Kodak Tries to Bring Its Digital Revival into Focus

When Jim Lucanish was shopping for new inkjet presses for his Los Angeles printing company, he considered buying from Eastman Kodak. After all, it’s widely considered a leader in digital imaging technology. But he knew Kodak’s six-year-old turnaround effort was faltering and that gave him pause. “I was really nervous about what was going to happen,” he says. “They’re burning through a lot of cash.” In the end Lucanish went with Hewlett-Packard and recently bought a fifth HP press, which starts at $1.8 million a pop. “We looked at HP,” he says, “and they were a lot more stable.”

Such fears about Kodak’s viability threaten to overwhelm Chief Executive Officer Antonio M. Perez’s efforts to rescue the iconic American brand. Since taking the reins in 2005, Perez has struggled to shift the 131-year-old company into the Digital Age. Racing the clock, he’s been managing the decline of the film business even as he invests in the new product lines on which he’s betting the company’s future: printers for consumers and printing and imaging equipment for businesses. Vows the 65-year-old Perez: “It’s a matter of time and execution, and we will get there.”