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Kodak Alaris: A consumer photo business reborn

Executives from Kodak Alaris discuss how the age-old company has emerged a leaner, more focused enterprise.

September 18, 2013

By Gary Pageau

Earlier this month, the Eastman Kodak Company completed the sale of its personalized imaging and document imaging businesses to the U.K. Kodak Pension Plan — a move that ensures the Kodak brand continues on with kiosks and consumer film.

The new $1.3 billion company, Kodak Alaris, is staffed by experienced Kodak executives who know the business: Dolores Kruchten for Document Imaging, and Dennis Olbrich for Personalized Imaging. 

Darren Johnson

Dennis Olbrich

Kodak Alaris will continue to use the Kodak name for its consumer businesses, comprising film capture, retail systems solutions (kiosks and dry labs), paper and output systems, and event imaging solutions — meaning kiosk customers will still see the friendly yellow kiosks in retail stores. 

The new company will also remain primarily based in Rochester, N.Y., but at the Eastman Business Park, not the legendary 343 State Street address.

It's not, however, business as usual for Kodak Alaris. 

Kiosk Marketplace spoke with Olbrich and Chief Growth Officer Darren Johnson about the direction of the new company with the familiar face. Johnson maintains there's an enormous opportunity for a company with the heritage and expertise of Kodak to be focused only on those aforementioned four business units.

"We are in a fantastic position," Johnson said. "We have this great heritage and great brand, and bringing it all together in a new vision for the four businesses. With the opportunity to leverage the synergies across them, and between them, is something we are absolutely looking to do."

Mobile apps will most certainly come into play — Johnson notes around 1.4 million Kodak app downloads are in use, with 2.5 million expected by the end of the year. (A reenergized developer program was kicked off earlier this year.) And the company already has more than 100,000 photo kiosks worldwide. 

Yet some industry insiders say the best days of the photo kiosk are in the past, a sentiment Johnson staunchly refutes.

"People are going to want to do things with their images," he said. "We are expanding the vision and the reach of kiosks from in-store touchpoints to the millions of [mobile] touchpoints. It's really going make a difference. Some of the consumer issues of how they do this are still up for grabs and are there to be solved. But the potential to knock down these barriers and provide more choice, more personalization, and more categories and extend the arena of what you can do with them is absolutely there."

Johnson added that the company is seeing a great uptake in printing from mobile apps.

"We are bringing it all together under one vision, which is to be the best in the world at delivering solutions that make it easy to enrich, to share and to relive your moments, your stories and your life. It's an evergreen vision that encompasses all of our businesses. It's as relevant today for the POS business, as it is for the event imaging business, as it is for RSS and film capture. Taking those four pillars and putting them together under one vision, and work the synergies across those businesses, gives us fantastic momentum to grow into the future."

Olbrich notes that even though the company is new, Kodak Alaris has been gestating for months. Looking back at the progress since April, a tremendous amount of work has been done, he said.

"We're really starting up a $1.3 billion company, so there's all the IT issues you work through, and it's still early, but it's going much better than I expected."

But going forward, Kodak Alaris will be in growth mode, in both the B2B and B2C portions of its business, Olbrich said.

"One of the things we are committing to, as a business, is understanding not only what consumers are doing today, but where are they going for the future, so we are providing solutions that make [printing] fast, easy and fun. Our focus on the consumer is driving that."

Gary Pageau is the former publisher of PMA magazine. He is currently with InfoCircle Content Marketing Services and a regular blogger and contributor for Kiosk Marketplace.

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