In 2009 The Impossible Project bought the last remaining factory of Polaroid film in Enschede, as the latter company was getting out of the instant business, and started producing Polaroid compatible film themselves.
Last Monday business news website Z24 wrote that the company with 30 employees doubled its revenue from 4 million euro in 2009 to 8 million this year. Florian Kaps, one of the ten founders (former Polaroid employees), told the site that they had hoped for more, but due to a lack of raw materials they could only produce 500,000 boxes of film.
In the first year The Impossible Project were still busy inventing their film, as the factory sale had apparently not included Polaroid’s secret recipe, and made its money selling old Polaroid stock. In 2010 the project managed to produce their own film, available in both black and white and colour, and selling for about 20 euro per 10 exposures.
If anything the project has proved the viability of the instant film photography market, which Fujifilm and Polaroid have now (re-)entered. Polaroid introduced the 300 camera earlier this year and is expected to introduce their second new instant camera at CES next January.
(Photo by Patrick Tobin, some rights reserved)