Fujifilm vs Kodak

Fujifilm's research teams spent four decades perfecting collagen and antioxidants to keep photographic film stable. Today, those same compounds sell as Astalift, a global skincare brand. In between, the film industry collapsed and most players disappeared. Fujifilm did not. Kodak, founded by George Eastman in 1888, owned 95% of the United States film market by 1976. Fujifilm started in Tokyo in 1934, had chased from second place, then digital cameras arrived, film demand fell 90% in 10 years. At Fujifilm, film slid from 60% of operating profit in 2000 to 1% of total sales 11 years later. Kodak, worth $28 billion at its 1996 peak, filed for bankruptcy in January 2012. Fujifilm Chief Executive Shigotaka Komori asked an unusually generous question of his engineers, not how to sell more film, but what film was actually made of? The answer was four technology stacks, collagen, antioxidants, light analysis and nanotechnology.