Kiddie Kandids Reviews

Pros

Love to work with kids, freedom to be an artist, the studio can be run how you see fit as long as you make your metrics.

Cons

Hiring someone to be a professional photographer, and only offering 8.50 with 15 hours a week, means you have bad associates that you must fire or good associates that quit right away. In the end you WILL average over 50 hours a week.

Advice to Senior Management

Make sure your dm emphasizes on recruiting and training. Or you will start missing your family.

Pros

I enjoyed taking pictures of the children. Customers seemed friendly.

Cons

Staff is under trained.
No communication.
District Manager said she'd call to formally offer me position...she never did and asked why I didn't call her...um...because I am not the DM and I cannot offer myself the position. DM also told corporate a different rate of pay than what I was told, difference of .50 per hour.
Staff is unhappy to the maximum, perhaps due to lack of training or pay.
Unobtainable goals. Corporate does not help out this part of their business, they seem to shift all attention and focus to their money making studio brand.
Our studio was scary slow, not even GOD himself could have brought the customers in, the location was smack dab in BACK of a Toys R Us location, nobody in our market had ever heard the name Kiddie Kandids before...smarketing would help.

Advice to Senior Management

DO NOT LIE.
COMMUNICATE....treat your most valuable asset as that.

Pros

Discount on pictures is good

Cons

The corporate environment is not friendly or optimistic. It's always "what you can do better"

Advice to Senior Management

CPI is a horrible company to work for. Less than 20% of the people working for Kiddie Kandids got a raise after a year. Some managers literally only getting a five cent raise. The others that didn't get a raise were not even notified that raises were given and that they did not qualify.

Pros

A Good job/ life balance.

Cons

A poor upper management team.

Advice to Senior Management

Better budgting of funds.

Pros

Wonderful people to work with. Good benefits. Atmosphere in the operations department of continual development of the employees. Great Team atmosphere and excellent customer service.

Cons

Lack of communication via home office to the field. Salary not compatible with other companies at same level of management.

Advice to Senior Management

Should have been open to the ideas and concerns of the field operations teams. Less is more, less management with higher salaries and responsibilities is better than more management with lower salaries.

Pros

People behind the R&D at Kiddie Kandids are very knowledgeable about photography. They stay on top of new technological break throughs in studio photography. Great place to learn.

Cons

Studio photography can be restrictive. Kids aren't easy to capture in film.

Advice to Senior Management

Performance is key! Take pride in your work. The better the results the happier the customer, the happier the management.