Kodak will lay off 425 employees after reporting millions in losses

From the company that invented the digital camera in 1977.
Made film that wouldn't break while on the Moon.
Invented the process to coat plastic with aluminum to make those GD flashcubes!

The list goes on and on as it should when you were a juggernaut of the photographic industry employing the best and brightest physicists, engineers and photographic scientists in the world. But this is where corporate hubris and arrogance gets you.

Kodak should create a filter app for smartphones that would emulate their films. They should sell he app for 99cents and charge additional money for new filters as they get released over time. If the app was any good, people would buy it, and millions of $$$ would be earned. But, Kodak is likely managed by complete idiots who are not photographers, not artistic, and completely out of touch with photography, and market trends. They should have released a filter app when Instagram first appeared. They could have even struck a deal with instagram, also they could have struck a deal with a hipstamatic, but no, they didn’t do anything like that, and here is the result.

I still shoot Kodak film, colour and monochrome; still buy Kodak chemistry too. Why? Because it's still amongst the best stuff you can get. The youngsters here will say that I'm a small dinosaur eating Jurassic vegetation. Good & true - but so many artists exhibiting in big city galleries are shooting Kodak. Fingers crossed that this is yet another blip....

This is probably where Canon and Nikon are heading.

Huge corps, lot's of history, lot's of baggage, big cash cows stopping them from innovating.

To find out what happens next, just look at history.

They still have employees left to lay off?

In the Eighties, at Cologne Photokina, the DIGITAL arm of Kodak was present with 300 representatives. Still puzzles me how they lost this game

BFD, Kodak died a long time ago due to a whole string of bad management decisions. What's left is not even a shadow of its former self. It now seems to exist in marketing name only with the right to use the name going to the highest bidder.

Sounds like the same philosophy of Mark Fields at Ford, where he kept cutting the work force by 10% almost every 6 months until the company was about half what it was before him, and no more engineers to do the jobs!
Then someone had the wisdom to say enough is enough, and they hired Alan Mulally, who stopped the madness and turned things around.
Fields recently was kicked out with a ~ $57 million as a reward for poor performance.
It's very rewarding to be a lousy CEO in Corporate America.

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425 employees gone? And they were doing what exactly? And how many remain and those, and equally doing what? I didn't even know Kodak exists for any purposeful reason aside from lending their name to cheap Chinese camera manufactures and even cheaper 3rd party products branding. For this you need about 1 employee.

Instead, they could do themselves a favor and bring back Kodachrome that for some few crazy people (like myself) would still throw some cash at them just for that.

There is no other world company that better exemplifies the result of 2 decades making the wrong decisions can lead to than Kodak. They should have long been renamed Godak, then Wentdak, and now they are definitely nothing more than Gonedak.

People still print? My last printed magazine I bought was in 2008.

what do they expect with bullwinkle running things??

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iKcFtgzcjiM

Please note the re-introduction of ektachrome is by Kodak Alaris, not this company

Who knew that Kodak still had 425 employees?

The article could do with some clarification of which Kodak is laying people of...

Vicious circle of shrinking. Bad management justifying poor decisions can only think of cost cutting. and layoffs. Fools are those who think the last 5 will start playing Russian roulette - they'll sell the leftovers and retire (graciously).

Kodak and Polaroid should merge.

Nikdak or kodakon coming soon

Love a CFO that can lose $46 million, wonder how much he's being paid

Just in case you haven't noticed this:

Kodak produces printers and motion picture film.

Kodak Alaris produces film for still images.

Two different companies in different markets. Kodak Alaris is a profitable company.

I hope they survive. TMAX and PORTRA are brilliant films.

The film business will survive in some form or another. Hopefully Kodak remains part of it.

What's Kodak?

A right direction to lay off employees when a company cannot maintain its business and profitability. Employees, just like the shareholders, they are the stakeholders of the company and take responsibilities for the success and defeats of the company.

Is that the division of Kodak that disavowed their shares and started new shares...

Same Boss that former employees want to bump off and he has two full time bodyguards???

They have a great "focus" :)

Maybe at some time, it would be interesting to apply it on photography product, instead of PR statements!

Sad. The mighty Kodak, that coined the term, ‘Kodak moment’ to inspire people to keep a camera with them always, is becoming nothing more than a fond memory. Imagine going back in time and telling them about their future - “you will one day be replaced by a phone that fits in your pocket that also takes pictures and can create movies”. No one would believe you 🤔

So, is the Kodak entity in the story what's left of the original Kodak company in the US and that's the group with the layoffs? We're not talking about some other branch that still uses the Kodak name but is really some other company that bought rights to use the Kodak name?

Kind of mind-blowing how far they've fallen. Kodak was at the forefront of the digital revolution. But they were stupid and greedy. They didn't get the value of "Intel inside" -- they not only stocked NIkon and Canon camera body kits with Kodak electronics but rebranded them as Kodak bodies. They gave Nikon and Canon every incentive to break away from Kodak components....Sony came in and gave Nikon and Canon and others every incentive to stick with their components. And the rest is history.

Ironically Fujifilm made a similar mistake to Kodak....but they recovered in time.

It's also an extremely hostile environment for craft use of film when Canon, whose film bodies are compatible with all their current lenses, no longer makes film bodies, and Nikon, which still makes a couple of film bodies, has introduced new lenses that aren't compatible with them and shows no sign of updating the film bodies accordingly.

Which camera is shown on the cover photograph for this article?

Every company has the same issue trying to re invent themselves...Kodak is what to the millions of people in the world, close your eyes and think Kodak what to you see.
Pretty simple to know where they should focus R&D and company funds. Any endeavors outside of this are startup risks and should only be reached for when Kodak has a really strong base. Kodak could also partner with another brand to create a new product using the Kodak name. It was a shame when Kodak folded but that was then. If a name Kodak cant be profitable in today's world then how could JOES Cleaners make it....really the issues confronting Kodak cant be difficult if the CEO has just a little vision.
I hope they make it a great American brand.

Kodak still had employees?

Once Kodak used to be the 'Apple' at present.

sad

I'm wondering why DPR chose an image of some ancient Kodak shutter from the 1920s to illustrate this article?

What this article lacks of course is a refresher of just what "Kodak" means these days.

The real question is: "how is Kodak in business anymore"?

I'm actually surprised they made as much as they reported. It's still a $1.5B company.

So sad. They are a prime example (just like Blackberry) that missed the most biggest boat ever and ignorance became their downfall.