As Kodak has slowly moved toward filing for chapter 11 bankruptcy (they finally made it official today), many Imaging Spectrum customers have asked us about the future of Kodak dye-sublimation printers and, more importantly, the availability of printer supplies. Everyone in this industry has a “Kodak story” – mine is that I am a Kodak kid, born in the holy land – Rochester, NY. My dad worked at Kodak for 28 years before starting Imaging Spectrum in 1992. We got our start selling $20,000 digital cameras to the government. One of our senior sales reps, Steve Behen, worked for Kodak for 16 years. I asked them to ping their existing contacts at big yellow to see what’s going on with media. Here is what we know…
First of all, Imaging Spectrum has about a four month supply of media for the Kodak 9810 and the Kodak 6800/6850 photo printers. It is our understanding that Kodak has quite a bit of stock on hand as well. Furthermore, Kodak has a very large install base of dye-sub printers throughout the world so dye-sub media is actually a profit center for the company. Kodak manufacturers their dye-sub materials in the United States. Another positive is that manufacturers are required by law to make printer supplies available for five years after said printer is discontinued and continue to honor existing warranties. That would give us another 2-3 years.
Our advice is that if you own a Kodak printer, there is no reason to be too concerned about supplies. And if you are considering buying a Kodak 6850 or 9810, you can buy knowing that media will be available for the foreseeable future. As we like to tell our customers, if you can’t pay off a printer with the work it is producing in a year, give or take, then maybe you should consider another solution. Who knows what will become of Kodak? There are probably hundreds of blog posts today on that subject. I do know that the team that runs this part of the business for Kodak is bullish – we all hope that this part of Kodak’s business still has a future.
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