Pronto to the Rescue

Almost from the time George Eastman fathered the snapshot, the biggest profits in the photography business have come from selling not cameras but film. Now Polaroid Corp., Eastman Kodak's biggest competitor in the $3 billion U.S. amateur photography market, is looking to cash in heavily on the same idea. This spring it will offer its supersophisticated SX-70 self-developing picture technology in a new camera called Pronto. Lighter and less cumbersome than the SX-70 original, with improved electronic circuitry, the black plastic Pronto will list for $66 but probably will be reduced by discounters to about $50--a third of the $150 that the highest priced SX-70 sells for at discount. Yet it does the same thing that the more expensive SX-70s do: at a touch of the shutter button, a white card is released that develops into a color picture before the viewer's eyes.

Wall Street analysts quickly saw the Pronto for what it was--a marketing tool to boost sales of SX-70 film and help Polaroid recoup the $350 million that it spent developing the SX-70 system. They predicted sales of 2 to 3 million Prontos annually, providing a hungry market for SX-70 film packs, which contain batteries to power the camera and sell at discount for about $5 each. Some analysts chided Polaroid for wasting time in descending from the unnecessarily complex SX-70 original to the simpler Pronto. Said E.F. Hutton Vice President Marvin Saffian: "If the Pronto had been introduced in 1972, it would have saved a lot of money, a lot of reputations and a lot of jobs on Wall Street."

Dead Batteries. He is not exaggerating. In anticipation of the SX-70's debut, investors bid the price of Polaroid as high as $149 a share in 1972--at about the time that Polaroid's Founding Genius Edwin H. Land first demonstrated the camera to shareholders. By 1974, the stock's price had plunged as low as $14; it closed last week at $36. Like many other issues, Polaroid's stock was clipped by the vicious shake-out among high flying glamour stocks.

But the worst of the company's problems stemmed from the SX-70. From the moment it was marketed nationally in 1973, sales were respectable for so high-priced a camera (then $180 before discounting) but below expectations. Users complained of dead batteries in fresh film packs and bad pictures--"washouts" from manual flash picture adjustments that were too complicated, poor color reproduction, even loss of such details as eyebrows that failed to appear in fully developed photos. Polaroid's earnings plunged from $66 million in 1970 to $28 million in 1974, and that year the company's lagging fortunes forced it to lay off 1,000 workers.

Polaroid countered by coming out with two cheaper SX-70s, exterminating the bugs from the film packs, and going into the battery-making business itself to ensure quality--all at great cost. Last year sales rose 4% to a record $800 million, and profits probably about doubled. That performance, plus the Pronto's potential, should put Polaroid in a good position to do battle with Eastman Kodak, which is expected to enter the instant-picture market at about the time of the Pronto's national debut. Supersecretive Kodak is not saying just what kind of system it will market. Whatever it is, Polaroid President William J. McCune Jr., 60, who has taken over the company's day-to-day operations from Founder Land, says that Polaroid has been "planning for it." A $4 million Pronto advertising blitz is in preparation. Already an improved SX-70 film is in the works, and analysts have no doubt that an even cheaper Pronto will soon follow the first one.

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