Film Camera Company Created Sustainable Market By Beating Flickr, MySpace, Friendster and Facebook to the Punch
With the bankruptcy of Kodak, most consumers and photography experts consider film cameras and film photography relics of the past. Lomography is a company that has bucked the overwhelming advance of digital photography and created a sustainable, niche market for itself.
The photographers and artists that founded Lomography during 1992 in Austria took two daring and farsighted actions that still make it a viable company today. First, one of the artists smuggled a Russian-made camera known as the Lomo through the Iron Curtain. It was mere serendipity that the poor manner in which the camera was designed and manufactured caused it to effect film, and the resulting images, in unusual ways that became popular with Western European photographers and artists. Lomography has maintained a relationship with a healthy customer base that appreciates the unique-looking photographs a Lomo creates.
The second bold move on the part of the people at Lomography was to launch a Web site during 1998, which was before Flickr, MySpace, Friendster and Facebook existed. Lomography’s site functioned much like photography sites of today, inviting photographers to upload, tag and share the strange images that come from their Lomo cameras. The site houses more than 10 million photos and 3 million visitors browse the site every month.
Lomography operates 35 stores in 12 countries. Annually, they sell a total of half a million cameras and approximately 2 million rolls of film. The company states that most of its sales occur in the retail-store environment and not over the Web. It attributes this to the stores serving as meeting places, physical forums instead of online forums, where photographers are introduced to the camera models and those with Lomo experience can share tips.