[Leica] IMG: Remnant of the Past

Fri Oct 8 11:08:52 PDT 2021

Ford found out about EV by offering the Electric F150 that can power your
house in a power failure, thank you.  Now they have so many orders they're
building a couple of new factories and hiring 11,000 Tennesseans to crank
them out.  GM has been futzing with cramped electric sedans for years and
nobody wants a sedan, ac, dc, or diesel.

On Fri, Oct 8, 2021 at 9:34 AM Don Dory via LUG <lug at leica-users.org> wrote:

> I hope Nathan chimes in to what I am going to say.  My opinion is that
> large companies develop myopia when large changes in their environment
> happen.  Sears owned the tool and appliance business in the U.S.  They had
> warehouses and distribution down.  Home Depot happened and they didn't
> respond.  Amazon started up and they discontinued their catalogue
> operations.  They fiddled on the appliance front and lost to a thousand
> cuts: now Home Depot sells tools, lumber and appliances as well as all
> kinds of things for the home.
>
> Personally, I believe that management fell in love with high margins on
> soft goods and made a decision to expand in that direction. Not their
> specialty so they were  killed by competition both upscale and downscale.
>
> Kodak essentially invented digital photography but couldn't let go of the
> high margins from the total film business.  Xerox couldn't imagine what
> computers could do.  Ford and GM can't see how fast the change to EV cars
> will be: my prediction is that the change from ICE cars will be in the same
> exponential S curve that digital photography was.  Self driving taxis will
> do the cars what the iphone did to point and shoot cameras.
>
> On Fri, Oct 8, 2021 at 9:22 AM Jim Nichols <jhnichols at lighttube.net>
> wrote:
>
> > Thanks for your comments, Nathan.  I think Sears got caught up in the
> > shopping center craze. In Nashville, they had a fine store near downtown
> > in the 50s and 60s which we always visited.  Then, as suburban shopping
> > centers opened, they tried to open a smaller store in each of them, and
> > the large store deteriorated.  In a few years, people lost interest. The
> > large store was sold to the Salvation Army, which uses it as its main
> > location in Nashville.
> >
> > On 10/7/21 11:56 PM, Nathan Wajsman wrote:
> > > Jim, you must do a book of those stories some day!
> > >
> > > As for Sears, I remember shopping there quite a bit when we lived in
> > Gainesville, FL from 1984 to 1987. I still have my very first tripod,
> > bought there and branded Sears, when I took up photography as a hobby in
> > 1985.
> > >
> > > I think I was last inside a Sears a few years ago during a visit to
> > Puerto Rico. A sad, rundown appearance, clearly a place in terminal
> decline.
> > >
> > > Cheers,
> > > Nathan
> > >
> > > Nathan Wajsman
> > > photo at frozenlight.eu
> > >
> > > http://www.fotocycle.dk/paws
> > > http://www.greatpix.eu
> > > http://www.frozenlight.eu
> > >
> > > YNWA
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >> On 5 Oct 2021, at 15:47, jshulman at judgecrater.com wrote:
> > >>
> > >> You indeed paved the way in color printing, which had been renowned
> for
> > not only inaccurate color but iffy registration.  I recall seeing purple
> > hams from K-Mart circulars, usually slightly out of register ("purple
> ham"
> > became shorthand in our house for a K-Mart shopping trip.)
> > >>
> > >> In the 1980s and 1990s I was the marketing director for a catalog
> > company that, though considerable growth, printed more than six million
> > catalogs a year in eighteen variations.  After considering several major
> > printing companies, including Donnelley (also famed for printing
> telephone
> > directories,) we chose World Color Press, a relative newcomer that was
> > building brand new plants around the nation.
> > >>
> > >> Our catalog was slated for production at a rural Wisconsin site,
> > recently opened in what had been farmland.  During a tour of the facility
> > my rep mentioned that they printed Playboy magazine, and that some
> > potential clients refused to do business with them for that reason.  I
> said
> > it sure didn't matter to us, so long as our job was done properly and on
> > budget.   We arrived at the proofing room, with 5000K lighting for a
> > uniform standard of judging match of the original files to printed pages.
> > There was a huge proofing table filled with copies of that month's
> > centerfold, being proofed by about six ladies who could have been
> > archetypes of Grandma from a Normal Rockwell illustration.  They were
> bent
> > over the table, peering through 10X Zeiss loupes, makes sure the pubic
> hair
> > was in register.
> > >>
> > >> I walked up to one of the ladies and said, "Interesting job."  Without
> > pickup up her head she replied, "Keeps the family fed and the kids in
> > school," with uninterrupted attention to some model's pudendum.
> > >>
> > >> When I think of all the teenage boys who were worried that mom would
> > find the stash of Playboys hidden under the bed, I also consider that
> > Grandma wanted to make sure they were completely satisfied.
> > >>
> > >> Jim
> > >>
> > >>
> > >> -----Original Message-----
> > >> From: LUG <lug-bounces+jshulman=judgecrater.com at leica-users.org> On
> > Behalf Of Brian Reid
> > >> Sent: Tuesday, October 5, 2021 9:23 AM
> > >> To: Leica Users Group <lug at leica-users.org>
> > >> Subject: Re: [Leica] IMG: Remnant of the Past
> > >>
> > >> Sears Roebuck was a major force in advancing color printing, and was
> > THE pioneer in digital color printing.
> > >>
> > >> By the 1960s, Sears realized that its customers expected the colors
> > printed in its catalog to be spot-on correct. As its VP of catalog sales
> > noted, "Your grandmother will hold the catalog up next to her curtains to
> > see if the colors match. If they match, she will order new sofa cushions.
> > If when the sofa cushions arrive they do not match the curtains, she will
> > return them angrily and stop buying from Sears for a while. The colors in
> > the catalog must be exact."
> > >>
> > >> By the time I got involved, Sears catalogs were all printed by R. R.
> > >> Donnelley & Sons at its printing plant on Calumet street in Chicago.
> RR
> > Donnelley won and kept the contract because they were able to do a better
> > job of printing accurate colors than the competition. My involvement was
> > advising them on digital color separation technology so they could use
> > 7-color presses; the classic optical separation process didn't work well
> > past 4 colors and the filters were mind-numbingly expensive.
> > >>
> > >> When my mother buys sofa cushions by mail order, she evaluates their
> > color using the screen on her iMac. Even if she could lift it to hold it
> > next to her curtains, proper comparison of glowing-screen colors with
> > fabric colors is impossible. The catalogs were better. I sometimes wish I
> > had kept one.
> > >>
> > >>
> > >> On 2021-10-04 13:29, Jim Nichols wrote:
> > >>> As I glanced around me on a cloudy morning, I saw this reminder of
> the
> > >>> days before Amazon and other on-line sources.  Sears Roebuck, and its
> > >>> rival, Montgomery Ward, were the mainstay of rural America.
> > >>>
> > >>>
> http://www.gallery.leica-users.org/v/OldNick/20211004-DSCF3289-Enhance
> > >>> d.JPG.html
> > >> _______________________________________________
> > >> Leica Users Group.
> > >> See http://leica-users.org/mailman/listinfo/lug for more information
> > >>
> > >>
> > >> _______________________________________________
> > >> Leica Users Group.
> > >> See http://leica-users.org/mailman/listinfo/lug for more information
> > >
> > > _______________________________________________
> > > Leica Users Group.
> > > See http://leica-users.org/mailman/listinfo/lug for more information
> > >
> > --
> > Jim Nichols
> > Tullahoma, TN USA
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Leica Users Group.
> > See http://leica-users.org/mailman/listinfo/lug for more information
>
>
>
> --
> Don
> don.dory at gmail.com
>
> _______________________________________________
> Leica Users Group.
> See http://leica-users.org/mailman/listinfo/lug for more information
>
-- 
Regards,

Sonny
http://sonc.com <http://sonc.com/look/>
Natchitoches, Louisiana
1714
Oldest Permanent Settlement in the Louisiana Purchase

USA