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The Rise and Fall of Kodak
H_Fisher writes "Michael Hiltzik of the L.A. Times writes with a frank look at the decisions and changes that have led to Kodak's decline from top U.S. photography company to a company whose product is almost irrelevant. He writes: '[Kodak] executives couldn't foresee a future in which film had no role in image capture at all, nor come to grips with the lower profit margins or faster competitive pace of high-tech industries.' He also notes that Kodak's story comes as a cautionary tale to giants like Google and Facebook."
I wrote an article about the impact of Kodak on Rochester, New York, the city it built. Some interesting context about how technology built a city - twice.
go get it
Kodaks whole business was founded on film development. The whole idea was that they sell the cameras cheap and charge for the development. Was that way going back to the glass plate days. Simply put, they where rendered irrelevant by digital photography which is the exact oposite market. Expensive cameras, free "film". While its sad to see them go, they are more or less a lost cause now.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
Kodak committed suicide in the mid 90s when management spun off Eastman Chemical, pharmaceutical and medical divisions. Management received nice bonuses though.
Hind sight is 20/20. There are also companies that died because they adopted a new fad technology. And lost too much money that they went out of business and should have stuck with their old model.
For example Saturn cars (yes it was oned by GM) but they got popular on the small car with little frills. Then when gas prices were at a low they jumped ship and started making SUV and sport cars. And hitting the quality on their small car line.
Gas prices rose. Saturn lost because it didn't have cars the people wanted.
Jump on the wrong fad you get hurt too. It is easy to mock Kodak but the digital camera faze may have ended with some software just not easy enough to share photos. Or broad band was just too expensive for the market. Or color printers prices remained high price and offered infeaor pictures.
Will the iPad and touch tablets stay popular. Or will windows 8 on multitouch laptops take the cheese.
A lot of companies are investing in getting the newest tablet to trump apples IPad, but what if tablets just reach their peak the holiday season then die down?
Do we skoff at the people who blindly jumped on the tablet fad? Even though right now it seems the hot new tech?
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
From my perspective, they played very little part. The signs of digital's dominance have been around for a decade, at least..
Real, trained, professional photographers adopted digital photography as early as 2000. It meant they could take hundreds of pictures of an event, with practically no overhead cost. An assistant could pick out the few not-terrible shots, and they would be sent to the traditional lab (or a minilab) for printing.
The first megapixel cameras were still slower than film cameras, so a good photographer going to an event (such as a wedding) would have a digital camera on hand for routine use (like taking pictures of the bridal party, preparations, and decorations), but still keep a film camera loaded and ready for moments of action (like exchanging rings), hoping for that perfect shot when something spectacular happens (like when the groom goes diving for the falling ring).
Photography (when done well) is a fast-paced and high-risk business. If a wedding photographer misses some special moment because they were reloading a camera, they can and do get sued. When digital became even remotely practical (several thousand dollars for a 2-megapixel DSLR), professionals jumped at the opportunity.
That improvement didn't come without its own problems, though. Many labs couldn't handle the differences in workflows, and that drove up their prices. Now, lab prices aren't very high compared to photographers' rates (about $10 for an 8x10 with finishing coat and manual retouching (which will be the comparison henceforth), compared to the $20-$50 that the photographer will likely charge), but the lack of integration also meant that orders often were lost, delayed, or damaged, and storing several gigabytes of pictures (at $10/GB) for each event was impractical for a small studio. As workflows, cameras, and hard disks improved, film became less important as a fallback, and digital was very clearly the future.
The next major change came in minilabs. I've mentioned them in passing already, but they deserve more discussion. As also mentioned, a full professional lab could produce an 8x10 for $10. That involves having several people preparing the film (or disk), moving it between chemical processors (or workstations), darkrooms, and printers, sitting at desks painting the white spots where dust prevented the paper from being exposed, spraying the print with any of several finishes, and eventually packaging the whole thing for shipping. A professional lab could easily fill a 30,000 square foot building. A minilab does the same job in a 60 cubic foot space. It's what you'll see in the back of a Wal-mart or pharmacy photo department now, but back in 2000 their quality was still catching up to the full capabilities of a professional lab. It cost about $0.65 for that same 8x10.
The "photogs" I see now are working in a different sort of industry. Sure, they can press a shutter button and arrange a decent shot, but I often question their ability to anticipate the "Kodak moments" than make photo albums entertaining. Many will take pictures, and provide the digital copies, but don't understand how artistic retouching and finishes can improve an effect. Sure, there's a lot of 'em, but I don't see them as being major players in the professional supply industry. There's enough "real" photographers out there that trends are still obvious.
For comparison, consider the differences between the bona fide audio engineering industry (where digital mixers and cheap-but-unique equipment reigns supreme, and professionals can artistically combine processors to achieve a particular desired sound) and the audiophile-supply industry (where noisy analog processors, vinyl, and high-purity copper digital cables are believed to sound "better" by being highly distorted).
Source: I used to work for a lab that was one of the first to integrate a complete digital ordering system (including a minilab, ironically) into their workflow. Said lab was eventually driven out of business in 2007 as minilab quality and prices drastically cut down the number of customers.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
IBM's market cap has bounced back. Surprisingly they're worth more than Microsoft again. Companies to look at for "Failure to adapt" might include RIM, Nokia, HP.
And Microsoft. They've been running on the same two products since their heyday. Their only real innovation (a graphical office suite) was developed for the Macintosh. Everything is "me too" crap, which worked for a while.
Apple is a good example of a company that was near death and transformed itself like Kodak will never be able to do. Then there are transformations like Westinghouse that went from dong just about everything to selling their name to the highest bidder to make crappy TVs.
I don't know, but it works for me.
Maybe the private carriers are better for large businesses or something?
UPS offers some services that the US Post Office can't touch - like handling all of your shipping logistics. It's been a while, but 5 or 6 years ago you could have them store your goods (e.g. spare parts) in their warehouses all over the country so that when a local need came up the delivery would be faster and cheaper than if you held them in a single location.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Kodak's main thrust was overall image quality and print quality, but look what has happened. People use crappy cell phone cameras for most things and hardly print anything.
Telling example of arrogant thinking: When the disc film camera system was introduced, there was a big presentation in the Kodak auditorium explaining in gory detail why it was so wonderful. The lens was a miracle of optical engineering. It was an impressive display of whiz-bang charts and 3D graphs of the photographic space etc. Only problem was you could not take a good photo with a disc camera; all the pictures were uniformly mediocre. Kodak took years to develop the disc system and Fuji had a copy-cat camera for sale in 6 months. This from the company that invented video tape recording and decided "Nobody would want a VCR in their home." Similar logic was applied to ink-jet and thermal printing and to a lesser extent to image sensor micro-lens arrays.
More recently, Kodak tried to sell image sensors into the cell phone market. Have any of you tried to sell anything to a cell phone company? We thought they would be impressed with the Kodak name, image quality and our proprietary image processing algorithms. They are so big they didn't care. Pricing is brutal. They want millions of parts on time or else! VGA devices are so cheap you can't make a profit. HD devices are low-volume so you can't make a profit. That leaves the middle ground of...nothing! We were earnest and naive.
Ranting against the dumbness of big business is popular and there is certainly blame to be placed on a management that could not see into the future, relied on a high-profit fading technology and approved only boring products. I have no doubt that all the fantastically wealthy managers that have driven this once proud company into the ground will enjoy their retirement. The technical people I worked with were GREAT!
Sorry, but gray text on gray background is making my eyes bleed.