Ex-Polaroid staff defy odds with big film sales

A GROUP of former Polaroid employees who revived its discontinued instant film have sold more than 500,000 packs in their first year of production.

The company has defied the critics, who said it could not make money from selling analogue film in the digital age.

Naming itself Impossible in recognition of this steep task, it is scaling up production to sell two million packs in 2011.

Dr Florian Kaps, a founder of the Impossible Project, said its factory in Enschede, Netherlands, had taken on 30 employees after starting the year with just 10 engineers who had been made redundant when Polaroid left the film business in 2008.

After selling the last batches of Polaroid’s film last year, Impossible has doubled its revenues to about €8 million this year thanks to the new film, alongside partnerships with photographic galleries in London, New York and Tokyo.

But sales have fallen short of the one million packs Dr Kaps initially hoped for this year, due to problems producing colour film.

Impossible had to start from scratch when recreating the instant film, due to lack of availability of many of the materials and chemicals that went into Polaroid’s original.

“We learned this year that it takes some time to develop properly,” he said. “We are just a little behind schedule. Next year we will have all the products and flavours.”

The company has also started selling refurbished Polaroid cameras at premium prices.

“People do not forget about the magic of analogue photography when they join the digital revolution,” Dr Kaps said. “Our project is the easiest way to access analogue photography – it’s a mini lab in every frame. You don’t need a darkroom.” – (Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2010)