[cowsandmilk]

I would hardly describe a brand licensing agreement as a pivot of the company.

A true pivot of Kodak was moving from just doing chemicals for film to doing chemicals for the pharmaceutical industry. That actually involved employees changing what they do, changing factory equipment, etc.

[ryao]

They did do more than just chemicals for film, but then decided to spin off the business so that they could focus on the film business:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastman_Chemical_Company

One really must admire their determination to throw all of the life boats overboard to go down with the film ship. Every time they have a chance to save themselves if they move away from a single minded focus on film, they discard the opportunity. They just needed to mimic Nikon and Canon to stay in business, but refused to do even that.

The only way I see Kodak having a happy ending would be if Eastman Chemical purchases their former parent company to put it under sane management.

[actionfromafar]

That's way too simplified. There's no "just" mimic Nikon and Canon and every other company which tried that died or pivoted away from the try.

[LudwigNagasena]

It makes sense to spin off a successful subsidiary into a separate company and bankrupt the unsuccessful parent company. ECC net income is four times Nikon's and one third of Canon's, so it fits right in the middle. Seems like a happy end for Kodak stockholders beyond the sentimental value of continuity of brand.

[vkou]

Survivorship bias. There's no shortage of dead companies who did try to pivot, and, as it turns out, it's harder to become successful in a new field than just saying 'We're trying something new, boys!'

[rubidium]

Fujifilm succeeded at it (before Kodak tried). Interesting case study between the two companies.

[bravesoul2]

Interesting idea. Rather than the tired "they missed digital photography"... they could have seen it coming and pivoted to something where the experience transfers.

[dotancohen]

Kodak _invented_ digital photography.

[SturgeonsLaw]

And then shelved it, fearing that it would cannibalise their film sales

[actionfromafar]

And then was a leader in digital sensors. But film sales collapsed basically overnight, not in a slower slope as projected.

Kodak mgmt wasn't crazy or anything like that.

[tejtm]

They thought people wanted to have pictures. Instead, we just wanted to take pictures.

[kriro]

I'd say take and share. Seems like people these days value pictures not as a snapshot for themselves (memory) but rather as a snapshot to show themselves to others (projection). Or at least there was some sort of shift.

[exasperaited]

Film sales didn't collapse "overnight" in any way -- it should have been easily predictable and their sales of crappy, creaky plastic digital compacts and printers should have told them. If that rubbish was selling, film was doomed.

More to the point, the sales of Kodak Photo CD many years earlier should have tipped them off to what would happen once a small, cheap-enough digital camera met the broad quality of the lowest resolution photo CD scan (or even approached it, given how bad most people's photos are and how digital cameras made better photography easier for everyone). And given how they were doing the R&D, they should have known what was coming. Not just people not buying film, but people not really paying for prints, which is a double-whammy.

Kodak management wasn't crazy but it was entitled, boorish, inept and lazy. A classic late-stage US company. They were overconfident about their reputation and their essential status (just like Intel). At best, perhaps they were just too self-absorbed to be able to dispassionately react to what was happening.

The problem is that digital required a different approach to profit because the revenue and profit was lumpier.

As a result Kodak's biggest problem is that they could not possibly have pivoted even late on, because their line of digital products was a total pile of exploitative shit over the long term, that offered intermediate, semi-pro and pro users nothing at all of value and was already reviewing rather badly.

People outside the USA simply didn't buy Kodak digital cameras because we didn't hold Kodak in the same regard, and there were so many other choices.

Kodak also overstretched itself repeatedly in international markets, including a hilariously stupid late-era buyout of a competitor's high street lab chain in the UK so there were times when really small towns had two tiny, lacklustre Kodak stores when they barely needed one.

Fujifilm did better (by planning both good digital cameras and a transition to the well-marketed Instax and digital Crystal Archive printing as well as building ancilliary businesses). Heck, even Ilford hung on for longer, to the extent that their business produced better consumer inkjet materials than anyone else. When they were finally restructured in administration they had made the film business lean enough to survive into a management buyout.

[Daub]

I believe that Kodak’s missed opportunity was in not realizing the social sharing potential of digital photography. They had all the ingredients: the first digital camera, the almost first online sharing of photos… but didn’t grok it. Instead they clung to existing outdated models. A camera nowadays is a different animal to what it was when there were such things as height street photographers.

Compare that to the increadidble lateral thinking they employed when they re-packaged their movie film stock into short rolls, made a cheap-ass camera to accommodate it (the box brownie) and established a printing service to process the results. Pure genius.

[actionfromafar]

This was interesting. https://www.casrilanka.com/casl/images/stories/EDBA/kodak%20...

[bravesoul2]

And they missed it!

[chris_wot]

Bravo

[pfdietz]

Didn't Kodak sell off Eastman Chemical long before the first bankruptcy?

[vintermann]

When the brand is your main asset, licensing it to a scam is pretty bad.