[pure-silver] Re: Kodak Discontinuing All Black and White Paper
- From: "Joseph O'Neil" <joneil@xxxxxxxx>
- To: pure-silver@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Mon, 20 Jun 2005 08:30:44 -0400
At 07:43 AM 6/20/2005, you wrote:
Kodak are quetly committing suicide.
-snip-
A few companies are. The economy of scale is ruinign many things.
The bottom line is this - it isn't that B&W products are not
profitable - they are. You have an established product, an established
consumer base, little or no R&D, and away you go.
The real problem is large companies look for how profitable. As a
small business owner/operator, I am happy at the end of the day to turn a
5% profit overall as long as I have enough money to pay the staff, pay all
my bills,a nd still put a roof over my head, have a decent - but not
extravagant - car, etc, etc.
A few years ago I took a night course at the local university -
business school, first year. I thought it might help me run my business
better. I was wrong.
What I did learn was the average MBA, from day one, is taught:
1) short term outlook - how much will I make in 3 months, one yar,
3 years, etc. By comparison, the average family business - the few of us
still around, in any feild - look at what do I need to do to ensure there's
something for my kids to take over.
2) the product is there to make a minium profit margin. If you
goal is 10%, and you product only makee 8", change something. The sad fact
is, if you have a product that , if left alone, consitantly makes a steady
8% or 5% profit, a small business person says "leave it alone - there's my
bread and butter", whereas the new MBA out of school doens't think that way
at all. Everything is grow, grow, grow, empire building, expand or die.
3) Workmanship, pride in what you are selling - right, what's
that? About the only sense or pride left is how big the profit margin is,
and how many beeps and bells and whistles it has - until the next new model
comes out 3 weeks later. :)
4) Planned obsolence. My 25 year old Nikon is as agood as the
day I bought it. My 3 year old digital camera is maybe worth $25 on ebay,
the new models are so much superior.
At some point - oh, maybe 10 years ago I am guess - the camera
companies quietly hit something of a wall - almost all households that were
going to buy a really good SLR had already done so. There were new sales,
but the saturation point had been reached,a nd sales slowed down from the
initial "rush".
With anything digital/computerized, you have about a three year
window that a product is viable, then you need somehting new. It is NO
accident that most software companies force you into an upgrade after 3-4
years. For exmaple, I was happy using my old version of QuickBooks - did
everythig it needed to do, but the comapny that makes it, dropped all
support for my old version, and i was forced ot upgrade to a newwer version
- even though it doesn't do anything that I need extra.
I am just amazed that the majority of the average John Q Public
doesn't see this, or if they do, they don't seem to care, or just resign
themselves to the fact without a fight. Dunno which of the three options
is the worse.
I could go on and on, but the bottom line is, all businesses, from
books to records to photography to hardware, everything is short term
outlook anymore, Business as a whole is very brutal. Not that it wasn't
always tough, but something changed some time ago. I think our best hope
is the smaller companies, especially those with people interested in what
they are selling.
joe
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