Deceptive practices.
The charges were marked up nicely of course. The final cost was what the North American lawyer quoted in the first place, so the client agreed to it ahead of time. And the North American lawyer was ultimately responsible for the work product. Free market you know. Essentially, the industry was replacing more expensive local lawyer work with less expensive offshore work, and keeping the difference.
Deceptive practices.
Nope - services provided, they just subcontracted the grunt work.
And that sort of work truly is grunt work. It is just that the lower minions doing it happen to be across the globe, instead of in the cubicles down the hall.
Apple and Costco can replace their subcontractors if they get greedy. Alaris has nowhere else to go if Kodak charges too much for their film.
Apple and Costco can replace their subcontractors if they get greedy. Alaris has nowhere else to go if Kodak charges too much for their film.
Did they charge an hourly rate or flat rate?
are they going to be- 'boots on the ground' or 'bums on seats'!
If Kodak is going to work with state-of-the-art production equipment, won't the programmers have to be in the factory most of the time if not all the time watching how their program works rather than working at home? If there's a glitch they need to address, they would want to see the results in real-time and not calling in from their Florida vacation home asking operators if the software patch works.
I don't know. I've been asking but no one seems to know. Do you?How do you know what the terms of the contracts between any of these entities are - what the contractual terms are with respect to determination of pricing?
The UK pension plan paid $600,000,000.00 USD to the Trustee for Eastman Kodak as part of the deal. Do you think the terms of the deal were haphazard or slapdash? Or that the newly re-negotiated deal is likely to ignore pricing or other concerns?
By the way, Ilford/Harman is locked into the same sort of exclusive distribution contractual arrangement with their sole US and Canadian distributors. As is Foma - at least in the US.
The US is the largest market for Ilford products.
And Harman was put into serious financial difficulties as a result of the sudden unexpected bankruptcy of their previous sole US distributor.
These are complex financial arrangements that involve, among other things, a whole bunch of experienced industry insiders, lawyers, accountants, tax specialists, import/export experts, and a slough of other specialists with expertise in world-wide trade of a specialized commodity. It isn't just a couple of people standing behind a counter trying to figure what they can squeeze out of a mom and pop shop.
And don't forget that many of those experienced industry insiders on the Kodak Alaris side used to do exactly the same work for Eastman Kodak. In fact, Eastman Kodak lost the majority of their experienced people with respect to these issues to Kodak Alaris, because essentially the UK pension plan bought the international marketing division of Eastman Kodak as part of the bankruptcy.
Do you?
Another reasonsKodak film might be more expensive beside the double markup issue from EK and then Alaris.
The exact terms - no, because they are closely held trade secrets.
But I do know how these sort of agreements are arrived at, and the sort of things that go into them.
If you don't think that companies with separate local manufacturing and international marketing divisions don't include two sets of profit calculations, you are likely to be surprised by how things work.
How would you write an agreement that's fair to both entities regarding pricing so Eastman Kodak doesn't get greedy or have to raise its prices beyond what Alaris will find able to effectively compete with other film manufacturers?
The main problem is that what incentive does Kodak have to work hard to reduce its costs if Alaris has to buy from them?
By putting mechanisms into the agreements that set out pricing rules, along with methods of resolving disagreements.
Agreements like this are complex and require a lot of specialized expertise to put together. They are the sort of things that expensive lawyers make a lot of money on.
People who put together complex labour agreements or international trade agreements regularly deal with similar types of complexity.
In each case, the agreements come into being because each party has a strong interest in the success of the other party. This is exactly the same situation with Eastman Kodak - the product manufacturer - and Kodak Alaris - the product's international first level distributor.
Although the situation is much simpler, the exact same co-dependence exists between Harman Technologies and the exclusive US distributor for Harman's Ilford and Kentmere branded products.
Because EK can't sell if KA doesn't buy. And KA won't buy if the price they pay is too high for them, in turn, to sell - exactly the same dynamic as experienced by any manufacturer.
If KA won't buy, how will they sell Kodak film?
I had an exclusive distributorship in the NYC region for energy management systems when I had my own contracting company. I sold a lot of products and when it came time to extend my three-year agreement, the manufacturer refused to extend our deal and opened their own office in NYC to sell direct. Where were you when I needed help on the contract. I obviously made a bad deal for me and a great one for them
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