (2,660 km).[7] Together, the 48 contiguous states and the District of Columbia occupy an area of 3,119,884.69 square miles (8,080,464.3 km2). Of this area, 2,959,064.44 square miles (7,663,941.7 km2) is contiguous land, composing 83.65% of total U.S. land area, similar to the area of Australia.[8] Officially, 160,820.25 square miles (416,522.5 km2) of the contiguous United States is water area, composing 62.66% of the nation's total water area. The contiguous United States would be placed fifth on the list of countries and dependencies by area. The total area of the country, including Alaska and Hawaii, ranks third or fourth. In land area only, the country ranks fourth, ahead of Brazil and Australia, but behind Russia, Canada and China.[9] Brazil is 431,000 square kilometers (166,000 sq mi) larger than the contiguous United States, but smaller than the entire United States, while Russia, Canada, and maybe China are the only countries larger than both. The 2020 census population of this area was 328,571,074, comprising 99.13% of the nation's population, and a density of 111.04 inhabitants/sq mi (42.872/km2), compared to 93.844/sq mi (36.233/km2) for the nation as a whole.[10] While conterminous U.S. has the precise meaning of contiguous U.S. (both adjectives meaning "sharing a common boundary"), other terms commonly used to describe the 48 contiguous states have a greater degree of ambiguity. Continental and mainland United StatesBecause Alaska is also a part of North America, the term continental United States also includes that state, so the term is qualified with the explicit inclusion of Alaska to resolve any ambiguity.[3][11][12][13] On May 14, 1959, the United States Board on Geographic Names issued the following definitions based partially on the reference in the Alaska Omnibus Bill, which defined the continental United States as "the 49 States on the North American Continent and the District of Columbia..." The Board reaffirmed these definitions on May 13, 1999.[14] However, even before Alaska became a state, it was properly included within the continental U.S. due to being an incorporated territory.[15] The term mainland United States is sometimes used synonymously with continental United States, but technically refers only to those parts of states connected to the landmass of North America, thereby excluding not only Hawaii and overseas insular areas, but also islands which are part of continental states but separated from the mainland, such as the Aleutian Islands (Alaska), San Juan Islands (Washington), the Channel Islands (California), the Keys (Florida), the barrier islands (Gulf and East Coast states), and Long Island (New York).[16] CONUS and OCONUSCONUS, a technical term used by the U.S. Department of Defense, General Services Administration, NOAA/National Weather Service, and others, has been defined both as the continental United States, and as the 48 contiguous states.[17][18] The District of Columbia is not always specifically mentioned as being part of CONUS.[18] OCONUS is derived from CONUS with O for outside added, thus referring to Outside of Continental United States (OCONUS).[17][19] The lower 48The term lower 48 is also used to refer to the conterminous United States. The National Geographic style guide recommends the use of contiguous or conterminous United States instead of lower 48 when the 48 states are meant, unless used in the context of Alaska.[20][21] Almost all of Hawaii is south of the southernmost point of the conterminous United States in Florida. Zone of the InteriorDuring World War II, the first four numbered Air Forces of the United States Army Air Forces (USAAF) were said to be assigned to the Zone of the Interior by the American military organizations of the time—the future states of Alaska and Hawaii, then each only organized incorporated territories of the Union, were respectively covered by the Eleventh Air Force and Seventh Air Force during the war.[citation needed] Residents of Alaska, Hawaii and off-shore U.S. territories have unique labels for the contiguous United States because of their own locations relative to them. AlaskaMap showing Alaska's actual physical relationship with the Lower 48 Alaska became the 49th state of the United States on January 3, 1959. Alaska is on the northwest end of the North American continent, but separated from the rest of the United States West Coast by the Canadian province of British Columbia. The term Lower 48 has, for many years, been a common Alaskan equivalent for "contiguous United States";[22][23] today, many Alaskans use the term "Outside", though a few persons may use "Outside" to refer to any location not within Alaska.[24] HawaiiHawaii (consisting of nearly all the Hawaiian Islands) became the 50th state of the United States on August 21, 1959. It is the southernmost and so far, the latest state to join the Union. Not part of any continent, Hawaii is located in the Pacific Ocean, about 2,200 miles (3,541 km) from North America and almost halfway to Asia. In Hawaii and overseas American territories, for instance, the terms the Mainland or U.S. Mainland are often used to refer to the 49 states in North America.[25][26] Puerto RicoPuerto Rico is an unincorporated territory of the United States located in the northeast Caribbean Sea, approximately 1,000 miles (1,609 km) southeast of Miami, Florida. Puerto Ricans born in Puerto Rico are U.S. citizens and are free to move to the mainland United States. The term Stateside Puerto Rican refers to residents of a U.S. state or the District of Columbia, who were born in or trace family ancestry to Puerto Rico.[27] U.S. Virgin IslandsThe U.S. Virgin Islands is a U.S. territory located directly to the east of Puerto Rico in the Caribbean Sea.[28] The term "stateside" is used to refer to the mainland, in relation to the U.S. Virgin Islands[29] (see Stateside Virgin Islands Americans). American SamoaAmerican Samoa is a U.S. territory located in the South Pacific Ocean in Polynesia, south of the equator — it is 2,200 miles (3,500 km) southwest of Hawaii.[30] In American Samoa, the contiguous United States is called the "mainland United States" or "the states"; those not from American Samoa are called palagi (outsiders).[31] Apart from off-shore U.S. islands, a few continental portions of the contiguous U.S. are accessible by road only by traveling through Canada. Point Roberts, Washington; Elm Point, Minnesota; and the Northwest Angle in Minnesota are three such places. Alburgh, Vermont, is not directly connected by land, but is accessible by road via bridges from within Vermont and from New York.[32] By contrast, Hyder, Alaska is physically part of contiguous Alaska and its easternmost town, but the only practical access is by road through Canada or by seaplane. The 48 contiguous states are:
In addition, the District of Columbia is within the contiguous United States.
Wikivoyage has a travel guide for Contiguous United States.
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