Marketplace

Amazing! A product is no longer meeting the fickle tastes of consumers and there is no bailout, no buyout, and no suing the customers for meeting their needs as they see fit? What an unusual story! AIG, GM, and the RIAA could learn something from Kodak. So could taxpayers in this capitalist economy: If a product or service can not compete then let it die. Kudos to Kodak.

I still have three rolls in the ‘fridge. Let me know if you need one…

Note to Ben:

Autos are not the same as color film. There is quite a bit to learn from the difference. People aren’t buying Toyotas and Hyundais either. None of the world-wide automakers selling in the US are making a profit. GM can’t sell smaller cars as well as SUV’s and V8’s because most people want large cars and SUV’s. People in this country want them sooo much that all the Japanese automakers produce large cars and SUVs for the US market. Even Honda, who found they could not sell enough 58 mpg normal Civics in the US to make them worth making in the 1990’s even started making SUVs.

Who’s suing the customers? Huh?

GM’s current problem is due to short term market trends due to high gas prices and the ugly problems wreaking our economy due the greedy financial “wizards” at companies like AIG and Citi. Toyota, who is seen as some kind of hero in this, has seen sales fall as much as GM. Toyota had problems selling significant numbers of the Prius, compared to sales of their large line of SUV’s. Sales of the Prius leapt when gas prices hit $4 a gallon, and fell just as quickly as gas prices fell.

European and Japanese automakers have home markets with $6-7 a gallon gas. Want GM to make the “cars people want”. Or really the ones we are told they want? Raise gas prices through the Federal Gas Tax.

This brings us back to Kodak. Kodak has been fighting a rear guard action, selling film as they plod fairly ineptly compared to Canon at a conversion to digital. Fuji is doing only a little better changing over to digital. It is somewhat sad to see Kodachrome go, but film for smaller formats has long since been surpassed by the technical surperiority of digital in professional hands. Kodachrome was really only purchased by professionals and advanced amateurs over the last 30 years, and most of that market went to finer grained films such as Fuji Velvia and Provia. And now the market for Velvia has largely gone to digital due to the same factors.

Kodak’s failure has virtually nothing to do with the economic crisis or gas prices, or government policy. All these factors affect the automakers.

BTW, I have a few rolls of Provia, Velvia, and an old roll of Kodachrome in the freezer. I will probably never use them. That time is past, but people still drive cars, even GM cars.