Competitive Cameras owners Eugene and Melanie Jabbour are getting ready to open their new store on Midway Road.
Tom Fox/The Dallas Morning News
Eugene and Melanie Jabbour are about to move into the Competitive Cameras store of their dreams.
In a week, the couple will unveil their 10,000-square-foot store on Midway Road just north of LBJ Freeway in Farmers Branch.
Competitive Cameras Scott Booth assists customer Salvatore Brancifort (right) of Richardson at the Competitive Cameras store on Irving Boulevard in Dallas.
Tom Fox/The Dallas Morning News
A huge “Coming soon” sign currently faces motorists on the busy street.
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The new digs are roughly three times the size of their cramped and dated location in the Dallas Design District, which has been a photography mecca for 27 years.
“This isn’t just a new location,” said Eugene Jabbour, son of the late founder Ramsey Jabbour. “This is a whole new identity for Competitive Cameras.”
Competitive Cameras 3.0 — the original was in Garland before being relocated to Irving Boulevard in 1999 — is a gutted career training center subdivided into dedicated areas.
In 2013, Eugene Jabbour (left) helped Richard Bergfeld of Austin at the Competitive Cameras store in the Dallas Design District.
File Photo/Staff
“Our current store was stacked to the ceiling with merchandise,” the 47-year-old Eugene said during a preview tour last week. “This sales floor is going to be more Apple Store-esque with a few things on display to show the depth of our products that we have.”
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He’s pointing to an expanse in the central area where in-stock merchandise from $15 to $3,000 will be featured.
“We’ve been stocking up for the new store and have plenty of goods ready to sell,” he said.
That also includes cameras from $400 to $8,000 and plenty of additional gear.
Four camera and two lens vendors have mini-showroom bays with customer counters and glass display cases along the sales floor.
Canon and Sony do so much business that each of them gets a two-stall spread.
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“Vendors tell me, ‘No one’s doing anything like this. Everyone’s stuck in their same routine with their same displays and stuff that’s just dated,’ ” he said.
A large education room for in-person workshops, classes and community events led by Competitive staffers is off to the back.
“One of the things we want to do is teach the next generation of young imagemakers,” Melanie Jabbour said.
There are also high-end equipment rental and preowned departments.
An interior view of the new Competitive Cameras store on Midway Road in Dallas that will open soon. The new store is roughly three times the size of their cramped and dated location in the Dallas Design District.
Tom Fox/The Dallas Morning News
The latter is Eugene’s favorite because it’s a feel-good one.
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The preowned business has taken off in the last two years as the economy tightened. Some want to cash out, while others are hunting for bargains. Sometimes Eugene finds a hidden gem.
“When a customer comes asking for something from the ’70s or ’80s, and you have it, he’s all excited, and I get to sell something nostalgic and fun,” Eugene said. “Sometimes I don’t have what he’s looking for, but I find something else and make the deal happen. Both of us are all happy about it.”
Organized last-minute activity was going on last week — similar to the crunchtime before a TV renovation show’s big reveal. A worker on mechanical stilts spray painted the central ceiling, while a handful of others worked on display cases, cabinetry and finish-out.
The lease at the Design District ends Wednesday, so the Jabbours have to be unpacked and ready for customers on Thursday — about a week before Melanie’s 50th birthday.
The couple promises people will be blown away with what they see.
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Frozen in time
The Midway location is 10 miles north of the old location but further beyond its past.
Eugene’s parents, Ramsey and Mary, opened their Garland store 44 years ago and moved it to the Design District in 1999.
If you needed expertise or wanted to buy anything from a roll of black-and-white film to the most expensive camera gear, Competitive was the hands-down place to go.
“Eugene was at the store working with his dad from the time he had to stand on a film box to see over the counter to sell a camera,” 74-year-old Mary Jabbour said. “He learned a lot by listening to Ramsey. It all boils down to being a family business and how you get to where you are.”
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The shoebox-sized store has remained physically frozen in time.
But what the store offers hasn’t.
“We’ve expanded into many more fields than just digital imaging and photography,” said technology buff Eugene. “We’ve gone into content creating, cinematography, podcasting, live streaming for churches and entered the preowned business.
“Our current location has served its purpose, but it’s time for us to start a new adventure of our own.”
Her yin to his yang
Eugene and Melanie married 15 years ago. He’s an oxymoron family-first workaholic, she said. They’re both devoted to their eighth-grade and sixth-grade daughters and college-age son from her previous marriage.
“We met at a Halloween party many, many years ago,” Melanie said. “We were really good friends first. Then after I got divorced, it just seemed to come together naturally.”
Melanie, who is integral in laying out plans for Competitive’s future, is an even-keeled counterbalance to Eugene’s sometimes mercurial temper.
“I’m the one who tries to keep him at peace, because in the store, it can get bad,” she said. “He’s softened quite a bit since his father died.”
Competitive Cameras’ new location will have a classroom for teaching and presentations.
Tom Fox/The Dallas Morning News
Get Eugene away from the business, Melanie said, and his gruffness completely dissolves. “When people meet him outside of the store, they’re like, ‘Wow! You’re a different person.’ ”
“He’s incredibly funny and has an amazing heart. He thinks of others more than of himself.”
She handles human resources, and it was largely her idea to purchase the new building. “I had to push him because he was afraid to make that move.”
Bursting at the seams
So why pull up long-planted roots now?
For starters, a new landlord quadrupled their rent. But even worse, parking became a daily war.
“We’re next door to a coffee shop,” Eugene said. “They park right in front of our door, and the car sits there for hours. My customers were driving two hours to see me, but given the limited parking, they had to drive back home and were very upset.”
“We were busting out of our seams,” Melanie added. “We were growing and had nowhere to put extra inventory.”
The Jabbours looked into buying a building in the Design District, situated just northwest of downtown. But they couldn’t find anything they could afford with sufficient parking. “There was a $10 million building with 13 parking spots,” he said. “I have 11 employees.”
Competitive Cameras will have a rental counter for customers at its new store on Midway Road.
Tom Fox/The Dallas Morning News
There’s also the matter of expanding its customer base, Melanie said.
“We currently don’t get any walk-in traffic,” she said. “We’re a destination location. People don’t know there is a big camera store in Dallas. We wanted to be visible and get that.”
Movin’ on up
They analyzed their customers’ ZIP codes and found that 95% of them drove to the store from north of LBJ Freeway.
So heading in that direction was a no-brainer.
They also wanted a busy street. Traffic congestion is apparently good when it comes to attracting new customers.
Nearby apartment residents and other retailers were also on their bucket list.
The Midway location near Alpha Road checked all the boxes.
After 27 years in the Design District on Irving Boulevard, Competitive Cameras will open its new store on Midway Road in Dallas on Thursday.
Tom Fox/The Dallas Morning News
They bought the vacant building in July 2025 and gutted it. Eugene prefers not to say how much he paid for it or how much he’s sinking into it — except to say it’s mortgage-free and substantial.
What would his father, who died of cancer two years ago, think of the new store?
“Right now he’s yelling at me, ‘You’re spending too much money!’ ” Eugene laughed.
But Melanie believes her father-in-law would be proud of the growth that her husband of 15 years has achieved.
Sales in 2012 were about $13 million. They’ve grown to about $16 million. That’s better than it might appear, Eugene said, because the cost of his goods has gone down.
“I didn’t do it all myself,” Eugene said. “I’ve delegated assignments and built a good team who works really hard and is used to me yelling at them.”
Melanie nodded knowingly at the yelling reference.
A wedding photo of Competitive Cameras owner Eugene Jabbour (right) is shown next to his late father, Ramsey Jabbour (center), and his best man and Fort Worth Camera co-owner, Jeff Masure.
Tom Fox/The Dallas Morning News
“Eugene and the team have driven the business to a higher level than when Ramsey was alive,” she said. “I think he would also understand that it was time to move and to do something different.”
Eugene’s mom comes down somewhere in the middle.
“Ramsey always thought about how much something cost and then, when it was done, he’d admit that it was worth it,” Mary Jabbour said. “I don’t know if he’s yelling from heaven, but he might be falling off his cloud.”