Discussion

By John Henry on Mar 30, 2009

"The Delaney Report,” said insiders at Kodak are complaining that Mr. Hayzlett isn't a "classic marketer."

Funny how an old firm can shrink year after year and when someone comes in, rocks the boat the moles come out.

Love or hate Jeff, Kodak will not sit back and grow stale. The end result is Kodak will not go down for lack of marketing effort.

Kodak has introduced cutting edge products consumer products. Its graphics arts imaging line with the Nexpress is being challenged by KM, Canon and Ricoh. The days of high cost iron and high click rates will be hard to maintain.

The race now becomes how long can the Nexpress hold on in the market until the new promising high speed inks comes on line.

Not understanding Kodak’s costs, but seeing the market. I would introduce a reconditioned Nexpress 2100 at the $100,000 price point. (they also rebrand the Canon 7000) Have simple click rate of .05 color, any size and hit back at the others. This puts machines that have little resale value into a segment you’re not placing units and builds market while keeping Canon, KM and Ricoh out of your back door.

The new selling market is the $100,000 +- range. The Xerox 700 and new KM is rumored to be out in late 09. Ricoh 900c and Canon 7000/6000 are eating market share. You can make very good argument you can out produce and have redundancy with multiples of these boxes compared to one high price print engine. Color quality is now close, in some case better and click costs are often less.

If Kodak cannot get this done you need to consider what is lifespan of the Nexpress and if you can even last as player in the marketplace.

I think Jeff knows this.

By Chuck on Mar 30, 2009

Jeff Hayzlett ROCKS!

By John on Mar 31, 2009

Hayzlett is great at promoting himself.
And the much vaunted printer ink savings?
According to Popular Photography: "Overall, the 5300 came in at the bottom of the four in terms of image quality for both 3 star prints and scans. And while Kodak can actually claim dramatic saving in ink costs over the competition -- it does so by comparing apples and oranges -- or more accurately, draft quality prints to "lab quality" prints from other manufacturers."
http://www.popphoto.com/Reviews/Accessories/All-in-One-Printer-Shootout/All-in-One-Printer-Shootout

By Michael J on Apr 01, 2009

The problem is that marketing does not profit make. Looks nice. Sounds nice. But where's the money.

The problem is not Jeff Hazlitt, he's doing his job. My bet is that the problem is a Board of Directors that is not focusing and not doing their job.

The idea of making Kodak "hip" is similar to the kool aid about Printers becoming "Marketing Service Providers." It's a great idea if you can do it really well. It's an awful idea if you can''t. Just saying so, doesn't make it so.

My 2 cents is that the desktop printer market is much, much too competitive for any company that isn't already the lowest cost producer with scale to have a shoot at reasonable margins.

If I were Kodak, I would maniacally focus on the installed base of offset printing Creo Workflows and newspapers. Make some kind of deal with Oce.
If newspapers move to versioned niche printing, that's a nice growing market in which the two of them should easily share the number one position.

By Baylye Knobbe on Apr 01, 2009

What about Dell Printers?

By Trevor Collins on Apr 23, 2009

What I would like to know is weather the Kodak machine is any cheaper to run that other photo printers when compeering like for like images.

By malcolm on Apr 27, 2009

I notice that kodak do not include compatable inks which can save people alot of money and doesn't alway mean poorer results..i feel the advertising campain misleads people into thinking they have to buy a new printer to unltimately save money on inks..where are the advertising standards people when you want them !!