late founder Ramsey Jabbour<\/a>. \u201cThis is a whole new identity for Competitive Cameras.\u201d<\/p>\nCompetitive Cameras 3.0 \u2014 the original was in Garland before being relocated to Irving Boulevard in 1999 \u2014 \u00a0is a gutted career training center subdivided into dedicated areas.<\/p>\n
![\"In]()
<\/p>\n
In 2013, Eugene\u00a0Jabbour (left) helped Richard Bergfeld of Austin at the Competitive Cameras store in the Dallas Design District.<\/p>\n
File Photo\/Staff<\/p>\n
\u201cOur current store was stacked to the ceiling with merchandise,\u201d the 47-year-old Eugene said during a preview tour last week. \u201cThis 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.\u201d<\/p>\n
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He\u2019s pointing to an expanse in the central area where in-stock merchandise from $15 to $3,000 will be featured.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve been stocking up for the new store and have plenty of goods ready to sell,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
That also includes cameras from $400 to $8,000 and plenty of additional gear.<\/p>\n
Four camera and two lens vendors have mini-showroom bays with customer counters and glass display cases along the sales floor.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Canon and Sony do so much business that each of them gets a two-stall spread.<\/p>\n
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\u201cVendors tell me, \u2018No one\u2019s doing anything like this. Everyone\u2019s stuck in their same routine with their same displays and stuff that\u2019s just dated,\u2019 \u201d he said.<\/p>\n
A large education room for in-person workshops, classes and community events led by Competitive staffers is off to the back.<\/p>\n
\u201cOne of the things we want to do is teach the next generation of young imagemakers,\u201d Melanie Jabbour said.<\/p>\n
There are also high-end equipment rental and preowned departments.<\/p>\n
![\"An]()
<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
Tom Fox\/The Dallas Morning News<\/p>\n
The latter is Eugene\u2019s favorite because it\u2019s a feel-good one.\u00a0<\/p>\n
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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.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen a customer comes asking for something from the \u201970s or \u201980s, and you have it, he\u2019s all excited, and I get to sell something nostalgic and fun,\u201d Eugene said. \u201cSometimes I don\u2019t have what he\u2019s looking for, but I find something else and make the deal happen. Both of us are all happy about it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Organized last-minute activity was going on last week \u2014 similar to the crunchtime before a TV renovation show\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n
The lease at the Design District ends Wednesday, so the\u00a0Jabbours have to be unpacked and ready for customers on Thursday \u2014 about a week before Melanie\u2019s 50th birthday.<\/p>\n
The couple promises people will be blown away with what they see.<\/p>\n
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Frozen in time<\/p>\n
The Midway location is 10 miles north of the old location but further beyond its past.<\/p>\n
Eugene\u2019s parents, Ramsey and Mary, opened their Garland store 44 years ago and moved it to the Design District in 1999.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
\u201cEugene 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,\u201d 74-year-old Mary Jabbour said. \u201cHe learned a lot by listening to Ramsey. It all boils down to being a family business and how you get to where you are.\u201d<\/p>\n
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The shoebox-sized store has remained physically frozen in time.<\/p>\n
But what the store offers hasn\u2019t.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve expanded into many more fields than just digital imaging and photography,\u201d said technology buff Eugene. \u201cWe\u2019ve gone into content creating, cinematography, podcasting, live streaming for churches and entered the preowned business.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur current location has served its purpose, but it\u2019s time for us to start a new adventure of our own.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Her yin to his yang<\/p>\n
Eugene and Melanie married 15 years ago. He\u2019s an oxymoron family-first workaholic, she said. They\u2019re both devoted to their eighth-grade and sixth-grade daughters and college-age son from her previous marriage.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe met at a Halloween party many, many years ago,\u201d Melanie said. \u201cWe were really good friends first. Then after I got divorced, it just seemed to come together naturally.\u201d<\/p>\n
Melanie, who is integral in laying out plans for Competitive\u2019s future, is an even-keeled counterbalance to Eugene\u2019s sometimes mercurial temper.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m the one who tries to keep him at peace, because in the store, it can get bad,\u201d she said. \u201cHe\u2019s softened quite a bit since his father died.\u201d<\/p>\n
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<\/p>\n
Competitive Cameras\u2019 new location will have a classroom for teaching and presentations.<\/p>\n
Tom Fox\/The Dallas Morning News<\/p>\n
Get Eugene away from the business, Melanie said, and his gruffness completely dissolves. \u201cWhen people meet him outside of the store, they\u2019re like, \u2018Wow! You\u2019re a different person.\u2019 \u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s incredibly funny and has an amazing heart. He thinks of others more than of himself.\u201d<\/p>\n
She handles human resources, and it was largely her idea to purchase the new building. \u201cI had to push him because he was afraid to make that move.\u201d<\/p>\n
Bursting at the seams<\/p>\n
So why pull up long-planted roots now?<\/p>\n
For starters, a new landlord quadrupled their rent. But even worse, parking became a daily war.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re next door to a coffee shop,\u201d Eugene said. \u201cThey 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.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWe were busting out of our seams,\u201d Melanie added. \u201cWe were growing and had nowhere to put extra inventory.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Jabbours looked into buying a building in the Design District, situated just northwest of downtown. But they couldn\u2019t find anything they could afford with sufficient parking. \u201cThere was a $10 million building with 13 parking spots,\u201d he said. \u201cI have 11 employees.\u201d<\/p>\n
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<\/p>\n
Competitive Cameras will have a rental counter for customers at its new store on Midway Road.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Tom Fox\/The Dallas Morning News<\/p>\n
There\u2019s also the matter of expanding its customer base, Melanie said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe currently don\u2019t get any walk-in traffic,\u201d she said. \u201cWe\u2019re a destination location. People don\u2019t know there is a big camera store in Dallas. We wanted to be visible and get that.\u201d<\/p>\n
Movin\u2019 on up<\/p>\n
They analyzed their customers\u2019 ZIP codes and found that 95% of them drove to the store from north of LBJ Freeway.<\/p>\n
So heading in that direction was a no-brainer.\u00a0<\/p>\n
They also wanted a busy street. Traffic congestion is apparently good when it comes to attracting new customers.<\/p>\n
Nearby apartment residents and other retailers were also on their bucket list.<\/p>\n
The Midway location near Alpha Road checked all the boxes.<\/p>\n
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<\/p>\n
After 27 years in the Design District on Irving Boulevard, Competitive Cameras will open its new store on Midway Road in Dallas on Thursday.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Tom Fox\/The Dallas Morning News<\/p>\n
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\u2019s sinking into it \u2014 except to say it\u2019s mortgage-free and substantial.<\/p>\n
What would his father, who died of cancer two years ago, think of the new store?
\u00a0
\u201cRight now he\u2019s yelling at me, \u2018You\u2019re spending too much money!\u2019 \u201d Eugene laughed.<\/p>\n
But Melanie believes her father-in-law would be proud of the growth that her husband of 15 years has achieved.<\/p>\n
Sales in 2012 were about $13 million. They\u2019ve grown to about $16 million. That\u2019s better than it might appear, Eugene said, because the cost of his goods has gone down.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI didn\u2019t do it all myself,\u201d Eugene said. \u201cI\u2019ve delegated assignments and built a good team who works really hard and is used to me yelling at them.\u201d<\/p>\n
Melanie nodded knowingly at the yelling reference.<\/p>\n
![\"A]()
<\/p>\n
A wedding photo of Competitive Cameras owner Eugene Jabbour (right) is shown next to his late father, Ramsey\u00a0Jabbour (center), and his best man and Fort Worth Camera co-owner, Jeff Masure.<\/p>\n
Tom Fox\/The Dallas Morning News<\/p>\n
\u201cEugene and the team have driven the business to a higher level than when Ramsey was alive,\u201d she said. \u201cI think he would also understand that it was time to move and to do something different.\u201d<\/p>\n
Eugene\u2019s mom comes down somewhere in the middle.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cRamsey always thought about how much something cost and then, when it was done, he\u2019d admit that it was worth it,\u201d Mary Jabbour said. \u201cI don\u2019t know if he\u2019s yelling from heaven, but he might be falling off his cloud.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Competitive Cameras owners Eugene and Melanie Jabbour are getting ready to open their new store on Midway Road.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":446221,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[102,104,103],"class_list":["post-446220","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-dallas","tag-dallas","tag-dallas-headlines","tag-dallas-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/446220","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=446220"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/446220\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/446221"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=446220"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=446220"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=446220"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}