Silver Fleet Capital Invests in PhaseOne

[dag.bb]

I thought I might post this interesting presentation from Christian Sandström, based on interviews and internal documents from Hasselblad. I originally gave the link in the other thread regarding the V-system, but thought it might be more relevant here.

http://www.slideshare.net/Christiansandstrom/hasselblad-from-the-moon-to-surviving-disruptive-innovation

His PhD on the topic is also available on his homepage.

http://www.christiansandstrom.org

As Sandström mentions (somewhat simplified), Hasselblad has been in the hands of private equity all the way back to 1991, when Incentive AB took the company private. According to the presentation, Hasselblad had a digital project going on already in the 1990s, but was stumped when Incentive AB sold to the next PE-owner, UBS, in 1996, and extracted ~ $ 30 million earmarked for development in the process. At the same time the new owner, UBS, supported the development of the H-system in collaboration with Fuji. According to Sandström the next PE-owner, Shriro was also involved in deciding to merge the company with Imacon.

This illustrates both aspects - you have LBO-investors who want to "raid the cash registry" of wealthy (or potentially wealthy) companies, and you have PE-investors who buy companies with challenges (technology, market etc.), "fix" them (investing in the H-system and later digital with Imacon), and reap the rewards. It'll be interesting to see where Phase One goes with SFC.

Dag

[Manoli]

Wikipedia ..

Venture capital (VC) is financial capital provided to early-stage, high-potential, high risk, growth startup companies... The typical venture capital investment occurs after the seed funding round as the first round of institutional capital to fund growth ... in the interest of generating a return through an eventual realization event, such as an IPO or trade sale of the company.

Venture capital is a subset of private equity. Therefore, all venture capital is private equity, but not all private equity is venture capital.

In addition to angel investing and other seed funding options, venture capital is attractive for new companies with limited operating history that are too small to raise capital in the public markets and have not reached the point where they are able to secure a bank loan or complete a debt offering.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venture_capitalist

[Steve Hendrix]

Sony realizes their products are notorious for being small and hard to hold, then falling out of the hands of westerners onto western stone floors, and subsequently breaking. This is an unavoidable result of their established inhouse design culture.

So their partnering with an outside western firm to create a tough-cased, grippy version of their delicate electronics is *laudable*. Nikon do their design work for the pro bodies partly in Italy for the same reason.

I for one like the idea of a titanium-cased RX100 and would be prepared to pay 50% premium for that option.

Where something went wrong in the product positioning was when they turned "tough-hi-tech" into  "bling luxury" rather than upper-range lifestyle. Reminds me of the whole Vertu phone story, which I never understood either.

Steve is of course someone who sells $40K cameras every day, so I guess he hands out mini-Hassies to the customer's wife and kids as door prizes ... vastly enhances the Wife Acceptance Factor - what would be even better of course would be if every Hassy came with a 2 carat removable diamond

Edmund

Uh...well we're actually not a dealer for either the Stellar or the Lunar, so - sorry. If you or your significant other is interested, here you go:

http://www.colette.fr/appp-4-1100183-boitierlunar-e18-55mm-titanium.html

And not all our clients have wives. Some have husbands! Actually, an add-on Stellar for the spouse isn't a bad idea! Hmmm....You got me thinking Edmund...


Steve Hendrix
Capture Integration

[jjj]

For what is is worth, Leica recently sold a limited Monochrome Ralph Gibson edition (35 bodies with lens) for 21,000 Euros (around $28,000) each.  It has its signature engraved on the top plate.

Leica's business has been kept alive by collectors and those snobbish enough to think a red dot makes the camera and therefore themselves somehow superior.

[eronald]

author=Steve Hendrix link=topic=87363.msg711940#msg711940
And not all our clients have wives. Some have husbands! Actually, an add-on Stellar for the spouse isn't a bad idea! Hmmm....You got me thinking Edmund...

Steve Hendrix
Capture Integration

Here is the wikipedia text on WAF. I guess it can equally well be called Spouse Acceptance Factor, although Marriage Interference Factor sounds ugly.

In real life, a Titanium Sony in the hands of the spouse may see more family use than the big MF camera of the trophy husband ... and it may help bring both spouses together in a shared photo interest.

Wife acceptance factor
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Wife Acceptance Factor, Wife Approval Factor, or Wife Appeal Factor[1] (WAF), are design elements that increase the likelihood a wife will approve the purchase of expensive consumer electronics products such as high-fidelity loudspeakers, home theater systems and personal computers. Stylish, compact, unobtrusive forms and appealing colors are commonly considered WAF.[2] The term is a tongue-in-cheek play on electronics jargon such as "form factor" and "power factor" and derives from the gender stereotype that men are predisposed to appreciate gadgetry and performance criteria whereas women must be wooed by visual and aesthetic factors.[3]
WAF is sometimes also known as Woman Acceptance Factor, Woman Approval Factor, or Woman Appeal Factor to accommodate unmarried heterosexual couples. As early as 1988,[4] the term Spouse Acceptance Factor (SAF) was suggested as a term uniformly and equally applicable to heterosexual, gay, and lesbian couples.[5] For instance, Neil Cherry's book Linux Smart Home for Dummies uses both "Spouse Approval Factor" and "Spouse Acceptance Factor" as it does not specify the sex of the reader.[6] In Cherry's opinion, while SAF "sounds like a joke, it isn't."[6] He continues by explaining that persons of any sex may be interested in keeping the home as peaceful as possible while indulging their interest in Linux-based electronics such as X10 devices for home automation.[6] However, Jen Haberkorn of The Washington Times wrote that the term "wife acceptance factor" is the more common one, given that men are usually more interested in electronics than their wives.[7] Wives control 88% of electronics purchases indirectly through their influence or directly by making the purchase themselves, according to a study by the Consumer Electronics Association.[7]

History

Larry Greenhill first used the term "Wife Acceptance Factor" in September 1983, writing for Stereophile magazine, but Greenhill credited fellow reviewer and music professor Lewis Lipnick with the coining of the term.[8] Lipnick himself traces the origin to the 1950s when hi-fi loudspeakers were so large that they overwhelmed most living rooms. Lipnick's wife, actress Lynn-Jane Foreman, arrived at a different term: Marriage Interference Factor (MIF). Foreman suggested that audiophile husbands should balance their large and ugly electronic acquisitions with gifts to the wife made on the basis of similar expense, with opera tickets, jewelry and vacations abroad among the suggestions.

Definition

The Wife Acceptance Factor is inversely proportional to the possible amount of conflict resulting from the different points of view. The lower the WAF, the more convincing needs to be done, or the more conflict arises from the acquisition or project.

[Wayne Fox]

Wikipedia ..

Venture capital is a subset of private equity. Therefore, all venture capital is private equity, but not all private equity is venture capital.

Good point as far as investment strategies of various firms who pretty much universally shun the VC moniker even if it is there strategy of choice.  Not sure where Silverlight falls into the mix of VC investment firms (Bain Capital comes to mind) vs more PE type firms (maybe Warren Buffet who tends to retain many of his investments and seeks profit from owning and not flipping quite so much or at least as quickly).

[tjv]

Phase could buy Arca–Swiss. That would be interesting. At the very least, it'd mean Arca would enter the modern age and finally get a decent website...

[gerald.d]

I wouldn't call that a cheap shot, merely a response to your post that basically indicated you were doing a project that contained 46 million photos.
So I'm intrigued what is that major project? And what on Earth needs 46k shots on a single shoot. I've got a project folder of 47k shots, but that took me 13 weeks of shooting over several years and I usually shot 15+ hours a day and at times 24 hrs straight.

For some reason I was reminded of this discussion today.

Anyway.

Here's a single piece of content that required 88,000 shots.

http://dubai360.com/

[jjj]

For some reason I was reminded of this discussion today.
Anyway.
Here's a single piece of content that required 88,000 shots.

http://dubai360.com/

That was a long time taken to reply!
So is that the work you were talking about or is it someone else's?

But as that is film footage of course one is going to shoot a whole heap of frames, which is quite different from 88,000 photos.

[jsiva]

Nice!  Looks like a whole lot of photos with a whole lot of different lenses to me.

[Manoli]

Here's a single piece of content that required 88,000 shots.
http://dubai360.com/

Guys, sometimes this forum seems to harbour a bunch of curmudgeons ... credit where credit is due.
I think it's great  and I like the 360degree pan facility. It's an impressive piece of work  - congratulations to Gerald. Period.