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Re: [OM] Aw, hell, mama, you can have it!

Subject: Re: [OM] Aw, hell, mama, you can have it!
From: "Brian Swale" <bj@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Tue, 28 Dec 2010 01:28:11 +1300
Bill wrote

> They are currently doing about 700 rolls a day, os still doing that  as he
> said. There'a story there: There should be an upswing in rolls, as more
> are taken from the freezer and shot as the end nears, so what were there
> before the announcement? That's 700 rolls WORLDWIDE! Not much, right?

and Nathan wrote

> People are waxing lyrical about the demise of Kodachrome, but the fact is
> that not enough of them were buying it when it was available to make it
> worthwhile for Kodak to continue it.

The reason not enough people were buying it is entirely due to a strategy of 
Kodachrome to phase it out over a period of about 10 years.

They had a clever, ruthless, kill-it-off strategy.

It was selling reasonably well in New Zealand, then they decided to not 
include "process paid" mailers. I had an abusive letter from Kodachrome 
(Auckland) when I sent in some mailer-rolls that my son had bought me in 
The Netherlands. They wanted to know how I had come by them. The tone 
of the letter was quite unpleasant.

Next, they made it VERY inconvenient for retailers to stock it. From having a 
small minimum order size, it went up to 400 rolls minimum. That killed local 
ordering.

700 rolls worldwide?  True that's not many, but it is so inconvenient to send 
to a non-Kodak plant, in another country on the other side of the world -  it 
was quite difficult to find their address, to begin with, and then, how to pay 
for the processing in the USA?

Formerly, there was a great Kodakchrome lab in Melbourne, Australia, and 
turnaround was good and payment easy. Quality was tops. That was all 
great.

Next, they killed off the Melbourne lab (and a host of others), and the 
nearest one was in Japan. As far as I know they weren't interested in 
forwarding films to Japan and arranging all that stuff.

I concluded that the Kodak marketing gurus did what they could to 
progressively kill it off with a minimum backlash against the company. 
Maybe they succeeded in that, but as a result their name in my household is 
MUD.

I will only reluctantly buy any Kodak product now. They can go to hell.

Brian Swale. 
-- 
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