This is one of those unfortunate “I told you so” moments. Kodak (or, Eastman Kodak, to give it its full name) has filed for bankruptcy after 132 years in business.
The familiar yellow and red logo is one I’ll always associate with my seaside holidays as a child, and the annual purchase of a suitable film cartridge for the old Kodak Instamatic to take with me.
However, I bought my first digital camera (a Casio QV-10) in 1995 – that’s nearly 17 years ago. I absolutely KNEW these things were the future, even if the QV-10 by itself wasn’t.
The QV-10 couldn’t possibly have been selected over an Instamatic when it came down to quality and resolution, but within 5 years a digital camera was easily up to the job of taking holiday snaps (even if printers weren’t, at the time).
Unfortunately, Kodak failed to realise this, and it waited for too long before trying to ride the wave. To be fair, it did climb on board the digital train – possibly a little late – but its real mistake was trying to bring the old film-based business along with it when it eventually made the jump. As a result, its digital printers (which are pretty good), are only now getting close to making a profit for the company. So it came too late.
Part of the original problem is still being echoed by those “saddened” to hear of Kodak’s troubles. A Photography Professor at Toronto University (hey, Canada has Mickey Mouse subjects, too) wails:
There’s a kind of emotional connection to Kodak for many people. You could find that name inside every American household and, in the last five years, it’s disappeared.
And a 69-year old Kodak employee says much the same:
It’s one of the few companies that wiggled its way into the fabric of American life and the American family.
‘As someone at Kodak once said, `We put chemicals in one end so our customers can get memories out the other.’
It’s precisely that attitude that got Kodak in the mess in the first place. You don’t move forward by standing still! Firms who do that simply die.
Kodak won’t disappear, of course. There’s too much American emotion involved for that to happen.