The Minolta MND35 promises 18x digital zoom and 64MP JPEGs. The manual says it has a 13MP sensor. There is no connection whatsoever between this camera and the original Minolta company.
Image: Minolta Digital
It'd been going on for months before I knew about it, but in the space of a couple of days, I received a text from my former colleague and saw a post on Reddit highlighting it. Minolta cameras had hit the shelves at Costco.
That's odd, I thought, surely Sony, which absorbed the Konica Minolta camera business, hadn't launched a budget line without telling us. And, by the same logic, presumably Konica Minolta wasn't allowed to use the Minolta name on cameras, as part of the deal with Sony. So what was going on?
The answer was stranger than I'd expected. There is, it seems, a US company that hunts around for well-known brand names that have fallen out of use. Trademark rules are designed to protect the names and brands under which products are sold, so that third-parties can't sneakily benefit from the reputation and goodwill the original seller has built up. But you can only maintain a trademark that you're using to trade. It turns out that neither Sony nor Konica Minolta had continued to use its trademark for anything camera-related, so a Californian company had stepped in and claimed it.
"You can only maintain a trademark that you're using to trade"
This company is in the business of claiming orphaned trademarks and licensing them on to other companies. The result is that New York company Elite Brands can now sell cameras in the US under the Minolta name. Elite Brands also licenses the names (former cinema camera and projector maker) Bell + Howell and owns the Rokinon brand under which it sells Samyang-made lenses.
This situation, where the name is now owned and used by companies with absolutely no connection back to the original manufacturer, is, perhaps, one of the more extreme examples of how legacy names stumble on as zombie brands. More common is that the original company collapses and the rights to its name get bought out of receivership by a company with no intention of trying to continue the original business. Other times the original brand merges with another that has a different focus, so its name gets licensed out to someone wanting to operate in the consumer industry.
But whatever the specifics of each story, the licensing process allows brand names to rise from the dead and shuffle their way onto shops' shelves and websites.
Rollei
The Rollei name is used on a wide range of products, including this recently announced 85mm F1.8 that appears to share its specs with the one made by 7Artisans.
Image: Rollei
Rollei appears to be an example of the former situation. The name was bought when the original company collapsed in 2004, and it sells a wide range of products under the name, though they are all photo related, at least. It also licenses the name to a German film marketing and distribution company that sells Rollei film. In addition to this, it's also licensed the name to Hong Kong's MiNT Camera, for use on its reproduction of the Rollei 35AF film compact.
Yashica
The FX-D cameras being sold via Kickstarter are only some of the products being sold under the Yashica name. Film and
One of the most obvious instances is Yashica. Yashica was a pretty well-respected camera maker for much of the 20th century but was eventually bought by Kyocera, which ceased production of the last Yashica products in 2005. It subsequently sold the name to a company in Hong Kong, which is responsible for the recent products being sold under the name.
We're not sure whether the Yashica / I'm Back co-branded version of the digital module ever existed, beyond this composite image.
Image: I'm Back
New owner JNC Datum Tech appears to be responsible for the SLR-shaped, tiny-sensor cameras being sold on Kickstarter. Film cameras and basic compacts are also available with the name, and a tie-up was even announced to use Yashica branding on I'm Back's somewhat clunky digital film modules and a "micro mirrorless" camera called MiMi, though it's not entirely clear how much of that came to pass.
Vivitar
Vivitar branding appears on a lot of products, some of which still relate to photography.
Image: Vivitar
Vivitar is a slightly more interesting case, because the originator of the brand was never itself a manufacturer: even at its height, it was a brand name being used to market and sell contract-manufactured products. It eventually collapsed and, the name having passed through various hands has, since 2008, been owned by a company headquartered in New Jersey, called Sakar International, of whom we'll hear more, later. The Vivitar name is now used on everything from bathroom scales and Peppa Pig-branded scooters.
Who's making these cameras?
Look closely at the cameras sold under a lot of these brands and you'll recognize than some of them look very similar to one another. There are a number of OEM camera makers that will sell you their cameras with your branding on them. Two of the biggest are Asia Optical, a Taiwanese company, and Shenzhen Soda Digital Techonolgy, a Chinese company also known by the brand name Songdian.
Asia Optical is responsible for making the Kodak PixPro cameras (which has included a Micro Four Thirds mirrorless model), and some of the Minolta-branded cameras, while Shenzhen Soda makes other Minolta Digital models and a lot of the unbranded cameras sold on online markets such as AliBaba.
As well as looking at whether a brand name is being used on original or innovative products, or items with any real relationship to the types of product on which the brand's reputation was built, I find it interesting to look at the About Us page on these legacy brands' websites, to see how much of a connection to the originating company's actions they imply they have. Rollei licensee Hans O. Mahn has the honesty to point out that it licensed the name in 2004, giving at least a hint that there's no particular connection back to the earlier events on the timelines that so often make an appearance.
Kodak
Personally I find the case of Kodak particularly fascinating, in part because of how stong people's feelings towards the brand still appear to be, despite some of the things that have been done with its name.
Kodak entered Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in 2012, selling off many of its businesses, including its consumer film business, to settle its debts. The revived company was primarily focused on industrial print and packaging. However, recognizing how powerful a brand it had with consumers, it set out licensing its name for a wide variety of products.
The Kodak Charmera keyring camera, "inspired by the Kodak Fling" is available in seven styles, but you don't know which you'll get. It's been created by Reto Production, one of a range of licensees of the Kodak name.
Image: Reto Production
The most visible are the PixPro series of compact digital cameras, along with the multiple companies it's let use its name on clothing. Its name is also used by companies making half-frame film cameras and the Charmera keyring digital cameras with their gatchapon / lucky-dip styling that, if not quite viral, appeared moderately contagious earlier this year.
Kodak's licensing efforts appear a little more restrained than they did back in 2018, and it's worth noting that the company licenses its name to different companies in different regions. For instance, the Kodak name in Europe is licensed by GT Company, a French company that has also licensed the Agfa brand for digital cameras.
Polaroid
Sakar tried to launch a modular system, where the sensor is a lens/sensor module, under the Polaroid name in 2013.
Photo: Lars Rehm
Perhaps the most interesting example is Polaroid. As with Vivitar, the rights to its name changed hands several times following the collapse of the original company. Sakar International (which owns the Vivitar name) used the name for a while, using it to sell camera modules that connected to smartphones and attempted to launch a modular camera system (conceptually not unlike the Ricoh GXR system) where lens-like units with the sensor built into them could be attached to a camera unit. Unfortunately the styling of these was lawyer-excitingly similar to the design of Nikon's 1 system cameras and lenses, so were withdrawn.
In an unusual turn of events, a project to revive instant film manufacture, boldly called The Impossible Project, managed to take ownership of the Polaroid brand name, meaning that, just sometimes, zombie brands can be brought back to life.
The Polaroid name is back in the hands of an instant film maker based in one of the original company's last factories.
Image: Polaroid
There are the seeds of something similar at Kodak, too, which has recently regained the ability to sell its photo film to the public, after over a decade out of the consumer market. The licensing will still continue, but you can again buy products made by Eastman Kodak from the continuation of the original company.
What's the value of a brand name?
Ultimately, brand licensing is something of a high-wire act. Companies understandably want to maximize the amount of money they make by licensing the brand name they own, but if you're not selective about who and what that name is associated with, you can undermine the public perception of the brand and risk reducing its value to both yourself and your licensees.
Licensing isn't inherently a bad thing, but the quality of the products you allow to wear the name then reflects on all the others. Which becomes important if, like Kodak, you want to also sell your own products under that brand.
Image: Kodak
It's hard to imagine that many people buying a Vivitar-branded personal massager are making any connection back to the Series 1 lenses of the 1970s. Perhaps simply being a vaguely familiar name has some value in a time when dizzying number new brand names (both emerging and transient) are being plastered over the countless products being sold on sites like Amazon. But in the case of Kodak and Polaroid, there is some connection to the original products on which those names' reputations were built. Or, at least, there are for some of the products.
"It's hard to imagine people buying a Vivitar-branded personal massager are making a conscious connection back to Series 1 lenses"
The Minolta example, where there is no connection at all between the products being sold and the reputation that the name would seem to imply is an extreme case, but the closer you look at the world of brand licensing, the more it should make you question what, if anything, that brand name you have vague fond memories of, now represents.
