No. It is not so simple, and it never will be not when one impresses their own conjecture around a grand narrative on why "we" (writ large, every consumer somehow) "just didn't buy enough" Kodachrome. It's also really condescending when you say "it's sad we keep having these threads". C'mon, dude.
For each new film photographer or cinematographer who listened to their mentors (those who steered them over to other films before even learning about what was so special about Kodachrome as a medium with its own palette and rendering capabilities), it meant that with each turnover of a generation, photographers and consumers more broadly heard less and less about this particular Kodak product family (and arguably about other Kodak product lines, as well).
Page back some days ago on this thread as I shared the way the sales counter at our city's premier pro camera sales/film/lab so actively steered me, then a new photographer, away from Kodachrome when I categorically asked them about it. There were entire bricks of professional Kodachrome in the backlit glass fridge right behind them. As I wanted to get really good at shooting with colour reversal film, I asked them about Kodachrome because it was the one slide film I knew by name (and instinctively, by its vividness on a projector screen whenever my dad assembled everyone for showing slides on his Ektagraphic Carousel). My dad shot all of the Kodachrome; my mother did not (she also wasn't a photographer). Though I lacked a technical grasp on what made Kodachrome different, I knew there was a reason for why it was a venerable film, one to have stuck through since at least the '50s (which is the oldest I'd seen hitherto, long before I knew about its 1935 debut).
I actually opened my masters thesis on the Kodachrome Toronto Registry in 2012 with this anecdotal recollection of how those men at the National Camera Exchange film sales counter so actively moved me over to their Fujichrome products. (If I still sound a bit cross, it's because I am. Their guidance sucked. That was several years totally squandered on not getting to discover something which would quite frankly change my life.)
Between: A) last-mile dealer dissuasions to consumers who'd ask about the Kodachrome product (in that case, it was 1998); to B) sellers and dealers who never brought up the Kodachrome product line unprompted; to C) an awareness that Kodak all but halted the end-user marketing of its Kodachrome line of products after around 1990, give or take a year; to D) a half-hearted effort to distribute and localize Kodachrome processing through its automated K-Lab tech (a brilliant technology of automation (!!!) but with the worst deployment and promotion); to E) persistently dialling back the availability of its line in larger formats going back to as early as 1951, as Kodak tried to market its not-ready-for-prime-time Ektachrome E-4 (and earlier processes) as "pro" (which in marketing parlance inferred "superior") while relegating Kodachrome as a "consumer" product (which in the same, inferred "inferior"), having one effect for still film branding, but compounded all the more for motion film (given higher volumes of stock that medium moved); and to F) a tepid rollout of a 120 film line for its Kodachrome family just four years before it informally put the kibosh on all marketing for that family well, the company was so completely at odds with itself.
The company would try to slice a cake, only to stab itself, then wonder why it was bleeding everywhere instead of enjoying a slice of cake.
Although this wasn't central or even a super-important component for my thesis research, I did find how elements like the above were part of a systemic problem which originated from the very top in the Rochester offices (you know, N. Clinton, Ridge, etc.). I found how the very top revealed its failure to acclimate and to adapt to a market which moved away from massive-scale, one-size-fits-most economies, to an age of more atomized, diversified economies (i.e., beyond primary resource extraction and secondary manufacturing economies), for which industrial processes for end products became more specialized (but still demanded). (On a question of scale and longevity, IBM, anyone?) I found the very top to be woodenheaded for its oversight to acknowledge how it wouldn't always be atop the imaging industry if it maintained a complicity a complacency, even in mismanaging Steve Sasson's brainchild and lumbered along by making strategic decisions (to external changes and consumption demands) with all the litheness of a glacier.
This systemic problem from the very top delivered an epic disservice to its aggregated brain trust of brilliant researchers and engineers across multiple optical and imaging divisions, so many of whom produced an amazing array of products and palette kits which (in their own ways) changed the world which, if you think about what a "palette kit" is, this is very much what different emulsions, CCD, and CMOS chips are. Ferrania C-41 films are a palette kit. Adox films are a palette kit. Lomochrome Purple/Cyan/Tie-dye-swirl films are palette kits. Even Ilfochrome is a secondary palette kit, if but a very cranky one.
The very top haemorrhaged itself of its own lifeblood and its many opportunities to adjust deftly to a changing marketplace (and to the different options which that market presented to consumers, whether b-to-b,b-to-d, or b-to-c). Finally, by 2012, the very top had bled itself dry. It's over.
When photographers discovered what it could do and liked what it could do, photographers bought Kodachrome. It engendered loyalties for life. Some photographers left Kodachrome for whatever reason (new films, an outcome they didn't want, a need for RA-4 prints, processing quality control laxness by Kodak itself, turnaround rate, etc.). Others stayed loyal because the palette kit meant everything to their work.
New photographers came into their own and looked to their predecessors, but they heard far less about this stuff called Kodachrome. It's because these new photogs weren't hearing about it from Kodak's routine of not marketing that family of film. Thus, sales tend to keep falling in an absence of a marketing plan. Unlike other companies which must assertively, even aggressively market a product when sales for that line begin to flag, Kodak fiddled. Kodak idled. Kodak did other unspecified things. Kodak did everything other than what it really needed at a time when it was needed the most.
From the moment I tested Kodachrome, I very nearly stopped shooting with every other film and just kept buying and shooting Kodachrome until December 29th, 2010. I try to imagine if Kodak, between 1988 and 2009, could have gone the necessary mile to reach the many film photographers out there who would buy its family of Kodachrome products the way Daniel Bayer did, or even I did (even if it paled to Daniel's prolific output) had it bothered to use adaptive marketing for that outreach. Even remedial marketing would not have hurt their bottom line. When selling a family of products at a global scale, marketing done well branding done well is a trifling expenditure with high potential of greater returns. Eastman Kodak's case for its branding work for Kodachrome was already made for them by WWII. This was a slow, underhanded pitch as far as marketing challenges went; at the time, say 1990, it certainly had the capital to develop a fantastic marketing plan. It didn't, however, develop a fantastic marketing plan.
(Really thinking about the readership here lots of dudes and trying mightily to stifle homologous relationships between "Porsche" with "911" to "Eastman Kodak" with "Kodachrome", but oh, there I went and let that one loose.)
tl;dr: Whether it was a reluctance to change the way to run a business from the old and familiar, or a lack of diversity in strategic decision making the very top hurt itself and did so in a slow, gruelling burn starting back in the 1990s. In so doing, it also disrupted the livelihoods of its many talented minds (as they were either laid off or snapped up by more sprightly competitors). What a bummer sandwich, Kodak. You guys.
An emulsion is a tool. You found the emulsion palettes and characteristics which you preferred the most for your photographic work. That's great! Every photographer should find their kit of emulsions which they feel will bring out the best of their vision in the work they produce. For me, and probably for Daniel and a few APUG readers, this is what the Kodachrome family of products did the very best.
Unfortunately, the very top at Kodak didn't think of their products in this manner. They didn't adapt. And this cost them very nearly everything.
And now, here's how Kodachrome chronicled a very hungry zombie.
Your grand narrative doesn't address the basic facts.
I don't think anyone disagrees that Kodachrome was one of the best transparency films made, particularly K25, It just wasn't the most practical particularly for those outside the US. Kodak had the monopoly on processing which was slow, in the professional world the vast majority of clients wanted their transparencies the next day, although that wasn't the case with many photojournalists.
A second factor was most professional work outside journalism and some fashion work was medium and large format and so Kodachrome wasn't an option until the short lived 120 Kodachrome was released.
If Kodak had release 120 Kodachrome very much earlier, as well as the Kodachrome 200, and address the processing issue so that there was a fast turn around regardless of where you were located then things could have been quite different.
Ian
