Comment by cloudbonsai | Hacker News Reader

Comment by cloudbonsai | Hacker News Reader

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> I'd love to be corrected if I'm misreading this, but the reports of Kodak's death seem greatly exaggerated

The basic background here is that Kodak has been pivotting at least for last 40 years.

- 1980s: Kodak tried to become a Chemical magnate. This strategy was abandoned in 1990s.

- 1990s: Kodak tried to become a Digital Imaging company. While it saw a brief success, Kodak lost the competition.

- 2000s: Kodak tried to become an Inkjet Printer company, which was doomed and eventually pushed it into bankruptcy.

- 2010s: Kodak tried to become a Blockchain company, issuing KodakCoin. It was a flop.

- 2020s: Kodak tried to become a Pharmaceutical company amid Covid-19 pandemic.

As of today, Kodak is focusing on its chemical business (such as manifacturing KODALUX, a fabric coating material) and borrowed $477M (at 12% p.a.) in order to expand that business line.

That loan is due in 2026. Kodak is basically saying "I have no idea how to repay that money. In fact, I only have $155M in cash. Maybe it's time to talk with the creditors?".

> - 2010s: Kodak tried to become a Blockchain company, issuing KodakCoin. It was a flop.

Its hard not to laugh at that. At least the pivots before that point kind of made sense. I guess 2010 came along and the executives just decided to yolo.

> At least the pivots before that point kind of made sense.

But was this even a real pivot? They "rented" out their name to a company with an already failed crypto coin project, who thought they'll make it if they use a bigger brand. A pivot implies some effort to change the business model, not just literally throwing your name out there and hoping money follows.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KodakCoin seems to say it was very photography themed and planned to integrate with their stock photo offering. Seems like it was at least integrated with their brand, so it wasnt just a totally random project

I do not miss the zero-interest-rate days and I hope they never return.

I loved my $4 Lyft across town. Was happy to spend VC money...

Interestingly, Fujifilm has pivoted to a like a dozen other industries successfully and it's now a full blown conglomerate.

And yet right now they’re back to chemical photography film being over 50% of their revenue due to the breakout success of the instax instant cameras. Being able to charge a dollar per photo remains an unbeatable business to be in.

I love instax… it’s seriously so good. The wide version especially. I’m addicted to shooting it.

As much as I like the end result, I HATE the bulk of the cameras themselves.

I ended up with a Polaroid Go. It's relatively tiny. The output is nowhere near as good (arguably awful), but for my use, it's fine. I have 35mm film and mirrorless digital cameras when I want "good" photos.

Kodak isn't far off from $1/shot retail for some of their film stocks.

Portra 400 is ~$0.50/shot (35mm, 36 exp roll). 160 and 800 are in the same ballpark.

What film stock are you seeing that's $1/shot?

I didn't say it was $1/shot yet, though medium format Portra 400 is $16/roll (if buying in a 5-pack) which is at minimum $1/shot. E100G is a bit pricier depending on where you buy it as well. I'm mostly just salty because a decade ago I was paying $6-7 roll for Portra and now (in Canada) it's closer to $35-40.

Does that include development?

No, that’s extra. I don’t know if Kodak is selling those chemicals too.

Maybe they should pivot into human robots, self-driving and robo-taxis next. I heard it pays out well regardless of whether your product being sub-par or non existing at all

Might as well mention generative AI as well.

The chemical thing kinda worked out. Eastman Chemical is the spinout from that and they're a $9B annual business.

The folks running Kodak kind of forgot that Kodak was really a chemicals company that supported photography, not a photography company. Hence why the pivot into that was ill-fated and doomed.

It's even worse, other than blockchain, their whole history is having successes and going out of their way to hand that success to their competitors.

> - 2000s: Kodak tried to become an Inkjet Printer company, which was doomed and eventually pushed it into bankruptcy.

Those were actually dye sublimation thermal printers and...they still sell them!

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