Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2005/04/25
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]>For our German speaking members... >http://www.spiegel.de/spiegel/0,1518,352985,00.html Thanks Feli for this link. Nothing really new to us. But when the "Spiegel" says something, then Germany knows it the next day. I tried to make a quick & dirty translation (excuse my bad english, as my favourite translation site http://dict.leo.org was unfortunately mostly offline) Didier --------------------- BLENDE ZU (STOPPED DOWN) by Klaus-Peter Kerbusk The traditional brand Leica is about to end soon. The german camera manufacturer has much too long underestimated the trend to digital technology. Hanns-Peter Cohn was optimistic that digital photography is just "a short intermezzo, like e-mail is an expression of our present". "Photographing" he said in Spiegel in sept 2004, "will always be something different, something contemplative, that will always exist". This becomes very uncertain for the traditional photocamera company. A few weeks after this full-bodied forecast, Cohn left Leica. Now his successor had to go in April 2005, too. Since then the interimist CEO Josef Spichtig tries to save the company from the financial collapse -with an insecure end. Sales are going down drastically, resulting in a minus of 15.5 millions EUR, the largest minus in ten years. If the company can not recapitalize until end of may, the end for the company, who built the first small format camera 80 years ago, is near, if not inescapable. For insiders it is anyway like a wonder, that the last significant exponent of the once mighty and legendary german photography industry could survive that long. Others like Rollei, Voigtlander or Zeiss Ikon could not resist the japanese rush and had to surrender. But Leica is still manufacturing by handwork a big part of his pricy cameras (up to 10'000 EUR), and it seemed they could resist all revolutions of the camera market. But it is not their first crisis. In the early 70ies, as companies like Nikon, Canon, Minolta and others began the "japanese invasion", the company was close to the end a first time. The fact that swiss industrial Schmidheiny bought the company, helped Leica to manage their financial troubles. The company kept it's way and focused strictly on mechanical precision and longevity, and not on technological gimmicks and gadgets like the japanese competitors. This strategy and the cult image helped Leica to have a veritable renaissance in the eartly 90ies, in a few years the sales were doubled to over 100 mio. EUR a year. The swiss owners had now seen a good chance, to sell the company with profit, after it has been crisis-approached for two decades. The IPO in 1996 was like a foreshadowing of the following new economy era. The shares, costing 24 EUR, were oversubscribed with a factor of 20. But then and now, the business model was based on hope and unrealistic optimism, only. It worked until 98/99, when the management's forecast of 170 mio. EUR sales/year could not be reached. Soon, the promised profits turned into heavy losses. 1999 Cohn came as reorganizer, but he continued the company's tradition of spreading hope and optimism. "Leica is restructured, and now we will attack the market" he said in 2000, just after he could avert another loss. A year later, he even said "Open aperture for black digits" [means "profit" in german]. But 2002/03 the company was incuring signifcant losses again. For the second time, the end of the company appeared to be really near. Now it retaliated upon Leica for having missed the digital route. The company had some digital cameras in the market, but these were mainly produced in Japan and did not bring much profit to the company. They still do not produce a high-end DSLR, like their competitors Canon, Nikon, Minolta and others are offering since years. A hybrid solution, with a digital back that turns the analog SLR (R-Model) into a DSLR, is still on it's way though it was first scheduled for oct 2004. Following the newest predictions, it should appear in may 2005. But then, it might already be too late. Leica must collect at least 22 mio. EUR, to continue it's activites. And neither french Hermes Group nor the austrian Kaufmann family, both the main share holders of Leica, have announced or even promised they will stock up. Meanwhile, Edgar Zimmermann, chief of the workers council, is still optimist. In his office, there's a cartoon showing a frog stuck in the middle of a stork's pecker. With his last forces, the frog holds the storks neck, inhibing the stork to swallow him. Zimmermann's interpreting it this way: "Just never give up". ------ Chart of Leica wins/losses 1995-2005 http://www.spiegel.de/img/0,1020,463360,00.jpg