Film Margins

Simon R Galley · Jan 6, 2014

Dear Snapguy,

I think you state 'Analog is becoming a niche, a subset in the photographic arts'

The first bit is fine, I've operated in a niche for 25 years + ie monochrome photography as a
proportion of all photography, the second part I would subtly restate

'analog is the photographic art'

What do I mean ? All photography is great and fun and each to his own, I really think a photograph taken on any medium has value.

Where analog photography, be it Colour or Mono or any of the alt processes elevates the work ( I will not even use the word 'art' but to me it always will be ) is absolutely simple, YOU PRINT, you produce a single piece of unrepeatable work that no one can exactly duplicate and that will continue to exist
long after you do.

To me, to make a great photograph and not to print it is like making a great meal...... and not eating it......

Simon ILFORD Photo / HARMAN technology Limited :

Photo Engineer · Jan 6, 2014

Bravo Simon. You have said it very well.

I would like to add that at the time Kodak did move towards digital, Mr. Perez was driving the entry into home printing which he believed was the future of digital. His model was invalid and the push by Kodak was a failure. His vision did have merit but people did not want printers. They used "cloud" storage.

PE

ME Super · Jan 6, 2014

Ah yes, storage in "the cloud." Here are the problems with "cloud" storage.

I currently pay a monthly bill just to have access to the internet. If all my photos are stored on "the cloud" and nowhere else, if I fail to pay the Internet bill, I lose access to my photos.
There's a periodic (monthly? yearly?) bill I have to pay to have the cloud storage. If I fail to pay the bill, I lose access to my photos. After some time of not paying the bill, chances are my photos will be erased. This one can be mitigated somewhat by local storage, but again that has to be updated periodically (hard drives typically last around 5 years or so?) When I die, who is going to want to pay the monthly bill just to maintain access to the photos stored in the cloud?

This is all mitigated by having physical copies of the photos. Slides can be viewed with a light source and a lens, either to magnify them or project them. Prints, while IMHO not as vibrant as slides, can be viewed with nothing more than the human eye. Storage is cheap - store them in slide trays, slide boxes, photo albums, or even shoe boxes.

Simon and PE, you said it very well.

Prof_Pixel · Jan 6, 2014

Photo Engineer said:
Bravo Simon. You have said it very well.

I would like to add that at the time Kodak did move towards digital, Mr. Perez was driving the entry into home printing which he believed was the future of digital. His model was invalid and the push by Kodak was a failure. His vision did have merit but people did not want printers. They used "cloud" storage.

PE

At the time we were developing the first digital camera (around 1990) company management was concerned about the margins of electronic equipment. Having come from the neg/pos area, I was convinced there was a consumer market for prints from digital files that would make money. Kodak owned a company that was a leader in ink jet technology, but the decision makers were so fixated on thermal dye sub printing I couldn't generate any interest in consumer ink jet. A few years later, Epson owned that market. By the time Perez wanted to get into that market, Epson and HP had it sewed up.

Photo Engineer · Jan 6, 2014

Don't forget Canon.

Anyhow, Perez forged ahead with his plans in the face of the opposition. In fact, some HP people did not thing Perez was high caliber enough to run a company like EK. IDK. Just hearsay.

PE

Athiril · Jan 6, 2014

I had access to the biggest market research that you normally have to pay thousands per document to get at. Most healthy companies that do well here have a profit margin of 10% of revenue.

Simon R Galley · Jan 7, 2014

Dear PE,

The 'Old' ILFORD did the same of a sort....

We had our photo business and we went for inkjet growth, we had no issue going into a 'colour' market as we had no real colour business apart from ILFOCHROME which was outstanding but very niche. We did really well, made some really nice products especially in the early Polymer coating days then you did'nt need photo quality / technical coating to make inkjet...then from 10 real competiitors you had 200 !

All part of life's rich tapestry....

Simon ILFORD Photo / HARMAN technology Limited

polyglot · Jan 7, 2014

guys: gross margin is not net margin is not profit is not viability; it's a technical accounting term that doesn't mean what half of you seem think it does. Given Kodak's overheads & liabilities, 70% seems a very slim margin.

Photo Engineer · Jan 7, 2014

Speaking of liabilities, some small company sued Kodak every time they made a move. Think of Berkey, Pavell and GAF each suing Kodak because they were ready with a C22 or Ektaprint C work alike and Kodak came out with C41 and Ektaprint 3. They claimed that Kodak did it maliciously to injure their entry into the processing kit business and they won all 3 cases. In industry, it a law suit, the big guy almost always loses and gets hit with lawyer fees, fines and a general caution in plans to move ahead.

This hindered many nascent plans in R&D. Projects were cancelled out of hand. This happened over and over during my time there.

PE

AgX · Jan 7, 2014

I would not call it an industry problem. Rather a US legislation and jurisdiction problem.

moose10101 · Jan 8, 2014

ME Super said:
Ah yes, storage in "the cloud." Here are the problems with "cloud" storage.

I currently pay a monthly bill just to have access to the internet. If all my photos are stored on "the cloud" and nowhere else, if I fail to pay the Internet bill, I lose access to my photos.

There's a periodic (monthly? yearly?) bill I have to pay to have the cloud storage. If I fail to pay the bill, I lose access to my photos. After some time of not paying the bill, chances are my photos will be erased. This one can be mitigated somewhat by local storage, but again that has to be updated periodically (hard drives typically last around 5 years or so?) When I die, who is going to want to pay the monthly bill just to maintain access to the photos stored in the cloud?

This is all mitigated by having physical copies of the photos. Slides can be viewed with a light source and a lens, either to magnify them or project them. Prints, while IMHO not as vibrant as slides, can be viewed with nothing more than the human eye. Storage is cheap - store them in slide trays, slide boxes, photo albums, or even shoe boxes.

Simon and PE, you said it very well.

I don't know anyone who uses "the cloud" as the sole repository of their photos. That would make no more sense than only keeping a copy on your PC's hard drive. "The cloud" is good for backup and for accessibility via the web no matter where you are.

What would you do if the slides in that shoebox got damaged/lost/discarded/destroyed? Would it have been worth an annual fee to guarantee that you could duplicate them down to the last molecule?

MattKing · Jan 20, 2014

Context and the Dollar stores

To give some context to the discussion in this thread, I thought I would share some information I received last week from the owner of a local "Dollar" store.

She operates a small, independent Dollar type store in a local strip mall. The mall owners have a new tenant coming in at the other end of the mall - a branch of the largest Canadian Dollar store chain. The new store will be much bigger than the independent.

The owner was saying that the big chains have quite an advantage over her. For a typical item which sells to the customer at a price of $1.00, the chains will pay just 8 cents while she, as an independent, will generally have to pay between 12 and 20 cents.

Buy for 8 cents, and sell for $1.00. That is "margin".

Xmas · Jan 20, 2014

MattKing said:
To give some context to the discussion in this thread, I thought I would share some information I received last week from the owner of a local "Dollar" store.

She operates a small, independent Dollar type store in a local strip mall. The mall owners have a new tenant coming in at the other end of the mall - a branch of the largest Canadian Dollar store chain. The new store will be much bigger than the independent.

The owner was saying that the big chains have quite an advantage over her. For a typical item which sells to the customer at a price of $1.00, the chains will pay just 8 cents while she, as an independent, will generally have to pay between 12 and 20 cents.

Buy for 8 cents, and sell for $1.00. That is "margin".

The big chain will have oodles of middle management who spend all day trying to work out what todays Dilbert cartoon means.

Tomorrow they turn over calander, new problem.

Kodak tried to destroy a minnow (Land) when they needed to address the Ja giant killer (Fuji).

Photo Engineer · Jan 20, 2014

Kodak never forgot Fuji. That company was always at the forefront of the EK strategy.

And now, Fuji is no longer in Motion Picture film production. Again, a question of margin. EK beat out Fuji in this case.

PE

Xmas · Jan 21, 2014

Fuji are squeezing Canons Nikons etc., dcam sales?
I have a Kodak all-in-one inkjet/scanner and use Double-X in still cams but a decade since I bought Kodak colour.
Cine film is in ICU. Ilford got out decade ago.
Local shops here must be selling Fuji rebrands10x Kodak and Ilfords volume combined? ignoring green box sales...
Profit after tax is a meaningful metric raw margin is merely an account item on a spreadsheet.
I live in an exKodak town in 1983 a Kodak insider told me Kodak were dead I inquired about his pension he said he had 'been paid a fortune to switch out the lights.' I was shooting his son's wedding on Kchrome 25. He asked why - 'bride likes sat colours'.

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