The downfall of KODAK

Kodak was once a big name in the camera industry, dominating photography market all over the world. When we take old photos of the 1970 's, it would have clicked with a Kodak camera on a film and paper. Despite one and only favourite company in the photographic industry around the world, this gaint company got Bankrupt in 2012. What went wrong with kodak? Why did the world's leading imaging company fell? So, here Iam discussing the tale of kodak that doesnt have a happy ending.

Kodak was an American company established by George Eastman and Henry A Strong in 1892. For most of the 20th century, kodak was the world's leading manufacturer of analog photography . By 1968, Kodak had almost 80% of global photography market share. The company used a strategy called the razer and blades to make profit. It means, it used to sell the razor at a very low price and the blades to use the razor at higher price. Kodak was able to grab tremendous profit from this business model. Not only that, it introduced a campaign called kodak moments which refered to an best moment in a persons life. Through this campaign, kodak was able to create an emotional attachment with the consumers. This campaign also reaped revenue for the company.

Everything was going well until the arrival of new technology, more specifically the digital camera. The thing is that,the first digital camera was invented by a person named Steve Sasson who was an electrical engineer at Kodak. He introduced the idea of digital camera to his high official at Kodak. but the officials told Steve to keep his idea to himself and not to tell anyone. The higher officials said it because, they are making most of their profit from films and paper used in photography. If digital camera comes, it would ultimately make the film and paper unnecessary. They ignored the digital camera technology to keep the profit intact. This was the first business blunder did by kodak.Though kodak let the idea of digital camera pass through it hands, Fujifilm a Japanese imaging company adopted the technology and implemented it on a large scale by realising the potential of what digital camera are capable of. Other camera manufacturers like Sony, Canon, Nikon and others also followed the same path of fujifilm and started to invest in digital camera technology.

In 1981 Sony came up with its first digital camera prototype called mavika. By seeing that, Kodak become little concerned about the technology disruption in the photographic industry by digital camera.Kodak believed that, the consumers in USA will not favour any japanese company like fujifilm and canon over kodak. But the thing is that, the companies had already penetrated into the market. Kodak also made made some bad investments.That is, In 1988 Kodak invested about 5.1 billion dollars in Sterling drugs by hoping that the chemical business would help them in manufacturing paper in photography . But later on kodak realised that, the drugs that Sterling was dealing with had less use in photography. Due to less significance, kodak sell it out with half the purchase price. What they did was, instead of investing money on bringing new technology into the company, Kodak wasted its time and money on not useful things. But Kodak had a chance to get back on the right track in 1989 during the time of chosing the next CEO of the company by the board of directors . They had to either choose Phil samper who was a Digital Photography enthusiast or kay whitmore who was a part of traditional mindset. The bod recruited kay whitmore. Whitmore stayed close to kodak core business in film and photography chemicals. It was the last nail in the coffin for kodak. Buy 2000 Kodak understood that it had to stop what it was doing and to adopt new technology. But it was too late by then, other big gaint like Fujifilm, Sony and Nikon already in the market with their exceptional popularity among consumers. In 2004, Kodak officially stop producing traditional film cameras and put more focus on digital camera in 2005. By 2009,the global camera market share was led by Canon and kodak was way behind Sony, nikon, Samsung and others. In 2012,Kodak faced bankruptcy which forced them to get out of the camera business.

Ameena s