“Just a decade ago, having a photo booth at a wedding reception was a novelty,” he says.
Savickis attributes the recent booth boom to social media, love of the selfie and what many in the business call the fun factor. Attendance has grown from 1,300 in 2015 to a projected 4,000 expected at the Westgate Las Vegas Resort, March 8–11, 2018. Three years later, Savickis founded Photo Booth Expo, an educational program and trade show for the photo booth industry. He realized the potential and added photo booth rentals to his DJ service.
A longtime professional in the entertainment industry, he was introduced to digital photo booths in 2011. Rob Savickis of Niagara Falls, Ontario, is one of the leading entrepreneurs driving this new business. Today, savvy entrepreneurs have brought about sweeping new growth in the classic photo booth industry by incorporating the latest in social media and imaging trends. Josepho opened the Photomaton Studio on Broadway in New York City, where four curtained-off photo booths delivered a strip of eight photos to customers in about eight minutes. In the U.S., Russian immigrant Anatol Josepho patented the first automated photo booths in 1925. Since the first coin-operated machine delivered ferrotype prints to attendees of the 1889 Exposition Universelle in Paris, consumers have been drawn to the novelty of instant portraits.