Kodak is cutting more jobs. President and CFO stepping down.

[msa]

It's not about the printers, it's about the ink and paper

I get that, but to sell ink you need an installed base of your printers.

They've never made enough headway in that market to sell that much ink.

Worse, when your chief selling point is "cheaper ink," that means you're giving up some of the margin the other guys use to recover their loss on the printers.

 

[wblynch]

Now it's cheaper to buy a whole new printer than replacement ink...

Lose money on every Sale but make it up in Volume ?

 

[Prof_Pixel]

Kodak should have entered the ink jet market back in the early '90s (before Epson and HP), but was so attracted to thermal dye sublimation printing, they chose not to get involved with ink jet at that time.

Thermal dye sub makes GREAT looking prints, but has a high materials cost because your must use 4 (or 3 in some cases) patches of dye, even if you don't need any of a color.

 

[msa]

Kodak should have entered the ink jet market back in the early '90s (before Epson and HP), but was so attracted to thermal dye sublimation printing, they chose not to get involved with ink jet at that time.

Thermal dye sub makes GREAT looking prints, but has a high materials cost because your must use 4 (or 3 in some cases) patches of dye, even if you don't need any of a color.

They missed that opportunity, but I think they'd have had to start even earlier. I bought an HP Deskjet 500 in 1992 or so. Still works, too. (Not that I use it.)

EDIT: Found this: http://www.hp.com/hpinfo/newsroom/press_kits/2008/deskjet20/bg_deskjet20thannivtimeline.pdf

Looks like the original DeskJet shipped in 1988. Kodak had its own problems at the time, and probably was not focused on new markets.

Now it's cheaper to buy a whole new printer than replacement ink...

Lose money on every Sale but make it up in Volume ?

And this is why I see the cheapest printers on the market at thrift shops.

They've caught onto this, by the way -- If you read labels carefully, in the last couple of years they've started underloading the starter cartridges... even toner, not just ink. I was looking at a LASER printer the other day, 2500 pages per cartridge*

* Except, you know, the one they give you, which is only filled for 600 pages.

Anyway, the margin on that stuff is huge -- it's a definite moneymaker. Problem is, since the printers are an automatic loss, you don't make any money until you've got quite a bit of the market. And that space is..occupied.

 

[RattyMouse]

Didn't they make sensors for the Leica M8 and M9 cameras?

Yep, but Kodak sold off that division. Anything successful, sell it off.

 

[wblynch]

Yep, but Kodak sold off that division. Anything successful, sell it off.

Thus the term: Vampire Economics

 

[Prof_Pixel]

I think they'd have had to start even earlier. I bought an HP Deskjet 500 in 1992 or so.

Yes, there were earlier ink jet printers (I had an Apple); however, the first photo quality home ink jet printer came from Epson in late 93 or early 94. It was REALLY slow!

 

[Photo Engineer]

Sure PE, but the companies I'm talking about have (or had, when they were in one piece), dozens and dozens of fabs in the US alone, and hundreds worldwide.

It wouldn't make sense for Kodak to try to compete with them, since that market favors scale. Anyway, the PV ship sailed...straight to China.

(Just like it doesn't make sense to try and compete with Epson and HP by making $50 printers.)

Kodak should be focused on the high end sensor market, things they can do that nobody else can. Getting down in the mud on low margin products won't save the company.

I am not talking about PVs. I'm talking image sensors, and at that time, only Kodak was making them, and only in Rochester. Later, as volume grew, then had other companies make the chips for the.

In fact, their latest technology is among the patents being sold.

And, there were inkjet printers as early as about 1988. I had a very slow Epson that made color images back then that were slow and poor. I got my second printer in 1997 and it was faster and better.

PE

 

[Poisson Du Jour]

And, there were inkjet printers as early as about 1988. I had a very slow Epson that made color images back then that were slow and poor. I got my second printer in 1997 and it was faster and better.

A dot matrix printer is probably not the same as an Epson of that era, but I had a Commodore computer (1987) with an A4 dot matrix printer. Wang Computer Co also had an inkjet printer around 1985 as I worked in a programming environment (insurance field representative bulk payment remitter program and provision of MultiMate wp services for field reps) from 1982 to 1989; two such "squirties" were tethered to a then-cutting edge Wang VS65 server in the room with a 50Mb disk requiring two people to load and unload it (!). Look how far we've come!!

Those printer are long gone, along with the early start-up VS-based systems.. I think about 40 minutes to print a single A4 text page. Squabbles and fists were common as patience was not yet invented...

 

[Felinik]

Yep, but Kodak sold off that division. Anything successful, sell it off.

They probably got a quite good bid on it too.

 

[Photo Engineer]

I had both a dot matrix and an ink jet printer in the late '80s.

PE

 

[BrianShaw]

Ya, and you thought you were pretty dang fancy and technologically-advanced when your dot matrix printer had a 24-pin head, didn't you? I know I did!

 

[Simon R Galley]

When I was a young and callow youth..... 1992 to 1996 I was one of the two or three ILFORD people in the UK who started working on wide format inkjet projects. This was because our parent company at the time International Paper ( USA ) was very interested in the technology, back then we were the only ultra high quality coater amongst the IP companies, and they were very supportive, so we were using ( and actually selling ) IRIS printers made in the USA ( Mass. I think ) including the IRIS 3047 an AO printer a snip at $ 150,000 each, they were continuous technology inkjet printers and jaw droppingly good quality. The software was the challenge and they came from the pre-press world, they all ended up in the SCITEX stable, we certainly learned a lot before moving down the food chain to the 'affordable' end of the market ENCAD, HP etc. seems like a lifetime ago?

Simon ILFORD Photo / HARMAN technology Limited :

 

[Prof_Pixel]

The software was the challenge:

Right. When Epson brought out the first home photo quality printer in '94 (Epson Stylus) with 720x720 dpi, the rasterizing software was extremely slow!

 

[lxdude]

seems like a lifetime ago?

It is if you're 20!

 

[lxdude]

Ya, and you thought you were pretty dang fancy and technologically-advanced when your dot matrix printer had a 24-pin head, didn't you? I know I did!

Oooo, yeah! My two girls...

Dot Matrix was fast and good, which was just what I wanted sometimes. Daisy Wheel was much better looking. She took her time, but she was all about quality!
Both were loud, though- it was no secret when they were doing it!

 

[Photo Engineer]

LX;

You, of course, knew Daisey Hand best, right?

PE

 

[MFstooges]

I was just wondering if current film sales volume is really not suitable for old business models like Kodak and other big manufacturers. How many factories are making vinyl LP now? We as film users may be too spoiled with the old business models and demand the products to be same quality/price or variety/price ratio. And the manufacturers still operate with the same old way. Only one thing has changed: volume.
They may need to come out with cheaper manufacturing process and/or compromise the quality, sell packages of DIY shoot-develop-print products, or whatever they did when people still taking pictures on glass plate, what do you think? $$$/roll?

 

[wblynch]

As long as we have 2 or 3 color films things should be okay.

We really don't need 12 varieties from each maker.

 

[Roger Cole]

No, but we need 2-3 each of C41 and E6. In a pinch I could do with two of each. I'd pick Portra 400 and Ektar 100 for C41 and Provia 100 (since Astia is already gone) and 400, but I know most people would want Velvia.

 

[Felinik]

As long as we have 2 or 3 color films things should be okay.

We really don't need 12 varieties from each maker.

Portra 160, 400, Ektar 100.

Just please Kodak, or whoever takes over the distribution, give us those in bulk rolls!

 

[lxdude]

LX;

You, of course, knew Daisey Hand best, right?

PE

Well, sometimes I had to be quiet, y'know...

 

[Rudeofus]

I was just wondering if current film sales volume is really not suitable for old business models like Kodak and other big manufacturers.

The volume varies greatly depending who and what you ask. If you want to know how much one would have to invest to keep it going, it's always billions and billions in volume and no sensible investor would cough up the huge pile of money required. If you talk about film sales, it's always a few million dollars and dropping which are just generally not worth doing it anyways. I wouldn't trust any number that I read online, and the official public Kodak reports even less.

 

[DREW WILEY]

The expectation are really quite different given a distinction between a private and public corporation. With a private one, you just have cumulative overhead and sales; whatever is left over
is profit, and as long as its reasonably positive, it's a viable model. When something is publicly held,
you need a big BS coefficient in order to attract more investors, and if their often unrealistic expectations aren't routinely met, you've got a big problem. In the present condition, Kodak won't
attract the latter. If they could supply film at a simple per-proft sustainable basis, the overall demand is probably still significant for a few niche suppliers. And they still have a sizable market for
color RA4 paper. But making color products does involve a lot of complicated infrastructure and
supply-chain issues, and all it takes is one weak link to break the chain!

 

[lxdude]

Ya, and you thought you were pretty dang fancy and technologically-advanced when your dot matrix printer had a 24-pin head, didn't you? I know I did!

My first had a six-pin head. Along with the six pinheads I had to work with, that made a total of twelve.