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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