Bankrupt - Kodak

one claims it's the company's only chance for survival [Music] atari has filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy protection 31 year old pwa presents the difference kodak is filing for chapter 11 bankruptcy protection [Music] what's up guys my name is jake and welcome to the seventh episode of bankrupt there are few brands around the world that are synonymous with the entire market they serve band-aid comes to mind or maybe even nowadays purell one that just encompasses all hand sanitizers when the average consumer mentions it there is one very large brand that did that to the entire camera and film market through the 1900s they were the leader in photography cameras printing sensor technology and most importantly film it was a company name known very well around the world yet in 2012 they filed for bankruptcy so today let's explore the incredible history and what eventually happened to eastman kodak this episode of bankrupt is brought to you by raycon go to byracon.com bsf to get 15 off your first order it all started in 1877 with a man named george eastman who set out to develop an easy to use camera one that didn't require a large amount of time and patience to operate cameras at the time use something called a wet plate to capture the image meaning a glass plate was covered in liquid chemicals then while wet were quickly inserted into the camera and used eastman had learned about a new technology called dry plates and he believed that was going to be the future of photography so in the early 1880s at just 26 years old he opened his own factory called the eastman dry plate company just around eight years later the company released a revolutionary new camera for consumers one which had very few moving parts and was marketed as a simple way for anyone to take photographs this was absolutely unheard of at the time with just one click and you're done it was called the kodak this was an enormous innovation and while there were a lot of rich and impactful things that the now named eastman kodak company did for time i'm going to skip ahead to the early 1900s as by now kodak was already very well known in the united states as the premier camera and film brand they had sold millions of cameras through the 1800s and once world war one broke out the company continued to innovate this time for the war effort kodak developed various aerial photographing technology as well as supplying materials for all types of military uses by 1919 george eastman assumed the president role of his company after the death of his longtime collaborator henry a strong now at the helm of his photography empire he guided kodak through other incredible advancements like 16 millimeter cinema film along with new cinema cameras meant for hollywood george had built the company up from nothing in the late 1800s to a thriving staple of new technological advances by the 1930s he helped bring the magic of photography to millions of people and as a person he was known to donate large sums of his extraordinary wealth to institutions he believed in however as he grew older and became sick he retired and in 1932 in a move that shocked many george had committed suicide at the age of 77. he left a note simply saying quote to my friends my work is done why wait [Music] eastman's legacy kodak continued their success for decades after developing the 16 millimeter koda chrome film which was one of the first widely adopted color film as well as 35 millimeter slides and eight millimeter home movie reels though professionals were also fans of their new innovations of products like the kodak 120 and 828 film after world war ii the company put all of their focus on the average consumer introducing low-cost movie cameras as well as the projector to go with it by 1952. kodak continued to expand their reach until an incredible milestone of over a billion dollars in sales by the early 1960s the company's film also found their way off the planets when astronaut john glenn became the first to record space travel through video he was using kodak film by now the instamatic line of cameras were introduced with big fanfare once again improving consumer photo taking technology after a pretty big presence at the 1965 world's fair the company had finally surpassed over a hundred thousand employees with over four billion dollars in sales this was all accomplished just by the end of the 60s the corporation though reached even higher levels of success as the company continued to produce cameras and film pushing the limits of what was possible and innovating at every step they had a massive office and factory park in rochester new york and had their products sold in almost every shop in north america by 1976 kodak had a staggering 90 percent u.s market share for film and 85 percent in cameras they absolutely dominated the market through this era and reaped all the rewards of it however this level of success couldn't last forever by the 1990s the market they had been dominating in finally received a worthy competitor fujifilm the japanese equivalent began making their presence in other countries including ones in north america however kodak remained a giant through this time making their brand known in almost every aspect of film and entertainment most notably sponsoring disney theme park photography spots and even making themselves the primary sponsor for the imagination pavilion at epcot center they also embarked on massive marketing campaigns yet decided to skip out on the 1984 olympics allowing fujifilm to swoop in and take on the sponsoring role introducing the often lower cost rival to the masses despite this slight loss in market share though the company still posted their highest sales of over 10 billion dollars as the company dabbled in other business ventures like buying sterling drugs inc they had also brought out products like the kodak ultralife batteries as well as the kodak fling which was one of the world's first disposable cameras by the 1990s kodak's lead was still honestly unchallenged as the bulk of film purchased in north america was kodak made sales had finally peaked for the company at 16.3 billion dollars and the brand continued to produce products like the kodak professional digital camera system and manufacturing the short-lived apple quick take it turned out though that their costly pharmaceutical ventures didn't exactly turn out that well and after a restructuring of the company management was still criticized for being slow moving patronizing isolated and bureaucratic at least in the opinion of a fortune writer in 1994. by now several companies had introduced their own digital cameras these were pretty terrible and quality and often very expensive consumer products especially by today's standards adoption was rather slow and because of this kodak essentially turned a blind eye to it which is sort of surprising because they were the first to develop digital photography all the way back in 1975 now that was just a rudimentary basically useless to the general public prototype but i think it's important to note that they were funding advancements into this technology by the mid-90s leadership within the company laid out a plan to slowly introduce digital cameras but very cautiously as they were scared that these cameras would cannibalize their lucrative film sales remember an enormous chunk of their sales were directly from film and that in turn funded other advancements but really kodak failed to see the emerging digital revolution on the horizon their ceo essentially thought that digital was never going to overtake film and that paved an ill-minded course for the company but that wouldn't last long when in 2000 the brand switched their ceos and a year later they introduced their own digital camera that actually garnered some praise it was called the kodak easy share and it sold pretty well this marked the company's actual real entrance into the digital photography space and for the first few years kodak was actually doing pretty well selling them they introduced all sorts of innovations within the space trying to solve the annoyances of shooting digitally but despite being number one film sales were enormously down and other brands like olympus nikon sony and canon were all bringing out other and sometimes much superior digital cameras the market went from just four and a half million digital cameras sold in 2000 all the way to over 28 million units sold in 2007. kodak's net sales were already noticeably down to 10 billion dollars and dropping one quarter after another their stock price too was in a free fall after a high of over 95 dollars a share in the 1990s to now just 2.50 there once remember 85 market share was now just 7 in 2010. the vicious world of digital photography had wreaked havoc on the brand who made most of their money on the old way of doing things still the company pressed on making new models of their cheap yet easy to use easy picks line but they still persisted making new film and cameras which was essentially only for enthusiasts at this point while also expanding their disposable camera line to now include waterproof models by now digital cameras had become the preferred way to take photos and now with the advancements in cell phones with their own onboard cameras many consumers felt like they didn't even need a separate camera anymore this evolution in the industry had decimated kodak's film sales and the corporation was now losing money kodak posted just seven billion dollars in total sales yet lost over 680 million dollars by 2011 the brand was attempting to turn things around kodak was clearly on a downward spiral and the public saw them now as a much older brand struggling to keep up with modern trends kinda like the radio shack of the camera market their iconic film kodachrome was already discontinued and their ceo began making drastic actions first with closing entire film factories and then laying off thousands of employees they began putting millions of dollars into their printing division a move to try and switch their core businesses from film to commercial grade printing and while this did kind of work in order to fund these more aggressive endeavors the company used up a large chunk of their over one billion dollar cash reserve to do so they were switching from the almost non-existent film market to the competitive camera market and now to the also very competitive printing market kodak was almost out of money and with dropping sales and no profits in sight finally on january 19 2012 kodak filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy protection just before their stock price had fallen below 50 cents a share and they were delisted off the new york stock exchange this bankruptcy filing came with a deal the company made with citigroup for a 950 million dollar line of credit to be paid off over 18 months this was done to ensure the company could keep operating as they try and figure out a viable future for the brand of course when a company this large goes through something like this their business needed to be streamlined downsizing became prevalent across the company and at their enormous business park in rochester new york the company began selling off former factories to other companies kodak also sold off some of their consumer imaging patents and spun off other businesses they introduced a new branded digital camera and lenses but more importantly switched their entire focus on printing both for consumer and commercial so the brand emerged from their bankruptcy in september of 2013 as a restructured company in their bankruptcy exit document they say quote kodak is focused on meeting customer needs and leading the consumer imaging industry in which kodak has a compelling and unique combination of advantages and well that brings us to now kodak today is a very different corporation than it was the company primarily focuses on printing and motion picture film with now a much smaller customer side of products for sale as of fiscal year 2019 kodak only made 1.2 billion dollars and actually made a profit of 112 million dollars which was a big increase from 2018's loss regardless that is a long fall from the enormous sales they used to generate but how did the staggering fall from grace happen well i think kodak was just too comfortable in the position they were in selling film is extremely lucrative with profit margins as high as eighty percent while selling digital cameras with no reoccurring payments only has razor thin margins of around four percent so of course upper management is going to want to try and ride that profit for as long as possible i also think they just had the idea that digital would never replace the traditional method the mindset that film will always have more detail than digital and to some extent that is true you can get more detail out of the image than you could with the low megapixel photos of that time it's why you can get a higher quality image of something like this in the early 1900s but get a digital photo that looks like this in 2002 however as cameras quickly became more advanced and as megapixels grew in size digital photography became universally adopted over film so that thinking was very short-sighted in fact the company had a history of refusing to switch to digital remember when kodak developed the first digital camera back in the 1970s well the inventor steven sassen claimed that the company killed off his project in fear that it would kill film sales and as the late 90s came in kodak only jumped on the technology cautiously only introducing one or two attempts and despite them still being on top in the market by 2005 they were now competing with other brands ones that focused much more on the camera technology than kodak was this caused a catastrophic chain of events leading to the film company to eventually be left in the shadows of a whole new digital age eventually leading to the inevitable bankruptcy and reorganization today kodak is merely a shell of its former self at one time in the golden era for the brand over 30 000 employees produced film today it's less than 300 people kodak's consumer products other than film are very limited they do still have a line of digital cameras and of course printers but also dabbles in audio and portable projectors they also for some reason produce home security devices puzzles and retro apparel i'm not sure how well these are selling and if they're even worthwhile for the brand but i guess i do see some value in these products in developing countries that don't have robust competition like north america asia and europe the company is continuing to drop in sales year over year and their stock price now even before the 2020 crash is just around two dollars and fifty cents however i guess kodak does seem to have found their place in the market and they are generating profit which is a good sign kodak was the premier name of photography for decades but now that iconic brand has somewhat become merely just a nostalgic throwback to better times while the company is still very much in business today and still even making film which i use from time to time they are almost a completely different entity george eastman made it clear that kodak was always going to be on the cutting edge of technology for over a century that was true and when millions of people across the world look back at their memories from the 1900s they look at them on most likely kodak paper taken on kodak cameras they were almost a symbol of the idea of capturing memories and that iconic logo will forever be a part of pop culture but they lost sight of that innovation mindset and they were delusional and blind to the revolutionary digital age the brand does seem to have a decent future ahead of them but as sad as it may be i think kodak's moments is finally over i'd like to thank raycon for sponsoring this video recon sent us their e25 earbuds and we absolutely love them they are high quality wireless earbuds but start at around half the price of the other guys however there isn't a sacrifice on quality since the e25s have powerful bass and do a great job with noise isolation especially for their size they're comfortable and subtle perfect for any use for the price you really can't go wrong and if you're interested you can get 15 percent off your first order by going to buy raycon dot com slash bsf a link will also be in the description below i appreciate everyone for watching this video through to the end and stay tuned for a lot more exciting content on the way my name is jake and thank you very much for watching [Music] so [Music] you

Channel: Bright Sun Films

Views: 572,226

Rating: 4.9552407 out of 5

Keywords: BANKRUPT 7, kodak, Eastman Kodak Company, George Eastman, Fijifilm, cameras, digital cameras, film camera, kodachrome, dry plates, history, documentary, HD, new, 2020, 2021, 2012, bankruptcy, company, corporate collapse, new york, apple, iphone, underwater camera, kodak film, printing, radioshack, company bankruptcy, bright sun films, Jake williams, YouTube documentary, history of photography, canon, first digital camera, PG, Clean, family friendly

Id: ZUQXLPNV-kU

Length: 18min 47sec (1127 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 03 2020