[Leica] IMG: Remnant of the Past

[jhnichols at lighttube.net (Jim Nichols)]

Yes, Sonny, our governor brags about that, but drags his feet on 
encouraging people to get vaccinated.

On 10/8/21 1:08 PM, Sonny Carter via LUG wrote:
> 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.
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>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>> 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
>>
-- 
Jim Nichols
Tullahoma, TN USA