The business was incorporated as a private company called Dixon Studios Limited and registered on 27 October 1937 with share capital of £100.
[2] Charles Kalms had been selling advertising space on the London Underground when he met Michael Mindel, who had a small photographic studio in Oxford Street but was keen to expand.
[4] The business expanded during the Second World War as demand for photographic portraits surged,[5] particularly from service personnel and their families.
But by the end of the war, the market contracted as dramatically as it had expanded and the company was reduced to a single studio in Edgware, north London.
The company began advertising new and second-hand photographic equipment in the trade, local and national press.