“I really don’t believe there’s going to be another Kodak moment.”
-Don Strickland, ex VP of Kodak Digital Imaging.
The humbled and understandably remorseful former executive told Bloomberg TV earlier today what the CEO doesn’t seem to have the stomach to below… After a storied, centurial history, Kodak is going out of business.
The real Kodak that is, the American company we all know and remember. In Mr. Perez’s words they’re using “Chapter 11 processes” and “restructuring.” There is truth to that of course. Certain of Kodak’s profitable business units in digital imaging, namely in Europe, will remain. So technically there will still be some semblance of Kodak, somewhere. But the photo company that left an indelible mark on the lives of nearly every single American in the 20th century will soon be gone.
“Kodak… was the company we entrusted our most treasured possession to – our memories,” Robert Burley, a photography professor at Toronto’s Ryerson University, told TIME.
Kodak was the pioneer in film. Everyone knows that. What most probably don’t know (what I was very surprised to learn myself this morning) is that they also invented the first ever digital camera. In 1975. They put it on the shelf because it stood to threaten their extremely lucrative business they had built around film.
The company never pursued their own industry-altering innovation until decades later. At which time they were already too late, unable to compete with the likes of Canon and Nikon. Those companies were quick to adapt, able to part ways with the past and embrace digital, around the turn of the century.
And so friends, after 130 years a real American brand has died (and there aren’t many left). A titan has fallen. Now is a moment to remember. A moment to learn lessons. A moment to, dare I say it, mourn. Those of us in entertainment, advertising, and many others owe Kodak an irreparable debt and should remember them fondly. What we do would not be possible without what they did.
We won’t postulate on the why. Neither the time nor the place. Suffice it so say Kodak was trapped in the glimmer of nostalgia. Now let’s make sure the rest of us are not.
