With a new CMO and CEO there's promise
Pros
With the recent hires of a new CEO and CMO, Adorama seems to be reconciling the former division between its local store and its national online operation. Under the previous store manager, many initiatives were started to engage the NYC local photography community that had previously been ignored by the national marketing team. Fortunately the new CMO recognizes what benefit there is to integrating locally sourced content and connections on a national level and the marketing for Adorama has improved significantly in recent years. Secondly, under the former store manager, there were a lot of initiatives to update and keep the store current. While he was met with a lot of resistance, it looks like the new CEO has started making substantial leeway there. A recent visit to the store (now as a former employee) has shown that the new CEO has taken strides where the former store manager was previously unable to due to an entrenched upper management. All in all, Adorama was a difficult but rewarding place to work in the years that I was there (2012 to 2016). While I have chosen to pursue career opportunities in Los Angeles, I do sometimes wonder how much my life would've changed had I stayed at Adorama with the new upper management as they were making significant changes to the management culture just as I was leaving.
Cons
These cons may be a bit out of date now, but here they are: - a stubborn upper management makes raises and wage discussions difficult - during my time, the greatest obstacle to effective change was the COO. Between his sporadic communication and his unwillingness to be held accountable for his verbal commitments, he made establishing and maintaining local relationships with photographic communities a craps shoot - before I left the company there was a marked divide in resources and care provided to the local store and the national marketing of the company - a severe lack of appropriate customer service at times
