The Branding of Polaroid, 1957 - 1977

Kodak -- More

Paul Giambarba, Ruth, Nantucket, Figurehead, 1954

Captured with an ancient pre-World War II Contax I with 50mm Zeiss Jena lens (see below) on Kodachrome, one of the best films ever made. Unlike Ektachrome, it did not fade in over half a century. 

Here's more about the ongoing Kodak saga. 

"So the question that Kodak's demise raises in my mind is this: would any of us have done any better in 1976 after our R&D guys had come up with an idea that would cannibalise our core business and reduce our margins to near zero? And as I wrote that I came on a lecture by Rebecca Henderson of MIT in which she imagined what a Kodak executive might have said to the developer of the first digital camera:

'I see. You're suggesting that we invest millions of dollars in a market that may or may not exist but that is certainly smaller than our existing market, to develop a product that customers may or may not want, using a business model that will almost certainly give us lower margins than our existing product lines. You're warning us that we'll run into serious organisational problems as we make this investment, and our current business is screaming for resources. Tell me again just why we should make this investment?'

"Good question. And here's the really nice touch. From 1998 to 2009, Ms Henderson was the Eastman Kodak professor in MIT's management school."

From today's CBS News article, Why Kodak failed -- and how to avoid the same fate, by Dave Johnson.

And, an Associated Press piece by Ben Dobbin in yesterday's Detroit Free Press.

 

Eastman Kodak, R.I.P. and an appeal to Fuji

Big Yellow is bankrupt.

For those of us who grew up knowing only Kodak and its yellow boxes, it is almost impossible to believe. 

This is a public and urgent apppeal to the President and Chief Executive Officer of Fuji:

Please, honorable Shigetaka Komori:

Buy that name before someone else does and licenses it for plastic bags or one more unnecessary android product.

    Respectfully yours,

    Paul Giambarba

How this giant of American industry and icon of the American dream, promoter of the Kodak Moment, could tumble from its lion's share of the photographic marketplace to be carrion for the cathartidae of commerce hovering above its remains is almost inconceivable.

Many years ago I consulted for the international division of Gillette, which at the time boasted of having 90 per cent of what they called the "wet-shave" market. I recall their buying PaperMate, Toni, Hyponex and others, and watching their share of a market they once dominated, diminish to a point where they were bought up by Proctor & Gamble.

 

Later, I remember Eastman Kodak attempting to enter the instant film business. At Polaroid we joked about their package design, and how their color photos faded. What? The great chemical company and photographic giant among us pygmies, couldn't work that out? Now it can be told how that embarrassing piece of information was discovered. Not in one of the many state-of-the-art labs or by one of the eminent scientists working for Dr. Land, but by thumbtacking their prints to any wall in direct sunlight.

There was also the devastating loss to Kodak for patent infringement, which enjoined them from manufacturing, using and selling their instant cameras. Six years later Eastman paid damages of $900 million to Polaroid.

By that time, Edwin Land had passed on to join George Eastman in wherever great men go to die.

The Wall Street Journal posted this photographic eulogy to the Kodak camera through 131 years of its life.