About a decade and a half ago, Kodak was among the most valuable of brands, putting it right behind brand behemoths like Coca-Cola and Disney. But, as of January 19, 2012 Kodak filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. Many people believe the cause of the company’s recent financial failures to be due to its lack of embracing the digital revolution.
After taking a closer look at Kodak’s history the aforementioned argument did not seem to be completely true. In 1976, Kodak was responsible for creating the first digital camera and was also responsible for putting the first digital camera on the market with a price under a thousand dollars in 1994. Kodak even held on to a multitude of patents involving their advent of the digital camera and received millions of dollars from the like Sony in patent-suit settlements.
One not so obvious shift within the photography community that greatly effected Kodak’s sales was the shift of cameras being thought of as gadgets as opposed to purely photographic equipment. This subtle, yet detrimental, shift in perspective caused the entire photographic consumer market to change; an industry that was once dominated by female consumers (60%), completely changed to a mostly male consumer market (70%).
Kodak’s true fatal flaw was its inability to look into the future and create an innovative demand for its product. Due to it being the largest producer of film, Kodak tended to latch onto marketing its film cameras and film for too long, and by the time they re-directed their focus onto digital photography, competitors such as Canon had already laid down a heavy amount of groundwork. Even after Kodak had perfected its digital cameras and other digital products, consumers seemed to brush them off because they too heavily associated the company with film. Even though Kodak helped to create the mentality of photography being a popular pastime, it failed to keep up with the market and ultimately the same aspects that caused the company to rise to prominence were also responsible for its demise.
Kodak’s logo over the years.
Image taken from: innovtoday
Tags: cameras, digital camera, digital photography, film, photographic, photography
