Kodak Australia announced the end of its retail photo printing partnership with Kmart Australia. The decision comes following many months of discussions and an extensive review by Kmart of its photo processing business.
Grant Smith, Kodak Australia and New Zealand’s general manager for Commercial & Consumer said: “After a very successful 30 year partnership, Kodak and Kmart are amicably ending their retail output partnership in Australia and New Zealand in coming months. Although we are of course saddened by the ending of such a long term alliance, it is critical that all business relationships make commercial and strategic sense to both parties, and clearly we reached a point where this was no longer the case.
“Although we no longer will be supplying Kmart’s retail photo equipment and consumables in the foreseeable future, Kmart will remain a very key partner for the balance of our consumer product range including digital cameras, inkjet printers and ink, inkjet paper and batteries. We will also retain a significant photo consumables business via Kmart’s Pixie Studios which are operated by another of our long term partners.”
Although Kmart has historically represented a significant component of Kodak’s consumer photo-processing business, over recent years Kodak has grown its customer base well beyond just Kmart, and amongst others now includes partnerships with Officeworks, Ted’s, Myer, Clive Anthony and Kodak Express stores. Moving forward Kodak has said it will continue to provide innovative, best-in-class output solutions and will focus on continuing to develop stronger partnerships with these and other retailers.
“We have a strong retail presence in Australia via our successful Kodak Express program, as well as a number of other large retail partners and we will continue to focus on growing their businesses,” Smith said. “Change also always brings new opportunities and we will be actively pursuing these opportunities.
“I would also like to take the opportunity to publicly thank Kmart for being a fantastic retail partner over these many years and to wish them all the best with their new business model moving forward. Kodak will continue to deliver professional, high quality retail and online print services to Kmart customers until the transition period is completed, which we believe will be sometime in 2010.”