Brand fail

[LittleWatchShop]

OK, this is a Free Zone so I am going to rant.  Just have to let off some steam.

What triggered this rant?  Kodak PLA 3D Filament

Here is the overarching them: Brands get pompous and think they can ride on their brand and market $hit.

Kodak, in the day, a reliable brand and then (years ago) started selling crap...thinking the mindless public would buy it because of the name.  They are not alone...other brands have suffered the same fate.  Polaroid?  Actually Polaroid is a slightly different story.  They screwed themselves by failing to understand their business.  They thought they were in the "instant film" business when, in reality, they were in the "instant photo" business.  When digital came along, they clutched their cold dead hands around the film business and lost.  Then in a last gasp they started marketing digital products that were pretty much crap with their name on it.  I have personal experience here...because I tried to do a joint venture with Polaroid, IBM and CRUS to bring digital cameras to market.  Fail.

Anyway...I bought some Kodak PLA and it is truly crap from hell.

I feel better now.  BTW...Polylite PLA never fails

[LittleWatchShop]

8 hours ago, LittleWatchShop said:

them

Theme

[KarlvonKoln]

Thanks for the heads up.  Being a semi-retired photographer, I have a bit of experience with Kodak too.  It's from back in the day though.  But it's not the first time they coasted on their brand name.  Their high end professional emulsions were always good.  But their standard commercial fare was sometimes pretty good, sometimes trash.  People would complain, they'd wake up, stuff got good again, repeat.  It doesn't surprise me that they're pulling the same old crap as before with their 3-D filaments, waiting until enough people complain that they'll feel forced to improve.  So sick of companies pulling that crap.  Just make a consistently good product, price it fairly, improve it whenever possible, and customers will keep on buying it.  People notice when you put up your feet and coast on your name.

[dadistic]

Brand names are traded these days like baseball cards, marketers understand that consumers will fall back on what is "familiar" when they have no other information.

I don't know about Kodak, but many many familiar brands from days past are completely divorced from the companies that created them.

@LittleWatchShop, Polaroid was Edwin Land. Was he still around when you tried working with them? He died in '91, so I'm guessing not. 

[LittleWatchShop]

42 minutes ago, dadistic said:

Brand names are traded these days like baseball cards, marketers understand that consumers will fall back on what is "familiar" when they have no other information.

I don't know about Kodak, but many many familiar brands from days past are completely divorced from the companies that created them.

@LittleWatchShop, Polaroid was Edwin Land. Was he still around when you tried working with them? He died in '91, so I'm guessing not. 

No, I was working with them 98 and 99. Developed a CCD based still camera using an analog front end we developed. was developing a cmos imager and was going to license Polaroid's color dots, but my company never saw my vision. I was right as time vindicated me.

[nickelsilver]

I used Kodak chemistry in the 90s to develop and print a ton of photos. Mostly Ilford film and Agfa paper though.

 

One of my mentors, Charles Sauter, started off at Kodak in the '40s, then moved to Hamilton then Bulova and finally Timex. He had great things to say about Kodak but was most proud of his work at Timex. This is a guy who could make a handmade watch in a week, but his biggest pride was producing affordable watches that worked. He prototyped the Indigloo haha. Born in 1922 or 23 as I recall.

 

Kodak was a heavy hitter in pure research back in the day. Polaroid too. Lot of money aimed at not necessarily any outcome. Silly that they didn't see the sea change, especially since Kodak had a working digital camera in 1975.

[Paul80]

Don't forget the Kodak of today is not the Kodak from the Film era who basically went bust after plowing millions into Digital imaging then wondered were all their film and print customers had gone, they were now doing it all themselves on Epson printers and using Nikon & Canon digital cameras.

They just didn't see they were developing a product that would feed their demise.

Business names trade hands all the time, today's product often has nothing to do with the history today's company tries to trade with.

Just look at the Hi-Fi world with many of the great names from the 60's & 70's reappearing but are nothing to do with the original company or its original quality, they just buy the name and trade on the names history.

Paul

[WatchingOracle]

On 8/3/2021 at 12:01 PM, LittleWatchShop said:

Kodak PLA 3D Filament

Anyway...I bought some Kodak PLA and it is truly crap from hell.

I feel better now.  BTW...Polylite PLA never fails

I had no idea Kodak had moved into the 3d printing and prototyping space. That's almost as bad as their 'diversifying' into blockchain tech and not understanding how that works either. What on earth does Poly Lactic Acid printing filament have to do with their old camera interests lol?!?!

 

Kodak seems to really have gone a bit off the rails, ever since they didn't want to get into digital photography. I remember seeing a great doco a year ago about how they basically had digital ccd tech for like 15 years ahead of the competition and kept the inventor who invented the thing there (who worked for Kodak R & D at the time) from being able to do anything with it and they suppressed and oppressed his work whilst he was at Kodak, as they were totally not interested as they knew it would be the death of their monopoly on film.