The market dun' took my Kodachrome® away-eh.
We're writing too often, these days, of proud old brands that are faltering, fading and failing.With Kodak, the failure is all the more astonishing because their brand remains synonymous with photography. Indeed, that company is more responsible than any other for putting the tools of picture-taking into the hands of the masses — a goal specifically enumerated by founder George Eastman as early as 1880.
Despite that success, Eastman-Kodak is just days away from Chapter 11 bankruptcy, from the fire-sale liquidation of billions of dollars worth of patents, and from walking away from a mountain of debt, including company bonds and employee pensions.
What killed Kodak? Perhaps they're victims of their own success. Photography is indeed in all our hands now…and in our phones, our computers and all throughout our digital cloud. A company founded on film couldn't seem to manage the shift away from analog. And when they did, belatedly, they were ill-equipped to compete with companies that were digital to their core.
So is this the coda for Kodak? That remains to be seen. They still have the brand that means "camera" to millions. But sadly, it seems as though they have little else.
