bankruptcy

Drobo, once a darling of the photography world, is officially no more. Following a filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection last year, the company was unable to emerge from that situation and is now in liquidation.

Data storage company Drobo has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in California's Northern Bankruptcy Court.

GNARBOX is no longer operated by the people who founded and ran it for the last several years. According to Tim Feess, the company's founder and former CEO, the original management team is no longer with the company and hasn't been since November of 2021.

GNARBOX appears to be dead. The company behind the popular rugged backup device has seemingly gone dark, leaving customers without support and turning the product into an expensive portable drive with no extra functionality.

Meyer Optik Görlitz -- formerly disgraced, purchased, and reborn -- has announced that it is no longer a brand-name only and is now operating as an independent organization. In the Meyer Optik's own words, it is "a real company again."

Splash News & Picture Agency, a prominent paparazzi group, has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy stating that the global pandemic that has kept celebrities indoors is partially to blame, but also fighting a privacy lawsuit by Meghan Markle has caused the group to default on a nearly $1M loan.

After word of Tetenal's financial difficulties emerged in late 2018, the photochemistry giant announced in January 2019 that it would be closing shop after 172 years. But an employee-led management buyout offer has now been accepted, allowing the business to live on.

After years of running hugely successful Kickstarter campaigns but widely failing to deliver on its promises, net SE (the company behind the revivals of Meyer Optik Görlitz and other vintage brands) filed for bankruptcy this year. Now a German company called OPC Optics has announced that it has acquired the rights to the Meyer Optik Görlitz brand and will be bringing it back to the market.

One of the big stories in the camera industry so far this year has been the bankruptcy of net SE, the German company behind the revival of classic lenses that raised millions of dollars through crowdfunding services such as Kickstarter.

DxO Labs has reportedly gone into receivership as a bankruptcy proceeding is opened in France. The company is mum on what exactly is going on behind the scenes but says its customers shouldn't be affected by the financial and legal situation.

The German start-up behind the Panono panoramic ball camera has filed for insolvency proceedings in Berlin, making it very unlikely that backers of their $1.25 million Indiegogo campaign will ever get their hands on their camera.

Instagram is known as a place where people use photos to flaunt their lifestyles, both real and fake. 50 Cent may be one of the biggest names to do so on the "fake" side: he claims he's broke and that he takes photos of fake money for marketing reasons.

Well-known lighting gear manufacturer Photoflex may live on after all. No, its original April 1st announcement that it was closing shop wasn't an ill-conceived April Fool's Joke or a bizarre marketing stunt -- the struggling company is reportedly working on a deal that will allow the brand to live on.

John Rogers was once one of the high flying entrepreneurs in the photo world. After coming up with the brilliant idea of scanning old photos for newspapers and splitting the rights to the digital images, Rogers was on his way to amassing one of the largest photo libraries in the world and was earning a whopping $120,000 per week selling his images on eBay.

Now his empire has come crashing down. Rogers is reportedly being sued for more than $90 million and has lost his business entirely.

Photoflex, a popular manufacturer of lighting gear and camera accessories, has unexpectedly announced that it will be closing its business that has been in operation for three decades.

Shortly after news broke this morning that camera store chain Calumet had declared Chapter 7 bankruptcy and would be closing all of its US stores (or will it?), a Calumet Rental Manager -- well, former Rental Manager now -- got in touch with us to see if we wanted to get some of the behind the scenes details of how the bankruptcy came to be.

We, of course, said yes. The employee has asked to remain anonymous, and so his/her answers are labeled simply as "Calumet Employee" below.

Update: Calumet has posted an update to its Facebook page to say they might reopen a few locations. Full statement at the bottom of this post.

In a story that is still very much developing as more information comes to light, well-known camera store chain Calumet Photographic has filed for Chapter 7 Bankruptcy without so much as a whispered warning to their employees.

Kodak clawed its way out of bankruptcy this past Tuesday, but the Rochester-based company has a long climb yet.

There's been plenty of talk on this topic over the past week, but most of it seem to be focused on what Kodak gave up to emerge from the shadow of Chapter 11. NBC News, for example, emphasizes the loss of consumer-oriented operations and a 50% reduction in yearly expected revenue when they discuss the "New Kodak Moment."

Anyone with an appreciation for Kodak’s heritage is sure to feel a twinge of sadness over these developments, but it is still far too early to be asking if the sacrifice was worth it. The more important question is "will it work?"

It's been a long and depressing tunnel, but Kodak has finally reached the light at the end. Over a year and a half after declaring Chapter 11 Bankruptcy, the once-great camera giant officially reached the end of its financial troubles yesterday.

It seems we're entering into the final chapter of the Kodak Bankruptcy epic. After filing for chapter 11 bankruptcy in January of 2012, the ex-camera company's final plan to exit bankruptcy received court approval on Monday. What emerges from the ashes, however, will be a company that does zero business with consumers directly.

We reported last August that Kodak was looking to sell its camera film business along with a number of other core businesses. Well, the company has now succeeded.

Kodak announced today that it has reached an agreement to sell off its two remaining imaging divisions -- which includes its photographic film business -- in a major deal worth $2.8 billion.

According to Reuters, Shutterfly has officially filed court documents in an attempt to shut down Kodak's My Kodak Moments app. Shutterfly -- who purchased the Kodak Gallery from the bankrupt company for $23.8M last year -- is claiming that the app is in violation of the terms of that sale, and demanding that it be taken down.

Kodak burned historic amounts of money in 2012, but is apparently still on track to leave bankruptcy sometime this year. The company released an annual report with performance figures and messages to investors. One of the glaring numbers in the statement was the fact that company lost $1.38 billion in 2012, almost double the amount it lost in 2011.

It looks like the Jessops name will be sticking around, even if the company's 187 physical locations won't. After going into administration (read: bankruptcy) a few weeks ago, and announcing that all stores would be closing, we thought that was it for the once-great UK photography chain.

But, as it turns out, the Jessops brand has found a savior by the name of Peter Jones, a UK entrepreneur made famous by the reality television show Dragons' Den. The only catch is that Jones won't be saving the physical stores (or the 1,300+ jobs that depend on them), he only wants the Jessops brand.

A couple of days ago, UK camera retailer Jessops entered administration (essentially bankruptcy), appointing PricewaterhouseCoopers as their administrator and putting them in charge of the store's fate.

Jessosps, one of the last of the UK's national photography retailers, may be entering into administration by the end of the day, according to recent reports. The major retailer managed to narrowly avoid administration in 2009 after an unpopular deal with HSBC, in which the bank "forgave" some 34M pounds of debt in exchange for a near %50 stake in the company.

In May of last year another ray of hope appeared in the form of a potential $16M investment by Canon, but no such deal ever came to official fruition, although some sources report that an investment was made. Now, Jessops seems to be out of options, and administration may be just around the corner, with rumors pointing towards PricewaterhouseCoopers as the potential administrator.

Over the last year, no news has been good news for Eastman Kodak. The company's slow and painful climb out of bankruptcy has involved everything from corporate greed to lost patent wars and sub-par auction outcomes. But just a few weeks ago a flickering light emerged at the end of the tunnel for Kodak in the form of $793M in conditional financing.

In fact, since we last reported on the story, the loan amount has gotten even bigger. That sizable $793M has been upped to $830M, every dime of which Kodak desperately needs to get its hands on if it ever intends to escape bankruptcy. But as the saying goes: there's no such thing as a free lunch -- and definitely not one worth $830M. The banks that have agreed to help Kodak out made the financing conditional: Kodak doesn't get the money unless the company's long-awaited patent sale exceeds $500M.