Polaroid Market Leader
How could a company worth $3 billion US dollars in 1991 file for bankruptcy a decade later?
A truly American enterprise was founded in 1937 by Edwin H. Land that would later in 1978 be known around the world as Polaroid Corporation, fame due from the Polaroid camera. This discussion posting provides a little background history to the founding technology from a visionary CEO.
One of the early products from Polaroid was sold to the US Armed forces, as so many products were during the years of the second World War. One of the Polaroid products for the armed services was designed to enhance night vision though infrared lens. Edwin Land created a polarizing polymer film. The sheet of synthetic plastic film transformed the images which helped to company finically and win notoriety. This basic founding technology is not integrated into many products like polarized sunglasses and other polarizing camera lenses (Lathrop,2020).
The first commercially available instant camera, Model 95 was named after the founder with the prestigious name of Land Camera. This was the first camera that developed the film without the requirement to use a darkroom with toxic chemicals. The notoriety of the Polaroid Land camera was in 1948 produce a picture in about 60 seconds. Like traditional cameras of that year the image was not in color or black and white picture but sepia coloration. The negative was procced in the camera body and future versions allowed the film processing to be completed outside the camera. The first color instant camera was the Polaroid SX-70.
The sales of the “instant picture” camera continued to climb and sell well through the end of 1978 and into the next decade. In the year 1978 the total number of Polaroid instant cameras sold was 14.3 million units.
Un Realized Forces
Edwin Land was CEO of Polaroid for 43 years and was on the cover of Time Magazine and the caption included “genius”. When Land retired the market for instant images and video began to shift and these unrealized forces forced Polaroid to cut costs with employees being fired and closing of manufacturing. One of the closures included Research and Development, which prevented growth for the company in the video and digital film market.
Un Fair and Excessive Executive Pay
When Polaroid filed for Bankruptcy, the takeover by the newly formed Polaroid Holding Company, included a structured bonus to retain the top 45 executives. Additional stock was provided to them while employees were forced to hold their stock and not allowed to sell as the stock price plummeted.
Lost Leadership Position
Polaroid was no longer the leader in film cameras, digital imaging, and digital file systems. The challenges of so many lower cost products like China’s manufacturing prevented Polaroid from leading in any one market (Lakishyk, 2012). The executive leadership could not lead the market and invested in many different products with the loss from selling Polaroid film packs. Small 3-inch and 4-inch printers were produced to print pictures taken with the new Polaroid GO camera. A 5 Megapixel digital camera was produced after other competitors introduced lower cost versions of digital cameras. Later a 16 Megapixel camera running Google Android was introduced, but the leadership would never belong to Polaroid.
Reference
Lathrop Ligueros,
A. (2020). Resisting Obsolescence : Polaroid Practices in the 'Digital Age'
(Order No. 28356747). Available from ProQuest Dissertations & Theses
Global. (2475191183). https://coloradotech.idm.oclc.org/login?url=https://www.proquest.com/dissertations-theses/resisting-obsolescence-polaroid-practices-digital/docview/2475191183/se-2
Lakishyk, K.
(2012). Manufacturer Product Line Decisions In Growing Consumer Technology
Markets: A Case of Digital Cameras (Order No. 3549598). Available from
ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global. (1284157713). https://coloradotech.idm.oclc.org/login?url=https://www.proquest.com/dissertations-theses/manufacturer-product-line-decisions-growing/docview/1284157713/se-2
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