Photography Studios NAICS 541921

May 21, 2025 - Slower Growth Forecast

• Sales for the US photography studios industry are projected to rise at a 2.96% CAGR from 2025 to 2029, slower than the overall economy's projected growth, according to a forecast from Inforum and the Interindustry Economic Research Fund, Inc. The professional and technical services sectors are driven by household income and consumer spending, construction spending, and expenditure on IT services. New technologies could support labor productivity gains for the industry. An expected improvement in consumer sentiment in the forecast period bodes well for the sector. A factor that may limit consumer spending is higher tariffs on consumer goods. Lower inflation supports a moderate increase of real disposable income by about 2% in 2025 and 1.9% in 2026. Real income could suffer to an extent if average prices rise due to tariff implementation.
• According to the Wedding Business Survey Q2, nearly 40% of wedding vendors, including photographers and videographers, said their business is financially worse off compared to a year ago. Asked about their bookings for the full year 2025, nearly half of the surveyed vendors said their bookings for events, services, and product orders were trending lower than normal, with 26% of vendors reporting bookings that were “much less than normal,” reflecting a decline of 25% or more. About 21.2% of vendors said bookings were about the same as normal, and 23.6% were slightly or moderately more than normal. Vendors were asked to estimate how much they’d seen couples cut their wedding guest counts and their overall wedding budgets. About half saw a decline in wedding guest counts, with 28.5% seeing declines of 10% to 25%, while half saw a decline in budgets, with 27.3% having a 10% to 25% decrease. Top business challenges were getting leads (23.6%), converting leads into sales (23%), couples delaying commitments (15.2%), rising costs of operations (14.5%), and pricing pressure from competition (7.9%). Other challenges written in by respondents included “ghosting” by potential customers, rising costs, iPhones wreaking havoc on the industry, and the “current global economic uncertainty.”

• Photography studios may see costs of equipment, including cameras, lighting, and tripods, rise under new tariffs from the Trump administration. President Donald Trump has enacted numerous tariffs in recent months, including new tariffs on imports from China, a tariff on imported steel and aluminum, reciprocal tariffs on 90 nations, and tariffs on imports from Canada and Mexico. According to a report in Digital Camera World, photographers may need to be concerned about an increase in camera prices due to the tariffs depending on where their cameras are made. While a majority of high-quality camera brands including Canon and Nikon are based in Japan and Europe, a number of more affordable cameras and many third-party lens manufacturers are located in China, per the report. China is also a key source for lighting equipment and camera support equipment like monopods and tripods used by photographers.
• An indicator of discretionary spending, consumer confidence levels fell in April 2025 month over month, dropping by 7.9 points, according to the Consumer Confidence Index from the Conference Board. Consumer confidence levels have fallen for five consecutive months, reaching levels not seen since the beginning of the COVID pandemic, according to The Conference Board, which publishes the monthly index. In addition, the final index of consumer sentiment from the University of Michigan dropped 8% in April 2025 from the previous month, according to CFO Dive. An index measuring consumers’ expectations for the future fell nearly a third since January, the steepest three-month percentage decline since the 1990 recession. According to survey director Joanne Hsu, “Consumers perceived risks to multiple aspects of the economy, in large part due to ongoing uncertainty around trade policy and the potential for a resurgence of inflation looming ahead.”