Have you seen _Villa Rides_ with Yul Brynner? There is a scene in there in which Pancho Villa's army receives their first machine gun, and one soldier loads it and begins firing without putting it into the base. He is unable to control it or stop it and bullets go flying in all directions.
Kodak's management is a lot like that, and it has been for the past fifty years or so. They have not managed to kill themselves yet, but it's been only a matter of time. Kodak did most of the fundamental research into digital imaging, and they held most of the patents. But they never actually introduced products until years after everyone else, because management could not see beyond the next quarter and did not want to invest into the long term. Then Kodak sold those patents at a fraction of their real value, again because they saw short term profit. Kodak's current CEO knows about printers, he doesn't know a damn thing about film, and to be honest Kodak hasn't really understood the film market for the past few decades. Every major decision they have made has turned out to be wrong. In the early 1980s, Kodak shut down all of the smaller film production alleys with the expectation that they would not ever need to do smaller production runs. They kept only the newer alleys that are optimized for very large jumbo rolls and very long production jobs. Consequently, as the market has shrunk, Kodak has been unable to keep any of the smaller-demand films in the catalogue. Stuff like the RAR films, the Hawkeye Surveillance Films, and other stocks that have a small dedicated market have all gone away and _that_ has accelerated the move of many of the scientific and industrial imaging people to digital systems because they had no alternative. At the same time, smaller operations like Orwo, Ilford, and Kentmere with smaller lines are able to make a profit on the smaller production runs which are the order of the day today. Kentmere is using these little nine-inch jumbos which would fit inside the core of one of the big Kodak ones. For two years I tried to get Kodachrome.... our local camera store was unable to get Kodak to ship them the stuff and it seemed like B&H was the only place in the country that could get it. Then Kodak discontinued it because of the low demand... but if you don't ship it to customers, they aren't going to be buying it. Kodak's film operation today basically hinges on motion picture print stocks. They make a lot of print stock, much of which is going into the third world, and the large scale print stock production is keeping the alleys open for them to be able to make smaller demand stocks like camera films. With the current move to digital presentation, demand for those print stocks is going to be going away. The only hope for Kodak's film operation is for Kodak to split it off and get some people who actually understand film and the film market to run it. It's going to take some capital investment too... some of those long alleys are going to have to be split up and transformed into facilities more conducive to small production runs. They are going to have to figure out how to make film in small runs and actually get that film to customers. So, I am hoping this is a good thing. If not, well, Fuji is making record profits today. --scott _______________________________________________ FrameWorks mailing list [email protected] https://mailman-mail5.webfaction.com/listinfo/frameworks
