Hello pure-silver folks I just joined up.
I use the Arista brand stuff and have for many years. I think it is a complicated issue whether it is morally upstanding or not.
In the 1990s the Arista was reboxed ilford. At that time Ilford didn't want them spreading the information around too much so when you asked Freestyle people on the phone if the paper was Ilford they would say that "they couldn't tell you, but actually just between you and me that is what it is." There were reports from people down in SoCal of piles of ilford boxes in the FreeStyle dumpster. I did a bunch of side by side testing and found it identical.
Recently (a couple years ago) Freestyle and Ilford broke their agreement and Freestyle switched to Kentmere. Now the sales people at Freestyle have no qualms about admitting it to you if you ask. So yes the Arista ll is Kentmere.
As to the moral issue of reboxing and renaming I think you can't put the blame on just one group. For one thing the operation of the paper coating and production is extremely expensive and hard to do in small batches. (Apug members know I am referencing an old Kodak employee) I think undoubtedly there are economic people sitting around with calculators figuring out how to maximize profit and minimize effort. Ilford for instance assumes that most of their buyers are loyal Ilford buyers. And they figure that they can raise their prices to a tipping point where the loss of sales is balanced by increased prices and less production. They are capable of much greater production but if they produce more they are forced to sell it which will lower the price. So they probably figure out that they could go ahead and produce more and sell it to a reboxer at a reduced rate and they would get that income and only lose a small portion of the loyal Ilford buyers.
An interesting development now is that Harman bought Kentmere and so owns both Ilford and Kentmere. So your money goes to the same people regardless of which you buy. I am waiting for the inevitable news that Arista ll is going up in price as Ilford is constantly doing.
As I understand it, Harman/Ilford is going to leave Kentmere as it is producing Kentmere products just as they have with the same formulas and stocks. But the Kentmere philosophy surely is the same in that they find a tipping point with production/pricing and sales and maximize the profit whatever that formula is. They undoubtedly find that they can increase production and allow someone to take over packaging and sales at a reduced rate and it increases their income more than they lose from Loyal Kentmere clients switching to Arista II. So who really is Devil? the reboxers or the people sitting figuring out the formula for squeezing the most money out of us. Personally I go with the reboxer because it saves me money and keeps the machine as it is. What is the worst that could happen? The original maker loses too many buyers and cancels the contract with the reboxer forcing people like me to pay a higher price for the original box.
I personally don't feel morally improved with whatever decision I make.
Dennis
On Apr 1, 2008, at 09:24, Jason McPeak wrote:
Most all of ARISTA's consumables are just repackedged products, their films are just repackaged FP4, HP5, etc
On 4/1/08, Richard Knoppow <dickburk@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
-----Original Message-----
>From: Ray Rogers <earthsoda@xxxxxxxxx>
>Sent: Apr 1, 2008 2:02 AM
>To: pure-silver@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
>Subject: [pure-silver] Angry Monologue aginst Deception in the Sensitized Material Industry
>
>
>--- Bogdan Karasek <bkarasek@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
>> Hi all,
>>
>> I believe that somebody recently mentioned that that ARISTA paper sold
>> by FREESTYLE was rebadged (manufactured by) KENTMERE. Can this be
>> confirmed?
>....
>
>You know I am having a hard time today- next doors no-freeze alarm having gone off and piercing
>all afternoon, so maybe you will excuse my short temper here...
>
>But I for one am sick and tired of Sensitized Material Manufacturers selling their products* to be
>sold to other companies so that those other "wanna be's" can pretend to be manufacturers
>themselves...
>
There has been a great deal of this sort of thing for many years. Agfa, Farinia, Kentmere, Ilford, have all made materials on a custom basis. I believe that Kodak never has. Ilford announced several years go that they would discontinue the practice but they still have a custom department.
I think there is a difference between products sold under house-brand names such as Freestyle's Arista brand, and materials sold on the general market as though by a manufacturer. Some of the Eastern European brands fall into this category (too early in the morning for me to remember names).
As far as Freestyle goes, they sell materials by several makers under similar names. Arista and Arista EDU are, in general, not made by the same manufacturers. One can sometimes make a good guess as to the actual manufacturer from the country of origin. For instance, Arista EDU film is not made in England while at least some Arista film is. I am pretty sure the Arista film is still Ilford but am not sure. I did actually once get some rolls of 120 Arista that had Ilford sticky tape on them. Some Arista paper must be Kentmere. Its made in England but does not seem to be Ilford.
For the most part the film and paper sold by these companies as custom material is the same as their regular production. The advantages they claim are a predictable market, lack of need for advertising, and some saving in packaging.
I agree that one of the reasons for custom marketing may be excessive production capacity, especially now, but the practice has been going on for decades so this can not have always been true.
One thing I found out about Kodak several years ago was that some bargain priced material was gray-market. There _were_ some differences in quality. For instance, USA made 35mm 36 exposure cassettes had about 40 exposures on them while the gray-market stuff had just about 36 exposures. I talked to someone at Kodak about this at the time and was told that while the gray-market sales were probably illegal and were certainly in violation of Kodak contracts the practice was so wide spread that it was hopeless to fight it. I think the film I bought that time was color film made in India and meant for the Asian market. This may have been a result of Kodak's refusal to sell on an OEM basis.
I have no idea if Fuji sells custom material. I do wish they sold their B&W paper in the US, evidently its good stuff, but is sold only in Japan.
In any case, the trick about understanding the modern world is that its all about money and nothing else.
Your's richly, AKA Scrooge McDuck
--
Richard Knoppow
dickburk@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Los Angeles, CA, USA
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I am a leaf on the wind! Watch how I soar.
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