Slashdot Mirror
Kodak Files For Bankruptcy Protection
Snirt writes "Following up on a story previously discussed here, it now appears Eastman Kodak, the company that invented the hand-held camera, has filed for bankruptcy protection. The move, according to Kodak's news release, gives the company time to reorganize itself without facing its creditors, and Kodak said it would mean business as normal for customers. The company has recently moved away from cameras, focusing on making printers to stem falling profits."
Sad to see ... but they've been living off patents and selling assets the last couple of years ... so not surprising they ran outa $$$
Hulk SMASH Celiac Disease
I was a summer intern at KRL (Kodak Research Labs), working on digital image processing, when the whole printer thing took off, and it was painfully obvious to us that it was a terrible move. Putting Bill Lloyd (formerly head of inkjet work) in place as CTO seemed to cement things in place.
Who prints anything at home these days, anyway? Especially photos....
Misery loves company. Online misery loves unsuspecting random strangers.
If you make products that people actually want, rather than continue gravy-training the success of the past, maybe you'll have a sustainable revenue stream.
Sincerely,
Darl McBride
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
That's a good rule for business, I like it.
Kodak died by not getting into the digital "thing" quickly enough and then doing poorly by the time they did. Same with Polaroid, really. Too stubborn to admit that their technology was coming to the end of an era and develop a replacement and instead letting their competitors (and even just random no-name companies at the time) do it for them.
At least they'll die having done almost nothing but film photography, so it looks like they just died as the industry for that died, rather than dragging the name through the dirt for decades trying to cling on to film's replacement.
I don't get attached to brands, but I do object to people running their businesses badly. The world's largest consumer of silver at one point - but totally failed to adapt when everyone stopped buying film. It's not a nice epitaph.
Fuji thrived while Kodak went bust. The Economist explains why.
and other people use it, then you have the right to be compensated for that use.
Were not talking about patent trolling, Kodak invented technologies, uses those technologies in its own products, and licenses those techs to other companies.
Whats wrong with that. Apple wants to use its patents to block competition while Kodak wants people (including Apple) to pay when they use its technology. Kodak historically has treated its customers and its employees very well(with pensions including retiree health insurance).
I work in the digital imaging industry, and have long interacted with Kodak engineers and digital imaging people.
Many years ago, at a FlashPix conference (anyone remember that chestnut?), I remember talking to a digital imaging manager, who told me that his efforts to promote digital imaging were being deliberately sabotaged by higher-ups, who had thrown their lot in with film, and were seeing none of "this new-fangled digital imaging" stuff.
At that point, I knew that Kodak was screwed.
This is really sad. Kodak should have ruled the industry.
It is an object lesson in that phrase Stuart Brand coined: "Once a new technology rolls over you, you are either part of the road, or part of the steamroller."
"For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong."
-H. L. Mencken
Once George Eastman died Kodak began its death knell...
Kodak for many years was not profitable the big trend in the 1990's was to Layoff and fire a bunch of fulltime workers in the 3rd and 4th quaters right around July & August (just in time to save on paying out vacation pay) and then again around November to December up to 1 week before Christmas. I know this because I watched peoples parents who worked 15, 20, 25, and 30 years at the company get pink slips for no reason. Then right after the new year 1st quater they would bring in thousands of temp workers to backfill those jobs. Meanwhile this made their stock float and made them look profitable since a company profits are determined by sales - costs . So by lessing the payroll they more or less fudged their profitability for years. Look back at all the layoff annoucements they always happened in the 3rd and 4th quaters of the year just in time to give the stock a bounce in the new year.
Additionally Kodak workers in the Rochester are were very loyal they bought only Kodak Cameras and anything else that was Kodak. Years ago they had employee suggestion boxes where if employees made a suggestion that benefitted the company, a refinement to an assembly line, a better way to product something, a new product an employee could write in the suggestions and in turn if it helped make the company more money by cutting costs or creating new streams of revenue the employee would see a percentage bonus in their pay based on the amount of money that idea generated. I know many people whos parents and grandparents got monetary awards from this program. However by the 1990's Kodak managers would just take your ideas as theirs and the monetary award system was ended. They became greedy
Also over the years within a few square miles of Kodak Park was a cluster of kids coming down with rare cancers, http://www.nytimes.com/1998/03/02/nyregion/rochester-parents-fret-and-sue-over-cancer.html This is also a MUST READ http://www.coldtype.net/Assets/pdfs/17.Nim.May27.pdf
in this same area people were reporting strange odors, animals becoming sick and dying, weird residue on their cars and homes, and odd fluids seeping up in their basements. One of the famous areas was Rand Street. Kodak was sued and they ended up paying out an undisclosed amount to owners of some of the Rand Street Homes. Kodak was sued multiple times for illegal dumping, fined multiple times by the EPA for being out of compliance with their factory exaust stacks. However the EPA was up and down with them while they went against them on some things they backed them on others. It wasnt until the 1990's the EPA started cracking down on them. Prior to that they turned a blind eye to what they were doing.
However they still continued to pollute the rochester region. Eastman Chemical which was part of Kodak until spun off had experimental chemicals inside of it that no one even know what they would do if they ever escaped the drums they were being stored in and because they were deemed "experimental" they did not have the same precautions and established handling procedures as known chemicals which carry MSDS sheets etc. Toulene, Benze, TCE you name it they had it.
The management became a complete joke you had managers managing managers, managing managers they made the same mistake that Xerox did. Too many inexperienced or burned out chiefs and not enough Indians. The 1990s caused part of this issue with the EOE b.s. many times fully qualified caucasian workers were passed up for job promotions, management positions and so forth especially males. If you were Latino, African American, or Asian or had a certain sexual preference you would get promoted to the top in no time even if you didn't knw how to do the job or have a college background or experience in it. Xerox did the same thing. They were both paranoid of dis