Polaroid And The Ponzi Scheme

You probably missed it with all the Madoff stuff out there, but there's another alleged Ponzi scheme that's blown up in the last weeks, and seems to have taken Polaroid with it. Polaroid--which just declared bankruptcy for a second time--was part of the empire of Minneapolis takeover mogul (I know, those words don't seem together) Tom Petters who's now accused of running a $3 billion investment racket. In any other week, this would be front page news, but Madoff is the clear market leader among investment scam stories.

Polaroid's limp march to liquidation or wherever its story ends feels quite sad to me, because Polaroid's Edwin Land was a giant among American inventors. Not only did he personally come up with the instant photo process (and defend it against Kodak, getting what's still one of the biggest patent infringement judgements in history), but his company was for years a truly innovative enterprise. The SX-70 remains a design triumph: it folded flat, looked beautifulm and the autofocus version not only took instant pictures, but was only the second autofocus camera in production (with a sonar-like focusing system that works surprisingly well). Land took a real interest in what was done with his cameras: Walker Evans was one of the first SX-70 users, and Chuck Close--and probably other major photographers, but Close comes to mind--did some extraordinary things with giant-format Polaroids that the company kept on hand and invited artists to use.

From a business perspective, however, Land's story is a cautionary tale. It was a company built around one vision, and never managed to evolve. First the cameras it made became cheap and ugly, then they became obsolete. And now Polaroid is out of the instant photography business entirely, though what other business they have that could possibly be worthwhile, God only knows.

PS: This is probably the place to plug my Slate story about the great brand myth. Polaroid of course was one of the great brand names of all time. But that doesn't do them any good. Once the business is shot, the brand--whether it's Polaroid or Pan Am or Cadillac--is shot too.