As an entrepreneur myself I really enjoy how you guys dissect the companies in the "company forensics". It amazing how you then put it together in an easily understandable way, please keep going! Great job!
Great video. Could you do one explaining how bankruptcy works? What does going in to administration mean? And how can a company come back from the dead?
Contrary to popular belief, "bankruptcy" doesn't mean "out of business". To the contrary, bankruptcy provides legal protection from creditors so a company (or in some cases, an individual) can get its finances in order and turn itself around, and stay alive. Sometimes it works; sometimes it doesn't. But bankruptcy at least gives a debtor some breathing room so it can conserve its resources and have a chance to turn things around.
A lot of relevant information regarding the past 20 years. Before that good information mixed with a lot a fuzzy if not inaccurate ones. The plates Eastman manufactured were glass not film (and he did not swap them that easily for free, how would he have made a fortune in so little time otherwise?). 1888 was the year of the release of the Kodak, the name Eastman gave to his new camera using silver gelatinous on film), The Eastman Kodak company was only registered in 1892. The Kodak camera had no cartridge, the camera was the cartridge one had to mail back to Kodak Rochester for unloading, processing, printing, and reloading with a new roll of a 100 shots. Kodachrome was definitely Italy not the first film mass-produced by Kodak. It was the first successful color positive film, it underwent several chemical and physical modifications and that made it last (not its "long shelf life"; something which has more to do with its preservation once processed). The 1947 Polaroid (shown) is not exactly a fully-automatic camera (automatism on cameras usually means something else that has to do with exposure not processing), it did not take that much away from Kodak at the time (although Kodak felt threatened enough to copy it and be sued and lose). There were far more color film manufacturers than indicated in fact most European countries (even Belgium with Gevaert) had their own color manufacturer, even the US had ANSCO (Binghamton NY).
hey slidebean folks, great story. some comments to drop into the conversation chain here.. kodak case study is a staple in b schools, but.. the perspective could be a little different.. and no less illuminating.. chronology - 1800s a company created an integrated product (camera+film-roll+development process) , corners market on moment->memory market need - 1900s sees competition come in take bites at camera, film-roll pieces of product - 1970s they invent digital camera - 1980-90s old product still sells gang busters (20years of profit) - 2000s (30 years later) digital camera competition catches up and party is over - 2010s and 2020s - digital cameras sell less and to where most photos are taken by cell phones option 1 125 years of making money on useful analog photography product .. followed by 10-20 years of making money on a digital photography product that vanishes into a cell phone option 2 90-100 years of making money on analog product and followed by what ? how would kodak have made money on a digital camera? how would they have held the ground once mobile phones come around? the challenge facing kodak was monumental.. and mobile eventually ate everything.. cameras, gps, landlines, games, watches. the kodak brand may have lost its sheen.. but thats life.. not every old dog can end-lessly learn new tricks.. and some times.. a dog(kodak) is up against a t-rex(mobile) and after all the execs/board/investors are all humans... just like you and me.. may be, we need not be too harsh on kodak.
We often complain of the negative consequences of an always growth mentality but this is an interesting case of the negative consequences of puprosefully ignoring innovation due to complacency towards growth (e.g. Kodak executives wonder why turn attention away from the stable film business towards a risky digital future). Would be interesting to see how similar growth averse decisions impact other companies. Great presentation yet again Slidebean!
Great work as usual, Caya. The thing that seems to be missing is the use of film in the motion picture industry (and medical field, but I'm not as familiar with that sector). Sure, theater projectors went digital, which took out a chunk of their film sales, but my understanding from Kodak retirees is that film stock for acquisition in the movie and commercial biz had sold well through the digital transition. That way, clients could digitize the master to whatever future resolution. Anyway, not enough to right their ship, but a curious anecdote while consumer sales withered.
Basically, Kodak foresaw this but also foresaw the conversion to digital acquisition. This is the rush to 4K, 6K, and now 10K which is all an effort to mimic the wide latitude (dynamic range) that film has. Kodak did see this and made both stock and chemistry in advance based on various projections for all the major formats which were sold in advance and stockpiled by various labs and the industry. This stockpiling did not add to Kodak's profits since it was already in place. Other firms such as Agfa/Ilford and Fuji also saw this as well as the increased EPA regulatory pressure in the US (the used chemicals are very hard to get rid of safely if you can't simply dump them in a river) and just made more chemistry and film stock and undercut the Kodak products.
Yes excellent point. In fact a lot of Kodak profits also came from the film industry (Kodak even financed a theater in Hllywood for the Oscars. It slowed down Kodak's downfall as most movie theatres were equipped with film projectors, and it took some time for digital to match the resolution of film (now in terms of both resolution and exposure latitude digital is ahead).
Why a dream??? Digital is far easier and more accurate in terms of colors than film. Film has a cost which is consistently going up. Processing and editing is so much easier and more effective with digital.
Kodak and xerox (another modern day disaster) had some of the most amazing R and D ever. sadly both companies specialized in inventing amazing things and tossing the blueprints in a closest....never to be seen again.
So did Bell Telephone and the Pennsylvania Railroad. The PRR is an interesting example, as they chose to keep developing steam engine technology into the 1950s believing they could build machines that would do the job better than any diesel. It wasn't the only bet the company lost, but it was a big one.
I worked in outsourced Kodak support for their EasyShare sw as a TL in a call center in Belfast, N.I., 2005-06. I hated their company culture as it trickled down to us lowest caste worker bees. We were Europeans promised to work with our native languages but forced to use our English (it's hard for someone from Southern Europe) answering that call from the deep South of the USA. Imagine working with someone in their 60's & basically computer illiterate about fixing rather complex computer issues ... one particular call lasted 3 hours! The fact that I found my employer's (Teletech) leadership even worse, didn't help. Was happy to hear of Kodak's demise.
Kodak was very involved in digital photography. They had a division that made CCD sensors. They made some of the earliest 35mm digital bodies by modifying Nikon and Conon bodies. But Kodak was not in the pro and consumer lens and DSLR body business as Canon and Nikon were. And there was no way they could have made digital cameras on a scale that would have been a fraction as profitable as film, paper and chemicals were. Lower end consumer cameras quickly became a low profit comodity and they were replaced by cell phones. Kodak needed to pivot in a major way such as inventing a service like Instagram before Instagram or RU-vid before YT. They had programmers and money. But they couldn't think that way or be very nimble.
Two things Kodak launched the Disc camera system. But when people got their pictures back they would be very poor quality. This was due to most labs not using the special equipment needed to make quality prints. This led the Kodak Disc cameras to fail. Second Kodak digital cameras would use standard AA batteries not more compact purpose made ones. This meant thst Kodak digital cameras were very bulky compared to the competition. When Canon launched the tiny IXUS they were done. They tried with the Easy Share system but that meant that users should have a cradle on their desk just for the camera, something most people would rather not do.
The issue with disc cameras was that facing a huge increase in the price of silver, Kodak (and other manufactures) had to face 2 solutions: increase the price of their products or decrease the amount of film used. They chose the latter (same reason for the APS-C format). In both cases because of the reduction in size of the negative, and in spite of improvements in film manufacturing, the results had to be inferior to 35 mm film which had received the same improvements.
with the recent rise of film cameras and apps that creates a similar aesthetic to old school photography, Kodak could have easily profited off this nostalgia. They could have created an app for film photography just like fuji.
No not really. The time of digital had arrived. The technology for digital sensors were developed independently without Kodak. Their patents were outdated and pretty worthless except to be used in patent wars.
It's so sad just driving by their facilities daily and what could have been if they were not to hard headed. Now MCC resides in their downtown building.
When i was a kid, my father worked at kodak for more than a decade, i remember the digital cameras were good but very very expensive, and film was still selling pretty good, but as the years went by, digital was far more simple and less expensive to take pictures. Too bad. They could've made cameras that simulate film, just like Fujifilm does today, and that would've been a very good selling product.
Kodak was the first to manufacture high-end digital cameras along with cheaper ones, so that is not the issue. Now regarding the simulation of film, to what avail??? Why not daguerreotypes?? What I mean by that is that it is a very well known fact that the color rendition of film was not accurate. Each brand had their flaws and biases. Within a single brand the colors could vary with the batches of film, so nothing to regret here, on the contrary. Digital has become far more precise and reliable than film (use a daylight film indoors with tungsten lights and see the result!
Interestingly, Kodak crossed over with the world of popular music twice in the 1970's. One was in the name of Paul Simon's 1973 hit song "Kodachrome". (One newspaper article on the discontinuation of this product appropriately quoted its lyrics by starting, "Mama, they're taking your Kodachrome away.") The other was George Eastman's descendant, Linda Eastman, who married Paul McCartney and was a member of his post-Beatles band Wings. (Truth be told, I think Wings only existed so that Paul could spend more time with Linda.)
Wow that is an amazing story. I did not know Linda had ties to Kodak. Just a legendary film company that existed for a hundred years. Yes they were part of the original DOW stock index. Founded in 1888 they didn't list until 1930 but they were one of the biggest company for a long time and owned the market. They'll still be around all film ain't going away.
Another old company fail to profile is South Bend Lathe. Founded in 1906, it grew rapidly, manufacturing metal lathes and other metalworking machinery. They even supplied modified versions of their lathes to Sears, sold as the "Expert" line. Circa 1914 Sears advertised the "Expert" as being manufactured by an "old, reliable company", when SBL had only been in business for 8 years! Over the decades, SBL would fail to fully modernize their production. Then came unionization and a sellout to American Steel, which used the name AMSTED on their conglomerate products, including South Bend machines. Eventually the employees banded together and raised the capital to buy South Bend Lathe from American Steel, becoming the first employee owned company. That was a thing many other companies would follow, often successfully. Unfortunately for SBL, they soon fell back to the old union style employees VS management and facing bankruptcy were bought by Grizzly, an importer of Asian machine tools. (Grizzly claims they didn't, that Grizzly and SBL are two companies owned by the same people.) Grizzly took possession of all of SBLs parts inventory, designs, casting patterns, and all their records that had been continuously maintained since 1906. With American manufacture of machine tools too expensive, Grizzly looked to Asia, but didn't want to have the lathes made in China. At the time there was an economic slump and a machine tool company in Taiwan was found who was happy to take on the work. The current SBL product line is a series of refined versions of various Asian lathes made by multiple foundries, and one high precision collet lathe that is a clone of the old Hardinge HLV-H. The lathes tend to garner a good reputation on various forums, even ones for vintage machine tools. There was one stumble, the 8K. For decades SBL's "bread and butter" had been their basic 9" benchtop lathe in various bed lengths. The 8K was positioned as its successor. Unfortunately the 8K was obviously the generic Asian 8x20 or 9x20 with a somewhat beefed up bed, an apron somewhat styled after the old 9", the old 9" quick change gearbox modified to fit, and an entirely new headstock that was rounded old style. Unfortunately the worst aspects of the worst generic Asian lathe were not changed. The saddle and compound side were the same, as were the tiny bed ways. The spindle drive belt was outboard of the left bearing instead of between the bearings (just like the crappy Asian x20 lathes), and even worse, the drive for the gearbox used toothed belts instead of gears. All that might not have been fatal to the 8K. The final, fatal blow was the swing diameter, 8". Nobody can call a lathe with an 8" swing a successor to one that had a 9" swing. Apparently the 8K sold poorly and a few years ago the remaining stock was heavily discounted to get rid of them. The base they started from was a design that originated with Emco Maier of Austria, with an 8" swing diameter. It was an expensive POS, with many design deficiencies. One wonders why Emco ever saw fit to put it into production. Possibly because it was larger than their Compact 5, which aside from its size is a better designed machine. For some reason various Asian foundries saw fit to clone it - exactly, precisely replicating every flaw. They're still made to this day. The only major changes to the design (other than the SBL 8K) have been in bed length and increasing the swing diameter one inch, and a CNC version with 8" swing was sold in the UK as the ORAC.
My first digital camera is actually Kodak back in 2004-2006. With that camera, manage to earn some money from it and finally ditch it and got me a Canon 350D.
Kodak tried to take on Polaroid with their own instant camera. Problem was it was not their camera. They had copied the Polaroid camera so closely that Polaroid sued them and won. As well as being fined Kodak had to remove it's camera from sale and give their customers the choice of either a refund or replace it with a Polaroid camera. Cost them a great deal of money and not a little in lost face.
Sony has/had a comparable issue with their smartphone vs camera division. Their camera division didn't want to help the smartphone division with camera IP and development out of fear it would cannibalize camera sales. Instead, it cannibalized both because it was too stuck with old ways of thinking.
Kodak earned so much money off film that they saw the writing on the wall and tried to bury digital, to maintain revenue. They could have owned the early stages of digital. Huge mistake!
This is how most monopoly failed. Intel is going to be like this very very soon. Apple is going ARM and smart phone has completely abandoned x86, yet Intel is still trying to shove atom down everyone's throat.
Its not huge mistake tbh. They managed to MONOPOLY for at several years BEFORE digitals take over. Once digital take over, they r already too late, drowned by their own GREED. They INVENTED IT first, and digital camera was very easy to GET COPIED BY OTHER COMPANY since u only need the device bluprint, so they decided to not improved it at that time.
Yes, RCA did this both with home recording and the LCD both of which were sold off to Japanese firms both of which continue to prosper while RCA has disappeared...
@@3takoyakis It was indeed a huge mistake not to recognize that the future was in digital; not film. Sure ... they got a few more years out of film, but just look at what they squandered!
@@superbmediacontentcreator Sony too, with the video recorder. Betamax may have been slightly superior to VHS, but it was expensive and ripe to be outgunned by a cheaper alternative, when Sony refused to "share" the technology.
I had a Kodak digital camera once, it was messed up. Use proprietary 3V lithium battery or alkaline, but not rechargable NiMH. Then it die right after the 1 year warranty. I remember the news when EU mandate 2 year warranty on products sold, Kodak decided to quit the European market instead of improving it. That's pretty much it for them in digital camera.
NiMH batteries were not introduced till 1989 and were very very expensive and required a different charger. This was a cost consideration so while your comment makes sense looking back you have no idea what you are talking about on many levels... sorry.
@@superbmediacontentcreator NiMH was not super expensive, they were all over the place when I got that Kodak camera in 2002!!! Every other camera manufacturer were using NiMH at the time and I cheap out to use Kodak not knowing this, and the reason let me tell you, is the voltage of 1.2V being too low vs the 1.5V of Alkaline and 3.6V of Lithium. I have a MSEE degree, and do circuit for a living. What do you know about electrical engineering?
@@maggiejetson7904 At that time I also had a Kodak camera but to your defensive and angry display of your dubious credentials, I worked for a major professional battery supplier at that time and note the difference between R&D, management decisions the long manufacturing lead-time and marketing. Pissing matches are not helpful to anyone but you are quite amusing and cute with your defensive and ignorant behavior.
@@superbmediacontentcreator Good for you, so how did your Kodak camera working for you? I would like to hear your experience, hopefully better than mine.
@@maggiejetson7904 I bought it as a novelty, a DC something or another, it had a lousy lens with no reach, was slow and had positively ridiculous ergonomics. It used some crazy algorithm to save the images and only then as very lossy JPGs. It took me forever to find a utility to untangle the images later when they were the only images I had of one of my long-ago sold yachts and a girl I adored who is now gone. If I remember correctly it saved to full-sized Compact Flash cards but had a very small capacity and a limit to the size you could put in the device. Funny I have several Kodak cameras such as an early Kodak Brownie from (I think) the 20s an Instamatic, and a Brownie Fiesta 127 but never even though of saving that piece of junk. As a still photographer, I still have issues with the dynamic range of video (even with HDR) over the photonics of film. I hate to sound like a film purest but electronics just look vibrant and too "alive" while film always looks romantic and handles light like my analog eyes. Every major motion picture in the past few years were shot on Arri Compacts. Good luck to you...
Eastman absolutely cornered the market on film, then killed himself because he had the same problem that I have to suffer through life with. What a gigantic wimp.
Hello, maybe based on series is wework dead, you take next companies like Exxon and GE, 15-20 years ago on top of corporate America. Now shares are 60-90% from the peak.
Actually like so many classic names (Bell & Howell, Sunbeam, RCA, and so forth) they license the name and logo for sales based on brand recognition but really are not involved. Ultimately with cheap and crappy products, it weakens the brand but at this point, the firms are just scavengers feeding off the last bits of the carcass and really do not care...
Nope. Kodak exploded in various and independent companies. One is drug-manufacturing related, but Kodak Alaris still based in Rochester NY is still in the film-manufacturing business (and not a pharmaceutical company).
@@BrunoChalifour Who hurt you such that you have such hatred inside you? You're pathetic and I urge you to get some professional help. By the way, the Emmy committee would disagree with you, ha, ha, ha...
It is very arrogant to think this generation is the only one that knows about selfies hahaha! As far back as there had been cameras there has been selfies.
As a kid I owned a Disney branded Kodak camera and while I loved it, I was young and the camera was not able to withstand my abuse. Possibly somewhat biased from my experiences with that Disney camera, I began to see Kodak as a cheaper, less impressive camera company. This wasn't helped by Kodak's original digital offerings which largely paled in comparison to what other companies of the time were doing. As the point and shoot market grew, Kodak's cameras were in 5th position or lower compared to Canon, Nikon, and Sony, and Olympus. Everyone made better digital cameras than Kodak. It wasn't till I was in my 20s that I learned about Kodak's history and ended up with a brownie camera. They were never good, but they *were* always affordable. Once price stopped being a real issue, they stopped being as relevant.
so why wait *commit* *suicide* lol kind of insensitive to the person who created the camera that is still used on some of this guys favorite films to this day. theres more to life than your stock price, especially if you actually have a purpose in the niche market. you dont see christopher nolan shooting on digital anytime soon.
My heart just broke as the video was about to end with the end of one of the best companies in world 😔. God please don't do this to Apple 🙏 Bright for today dark for future
Research, dude, try doing it. Film is still used all over the world, photographers who use it say it makes them better because they need to pay attention to the gestalt of the picture, not just take it and photoshop it later. So maybe the next time you smirk regarding something patently too complicated to for you to comprehend, maybe you'll remember this video... nah you won't. But I will shoot you a thanks, your tiny moment came at :37, saving me from having to sit through the rest of this.
@@mohit_panjwani Nice one, it's good to be on the ball, isn't it, Mohyeet? All up to date and convinced you have a clue, parading your delusions of adequacy for all the world to see? Well here's the deal, sport, people write about what they know. Are there windows in your mum's basement?
Film is still used, but it's too niche nowadays. Not enough to power a juggernaut like Kodak. Digital is just too affordable and prevalent. How about you actually run a business before you pass judgement?
@@leonrobinson8180 Run a business? So now you're twice a fool because you refuse to attempt any level of understanding and slam me for something- there's a pattern here, are you seeing it?- you know nothing about. Why do you do these things to yourself? As a matter of fact, I have run a business, and learned a lot from the experience, such as not being a child when someone calls you out. It isn't about "... powering a juggernaut like Kodak... ", it's about fineness of detail. It's about the level of control true film cameras allow and it's about technique. Instead of making something you apparently know very little about seem tawdry and out of date, do some research and provide a balanced statement, not just one that suits your narrative. Sorry I'm not worshiping at your altar, the message is an empty one.
Dude, you should research to. Digital is far more used than film, and photographers who use it say it makes them better because it is more accurate, more efficient, giving more control over the final product not leaving it to the chemicals and the lab. Film users used to think "I'll take it and fix it in the darkroom".... nothing different. Besides a lot of film users never use a darkroom and scan their film and Photoshop it. As for the "gestalt of the picture" it is 100% on the photographer, not the tool.
