Ilford and the death of film

The British company Ilford is almost as old as photography itself.

Founded in 1879, the company started to manufacture photographic plates.

Over the years, Ilford became a well established player in the film industry.

In 2004, the year when the company celebrated its 125th birthday – Ilford filed for insolvency.

What an odd coincidence.

The rise of digital photography had put the company in deep trouble over the last years.

Demand for film had decreased rapidly and most of Ilford’s business therefore reached a dead end.

Let’s take a look at what happened to Ilford.

In the 20th century, the company emerged as one of the dominant film manufacturers with a particularly strong position in black and white photography.

A square image in black and white – this photo is most likely taken with a Hasselblad, using Ilford film.

Henri Cartier-Bresson, perhaps the greatest photo journalist in history, used Leica in combination with Ilford film.

This image of the Vietnam war was captured by Ilford and Leica.

Photos of Marilyn Monroe

Cartier-Bresson was one of the great ambassadors for black and white film. Coincidentially he passed away in 2004 when Ilford was in deep trouble.

Ilford also launched some cameras and colour film from the 1940s and on.

But the company flagship was always the niche product black and white film.

Since film was a consumable good, there was always demand for it back in the analogue era.

Though the firm met some competition with the rise of the Japanese companies in 1950-1970, it still remained healthy and profitable.

With the rise of digital imaging in the 1990s, the photo community started to discuss whether and to what extent film would be replaced by digital cameras.

"I use both, but I can put my heart into film. I don't think we'll ever see it totally disappear.“ // Hideki Fujii, director of the Nippon Photography Institute, a Tokyo-based photo school

"The fact is, people prefer film.“ "The look and feel of it puts it on a different level to digital output.“ // Steven Brierley, sales director at Ilford Photo of Britain, 2006

Though it was far from obvious that film would die, Ilford still decided to stop putting R&D into it.

In the mid 1990s, the Swiss branch of Ilford in Marly started to explore the area of inkjet paper and nanotechnology.

The Swiss branch had been in the colour segment of film and had always been more technologically advanced.

Maybe such investments could help Ilford to survive in the digital area?

Doing so was a bit risky, since no one really knew whether this would create any revenues at all.

For about five years, these investments did not contribute at all to the business of Ilford.

The Swiss group started off by focusing on colour film but continuously moved away from this and towards papers for digital prints.

In this period, they went from basic research into full production of inkjet paper which enabled film quality. It turned out to be a huge and growing market.

At the same time, the core film business started to decline rapidly.

The explosion Number of film and digital cameras sold in the United States (guess which one is digital!)

In 2000-2004, the film business decreased at about 10-20 percent annually.

Given that there are a lot of fixed costs related to production, this implied huge losses for Ilford.

While the Swiss branch kept growing, the old, traditional Ilford faced extinction and several layoffs took place in these years.

Profits kept rising in the digital inkjet printing while the old business collapsed.

In the first seven months of 2004, film sales declined with a mortal 26 percent. Up to this point, more than 50 percent of the UK employees had been fired and the company had accumulated a debt of £40 million.

In mid 2004 the company became insolvent and was restructured through a management buy-out.

The new ‘old’ Ilford kept producing black and white film and even re- introduced some old products.

The company is now owned by what is called Harman Technologies Ltd (Harman was the founder of Ilford) and is traded under Ilford Photo.

They’ve found a niche where film can survive on a small scale.

The expanding Swiss branch was sold to Oji, a Japanese paper company and has kept growing ever since.

They still use the llford brand and sell some colour film as well.

“Oji’s corporate strategy is to build global networks for existing products and to develop new product capabilities to meet the demands of the changing marketplace. The acquisition of ILFORD in July 2005, meets this overall strategy.” // From the webpage

Summing up: the old Ilford survived in a different shape after a lot of downsizing and a few ownership changes. The Swiss business prospers today after having developed inkjet printing paper.

A lot of shareholder value must have been created from the strategy to go for inkjet paper and nanotechnology back in the mid 1990s.

The manager in charge of the Swiss and British sites had to decide whether to spread resources thinly or put them all in one uncertain basket.

He was brave enough to go for one basket, and this turned out to be crucial for the company.

In a fast-moving industry which is heading for a digital revolution, hedging and playing low-risk does not seem to be an option.

Sources The British Journal of Photography Credit Suisse Ilford Chronology

Image attributions

Christian Sandström is a PhD student at Chalmers University of Technology in Gothenburg, Sweden. He writes and speaks about disruptive innovation and technological change. www.christiansandstrom.org christian.sandstrom@chalmers.se