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A Tale of Two Companies
Rick Zeman writes "They've had the best of times, and now they're living through the worst of times. The Washington Post talks about the dissolution of both Kodak's and Polaroid's business models, what Kodak can learn from Polaroid's earlier mistakes, and the resurrection of some classic Polaroid tech by private entrepreneurs."
Can someone instagram some photos of hese old cameras and a "gold box" of film so I can see what the hell they're talking about?
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
Polaroid was always a bit of a niche company. They happened to be in a fairly big niche, but they were very unique in what they did. Their monopoly kept them going until the market changed.
Kodak was killed by shortsighted managers who could not understand the implications when they invented digital photography.
[car analogy] Both companies were buggy whip producers. Kodak invented the internal combustion engine, but never thought it would catch on.[/car analogy]
The article is wrong, both companies were doomed by hopelessly incompetant managers who either failed to see the coming end of film, or else saw it but failed to act (exercise for the student to decide which is worse.)
It didn't have to be like this, look at Fuji to see how a company could switch its main product and survive.
Pity, so many people lost jobs because of a few retarded managers at the top of their companies.
Given how frequently(and often painfully, toward the end) companies seem to founder in the face of structural changes that they can't do much about(short of essentially re-founding as something else, just carrying over the campus and the capital), I have to wonder if there has been any work done outside of the barbaric corporate raider sector on building companies with clean exit strategies...
After all, there isn't any reason why a company needs to struggle to perpetuate its existence forever(any more than a company would struggle to perpetuate the existence of a given product line forever). Sure, the process that companies who do fight and then die go through is pretty grim; but that is, at least in part, because they keep struggling even after the situation is hopeless, and just bleed and bleed and bleed.
Is there a process where you just quit before you are behind, wind down neatly, rather than the corporate equivalent of spending a few years stuck full of tubes and unresponsive in the ICU?
Part of the problem that Kodak had was less to do with the Digital Revolution and somewhat more to do with the complex formulations of their photographic emulsions.
As I understand it some of these emulsions are so sensitive to variables that one merely couldn't take the "recipe" and scale it down to a smaller run which would work wherever a coating machine existed.. The Kodak Photo Engineers had to tweak and develop the emulsion formulations for the various films they produced to suit each vessel which they were mixed in/stored in/expelled from during production...
With many of the engineers aging and few young people coming in to the work force having the hands on access to emulsions and coating machines to learn the very specialized techniques of the Photographic Emulsion Engineering guys it put kodak in a situation where scaling down and suiting the changing market would become more and more difficult.
The end result seems to be they were producing far more film than they could sell, and were having to store it instead of making profit off of it... running operations that they knew were too large... and stuck in a spot where loyal customers might not accept the changes in emulsions that may come from downsizing the operation...
Digital imaging certainly hurt.. but the extremely complex emulsions and coating really didnt help.
The biggest loss from Kodak and as we are finding with the people trying to replicate Polaroids instant films.. is the stuff you dont learn in chemistry class, or from a masters degree in Photography.. its knowing how to troubleshoot problems with emulsions and make consistent high quality coating machines..
While a lot of the processes in the history of the medium of photography can be done without much trouble as a DIY thing.. modern high speed emulsion films and developing papers are one of the few things that are, even with the right tools and ingredients.. likely out of the realm of possibility for the most hardcore of us. (with only a few people i know of even attempting this)
This is not a "good riddance" type thing.. high speed modern film isnt replaced by digital..
With the death of many of these former emulsion engineers we stand to lose a photographic process that has been with us for over 100 years.. and that sucks.
Kodak's CEO, Antonio Perez, was named to Obama's Council on Jobs and Competitiveness.
http://pmanewsline.com/2011/02/24/antonio-perez-appointed-to-the-president%E2%80%99s-council-on-jobs-and-competitiveness/#.ULudQOS1Uzk
"The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old......They literally know nothing." - Ben Rhodes
When puzzling over some strategic move by Kodak upper management, my colleague would say, "People much smarter than us have this all figured out."
Sorry, but gray text on gray background is making my eyes bleed.
At the original factory for Polaroid media in The Netherlands some guys are again producing the 'film' you need to continue using your late model Polaroid cameras:
http://www.the-impossible-project.com/?nointro=1
"The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."
What do they mean there is nothing like Tri-X? What about HP5 Plus?
The article mentions Tri-X's hard-core following, the demise of Pan-X and how Fujifilm has done better, but it completely neglects to mention Ilford. Ilford sells films that compete against Tri-X (HP5 Plus) and Pan-X (HP4).
I believe that Ilford went through a bankruptcy, but is doing OK now. I think it would be interesting to learn how they are doing compared to Kodak's analog film division.
In the book Makers the company Duracell buys Kodak, guts the company and uses Kodak's spoils to fund hundreds of makers to invent the imaginable while making use of Kodak's supply chain network to bring those inventions to market. 3d printing and re-purposing discarded products for parts plays a big role for low-cost of production and fast prototyping inventions. One of the inventions is smart bins with RF chips, where you tell you computer "where is my ?" and the bin with that item will make sounds and rattle so that you can find it.
http://money.msn.com/investing/worst-business-decisions-ever
If these two companies didn't see digital photography coming at them like a bus they were stupid. It was get on board in a big way or be roadkill. I'm a darwinian capitalist. No business gets bailed out. When the banks tanked the government should have bailed out the bad mortgage holders, not the banks. Like the FDIC - insure the citizens, screw the businesses. They want to make money? Don't screw up.
.. and I bet there are plenty of Slashdot users who still shoot film instead of, or in addition to (me) digital. Actually, I was going "mass market" -- I normally shoot E6 transparencies ("slide film"). Now *that* is a business that's fast disappearing.
True black and white film, however, will be around forever, as an art medium. It is much, much easier to make (some can actually do it at home), and there are several small-scale manufacturers in Eastern Europe, England, India and China, as well as Fuji, the Japanese giant. It has qualities that are difficult or impossible to produce digitally.
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Digital photography is the modern poster child for how a cheaper, crummier, technology eventually eats the lunch of the old guard as it improves.
Two things make it totally NOT obvious at the time that Kodak was doomed.
The first of course is, that Kodak invented the modern camera sensor. It was Kodak that developed the Bayer sensor to begin with.
The second was that Kodak came up, in conjunction with a few other film companies, with a really good film/digital hybrid. It was called Advantix.
The reason this was a great idea was that it combined some of the best aspects of digital cameras - lots of information about your image recorded to a magnetic layer on the back - with the huge benefit that film retained for some time - resolution and low ISO performance. It even allowed you to switch rolls of film and switch back in a partially shot roll at any time unlike normal film.
The thing thing that made it really compelling was the physical design that enabled easy re-use of the film cartridge made dead-simple scanners a snap. Kodak sold a film scanner that you would simply insert a roll of film, then you could review the images and select the ones you wanted high-res scans from.
The problem with Kodak though, was they never fully committed to that format, and abandoned things like the film scanner after some time. It could have had a really good run and kept both Fuji and Kodak doing quite well with film for much longer, allowing a more natural progression into digital that Kodak might have been able to manage.
It was Kodak's lack of ability to commit to their own ideas that doomed them, but that was not obvious all along.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Given how frequently (and often painfully, toward the end) companies seem to founder in the face of structural changes that they can't do much about (short of essentially re-founding as something else, just carrying over the campus and the capital), I have to wonder if there has been any work done outside of the barbaric corporate raider sector on building companies with clean exit strategies...
After all, there isn't any reason why a company needs to struggle to perpetuate its existence forever (any more than a company would struggle to perpetuate the existence of a given product line forever). Sure, the process that companies who do fight and then die go through is pretty grim; but that is, at least in part, because they keep struggling even after the situation is hopeless, and just bleed and bleed and bleed.
Is there a process where you just quit before you are behind, wind down neatly, rather than the corporate equivalent of spending a few years stuck full of tubes and unresponsive in the ICU?
It is possible for a company to cease operations without lots of pain. All it requires is a management willing to face facts. Ken Olsen, founder of Digital Equipment Corporation, used to tell the story of a corner barbershop that knew its finances very well. When their landlord increased the lease on their parking lot, they immediately closed: they knew that with the increased cost they could not survive.
Some years ago, I owned and operated a store which sold and serviced the Commodore Amiga. When Commodore folded, I had two choices: convert to an IBM PC store, or close. There were already several IBM PC stores in town, better established than I would have been, so I decided to close.
I decided that December 31 would be my last day. I told my technician to go home, but I would continue his health benefits through the end of the year. I paid my rent and hired kids off the street to help me clean out the store. Most of the stuff in the store was trashed, but I took a few items home. I kept the store name for my personal consulting business.
No pain, no tears, just the orderly end of a retail business that had lost its manufacturer.
No, it WAS totally obvious, and you said the key phrase yourself: "they never toally committed"
The reason it was not obvious is because at a number of points it was possible to change course - they just never did. It's all too easy to claim in hindsight it was obvious; but anyone that thinks so did not properly consider possibilities at the time.
*You* didn't see it coming because you think like their managers
No. The problem is that you fail to understand that film had very real and huge advantages in quality over digital, really until just a few years ago. By making a hybrid-digital product and treating film as a near-digitial entity, they could have given themselves, and the industry, more runway in switching to digital while giving photographers almost all of the advantages we are used to with digital cameras today. It would have been better for not just Kodak but also the market.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley