Jobo

[Bob McCarthy]

In recent years JOBO has continuously overcompensated for the steady decline of its dark room business with innovative digital product introductions. Presently, the digital business represents more than 85% of JOBO world-wide sales. In fact, manufacturing the traditional analog processors for a profitable return is no longer possible. Therefore JOBO CEO Johannes Bockemühl-Simon has been forced to make the unfortunate decision of discontinuing this product line.


Not too clear, but if 85% is digital, total analog has become insignificant in the big picture. The changes in the photo industry are mind boggling. I live in a large city (DFW) and all the pro level shops are ill. All but one has dropped the non-digital side of their businesses. And the digital side has no follow-on film purchases/processing. And I can buy a digital camera anywhere.

"Jobo products are loosing their distribution channels". This has to be killing all analog products

Mail order/Internet is seemingly healthy. I'll bet digital Jobo products are doing well there,

Bob

[Oren Grad]

Eric -

That's not clear. If I had to guess from the press release, I'd say that they're going to stop production of all processing machines but keep providing parts for as long as stocks allow, which may be many years, and also that they'll keep selling analog drums and reels for as long as they don't lose money on them.

I think the Expert drums are a big question. I had an interesting discussion about the Expert drums a few years ago with someone from Jobo USA. I hadn't appreciated before then just how expensive the tooling was for each of the drums. What that says is that for sure, once the tooling wears out there won't be any more, because sales going forward would never come close to covering the cost of new tooling. But I'm not sure whether there's enough demand even to sustain some continued production with the existing tooling, or whether they'll just sell off whatever stocks they have.

But again, this is only speculation on my part. It would be nice if they would issue a clear statement about the fate of the different product lines, but given that they didn't even bother issuing this press release in English, I don't know whether we can expect that.

[Eric Biggerstaff]

Thanks all.

[Gregory Gomez]

Fortunately, I came into some stock option money that has allowed me to buy a Jobo CPP-2 off of E-bay. (No, the options were not back-dated. )

I'm not going to wait for the other shoe to fall. In the next week or two, I plan to buy the Jobo Expert Drum that will allow me to develop six 4x5 or 5x7 sheets of film at one time.

Before we know it, the Expert drums will also be a thing of the past.

In the near future, I will also buy spare parts for my processor. Who knows whether Jobo will be around in ten years when I may need replacement parts.