A couple of weeks ago I wrote about the need to adapt or die.  Today I read an article that illustrates exactly why.  Kodak announced today that it will be discontinuing production of Kodachrome film effective this month.  The article talked about how sales had dropped to a point it no longer made sense to continue.  The real telling thing was, there is only one lab in the country that still processes Kodachrome and they will be done this winter.

Apparently Kodak stock is off 76% from earlier this year.  That’s pretty ugly.  But I remember telling my son in 2000 that the film companies had better reinvent themselves or there would be problems down the road.  Some did, some didn’t.  The thing to keep in mind here is Kodak had the best product.  It’s still as good a slide film as you can buy.  That’s not the problem.  The problem is, people aren’t buying slide film.  It doesn’t matter how good your product is, if the market has moved and nobody is buying your product anymore.

It’s like typewriters.   You could start manufacturing the best typewriters ever made, but nobody wants one.  The market has moved on.  Typewriters are old news.  It’s the same with film.  Who shoots film anymore?  Movies are still made on film, but stills are taken digitally.  Everyone knows that — except Kodak, apparently.

The funny thing is, these things don’t happen overnight.  It took 10 – 20 years for word processors to overtake typewriters.  It took the same for digital cameras to overtake film.  The obvious question is  what were these guys thinking during this time?  Why did they sit idly by and watch their business slowly slip away into oblivion?

And it’s not just film and typewriter companies that need to reinvent themselves.  Every company needs to be constantly evolving if they’re going to stay in the mainstream of the market.  The real question is, if you’re not watching the market (and making small course corrections along the way,) what are you doing?!?!?