Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 1999/11/21
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]
At 01:15 PM 11/21/1999 -0500, Jonathan Borden wrote:
>Why did the Contarex bankrupt Zeiss Ikon?
Well, simply put, the management of Zeiss Ikon was misled by the success of
the Contaflex into believing that ANY Zeiss Ikon SLR would succeed in the
marketplace. And they still were using those war veterans (bit government
subsidies and tax write-offs, not that the money-losing Zeiss Ikon had to
worry about the latter, existed in Postwar Germany for hiring disabled
military veterans) at low wages and high quality. Hence, the Contarex
Bullseye ("Cyclops" to some) was a wonderful camera in all regards but
ended up the most complex camera yet made and the most expensive to
produce. And, like the R8's motor drive, it was late past-the-post. It
was introduced at Photokina, then wasn't available for sale for two years,
the two years when the Nikon F WAS available.
As was the case with the British Rootes Group and the Sunbeam Alpine, Zeiss
Ikon lost money on every Contarex they made, as the production costs
exceeded any price-point the market would bear. They could have afforded
this if the rest of the line had been successful, but the Ikonette scandal
broke at this very time, the high cost of integrating the Voigtlander and
Zeiss Ikon product lines, and the result was that only the Contaflex
continued to sell well. The various P&S cameras broke even, but the
Contarex was simply a mechanism for making money disappear. (As boat
owners say, "a boat is a hole in the water into which one pours quantities
of long green", and as vendors at camera shows smugly laugh, "I lose money
on every sale, but I make up for it in volume".)
And, then, the final damnation: Zeiss Ikon, strapped for cash, was forced
to wait three years to introduce the successor to the Bullseye, which WAS a
world-beating design, and also had to wait on the Icarex. These guys came
out in '66. Had the Contarex Super and the Icarex 35 been introduced ASAP,
in '63, we'd be discussing the failure of Nikon and Canon and Olympus and
Pentax to maintain that market share they enjoyed in the first years of the
1960's. But money and corporate confusion prevented this, and by '66, the
Contarex users had shifted to the more modern Japanese cameras and the
Icarex was simply a dowdy might-have-been. (To emphasize the point, the
Contaflex went from success to success, even enjoying a measure of
professional use. The Contaflex Super BC was to be, with the Voigtlander
Ultramatic, the first TTL-metering camera, and, to the last, the Contaflex
sold solidly and well. Note that the Icarex survivors were remaindered to
Cambridge; no such fate was afforded the Contaflex, which was sold through
the Contarex-Vertrieb at full price into the later 1970's.)
The Contarex Bullseye enjoyed a pool of professionals and advanced amateurs
who had great brand loyalty. Delays in production coupled with the weight
and complexity of the camera (though it WAS amazingly rugged and enjoyed
what is generally conceded to be the absolute finest lens line ever put
onto a 35mm SLR -- a bunch of these lenses are STILL in production for the
Contax RTS system and the Rollei 3003 line, as well as that wonderful
3.5/15 "Leica" Super-Elmarit, and they are still competitive!) hurt sales,
and, when a successor did not appear in a timely fashion, former Zeiss Ikon
users flooded over to Nikon and its ilk.
There were a number of pros, of course, who stuck with Contarex, and
technical sales to medical and industrial labs were strong -- Zeiss Ikon
had always dominated this field, building on the grand success of Zeiss
microscopes.
Should Leica take note? I suspect so. But they already have had a lesson,
when they repeated Zeiss Ikon's mistakes with the original Leicaflex and
its immediate successors, money-losing cameras which would have caused
Leitz to fold if the family hadn't put the bulk of the money they had back
into the business in the late 1960's and early 1970's. (The Leitz family
did not sell the company until, bluntly, they had no more money to give.)
Marc
msmall@roanoke.infi.net FAX: +540/343-7315
Cha robh bas fir gun ghras fir!