Fatal Mistake - It was the company's decision not to invest in the field of digital photography, even though it was technologically advanced and could have given it an edge over the competition, but this became one of the biggest business mistakes in history. A big mistake followed by several smaller ones.
It was this company that made the first automatic camera in the early 20th century, making photography a hobby for many people instead of a professional activity. It even managed to get women into the photography "game", introducing. The "Kodak Girls" were dynamic and independent, but of course they were also good wives and mothers.
Even in times when marketing was not as sophisticated as it is today, Kodak had managed to convince consumers that it was the ideal company, that is, the only one that could capture their memories. The “Kodak moment” was synonymous with family happiness.
$30 Billion Giant - By the mid-1970s, the company was worth more than $30 billion, the largest in the photography industry. It had a near-monopoly on the worldwide sale of film and cameras. They made up to $15 on each roll of film, a sum of money that no one could afford to throw away.
On the business side, everything seemed to be going well for the company. In 1975, Steve Sasson, an engineer working for the company, invented a camera that didn’t need film. The image was recorded digitally, but of poor quality. The machine was clumsy and heavy, but it was clear that it had a future.
“Okay, but don’t say it anywhere,” was more or less the company’s response to Sassoon’s invention. The problem with his invention was that it directly threatened Kodak’s business model. For many years, the company continued to display an idiosyncratic denial about the prospects of digital photography.
This remained the case even when, in the early 1980s, Sony, one of its competitors, released a filmless camera. Kodak then requested an internal investigation into the industry's prospects and whether the classic model was in danger. The investigation showed that digital had the potential to replace film, but Kodak had a decade to prepare for the change. Ultimately, despite having a long lead, Kodak did almost nothing to take advantage of it.
Instead, the company tried to use digital to support film. In the mid-1990s, it went so far as to invent a hybrid of digital and analog cameras. The photos had to be printed in a lab, so as not to lose film sales. Naturally, the venture failed.
Digital Advance - Kodak executives in the 1980s and 1990s were extremely reluctant to consider replacing film with digital. As has been analyzed many times in marketing theory, they failed to find where digital “fit” into their operating model. Again, they did not get into the mindset to pioneer digital film as well.
They thought consumers would never part with the ritual of developing film and that the digital camera eliminated that need. Along the way, the quality of digital surpassed that of analog film, not to mention how cell phones became incredible cameras as well.
As digital cameras became devices, they were sold wherever you could find electronics, not just in the photography line that Kodak controlled. Gradually, the company lost its “field” and was forced to play in what its competitors had shaped.
But it also lost another audience it had built up over the years, women. The main users of digital photography were now men who had (and still have) a less developed logic than those who record beautiful family moments.
In 2007, Kodak was worth $140 million, as a small shop in the photography industry, so its bankruptcy in 2012 was the culmination of a predetermined course.
If anything can save classic film, it's only fashion that comes and goes. A little perspective, a little curiosity, and perhaps a little "hipsterism" and a romantic return to the old days, the demand for film and classic cameras (even second-hand ones) has started to grow in recent years.
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