There are pretty big shakeups underway at the Impossible Project right now.
Just in time for Labor Day, half of the US employees are getting pink slips. The gallery space in NYC is closing. Operations are being centralized back in the EU. The other gallery spaces, worldwide, are closing as well.
This was all laid out in marketing speak in a letter from the CEO. While there are some kernels of truth in what was said: Impossible Project does need to concentrate on their core product. Their development has been a little stagnant lately. There was a lot of fluff that didn’t sound like the core problem was entirely market driven, though. It was a bit off-putting that the company was flying marketing and management people to Europe on the corporate dime just as this was happening.
All in all, this does not give me a lot of faith in their future.
I feel for those workers. I’ve been in their shoes. I’ve held employee numbers in companies of less than 100 on several occasions. I’ve believed in a product and put a great deal of my time and soul in to it just to be laid off when the company had trouble time and time again. It was never easy, and it was never a good thing.
What makes me feel worse is that every single time this has happened to me, the company did not survive.
I’ll leave aside the economics of layoffs (hint: it’s not as cost-effective as the alternatives), and just look at the outcomes. The one thing I have always gotten from IP is exemplary customer service. If I had a problem, their response time was usually less than 3-5 minutes. Time and time again, they were fantastic to deal with. Even when I was a bit ticked off at their product, I always came away from interacting with them with a smile. I can even recall one time when I got a call from a delightful young woman in NYC who told me I had just ordered one small item, and it wasn’t fair to pay the flat rate shipping on that, so they’d just knock that down a bit. I hadn’t complained or even asked. It was very nice, tip-top customer service. I have a problem seeing how that can be maintained with half of the staff gone.
I am still an Impossible Project Pioneer. We were early adopters that beta tested the film and paid to do it. There were around 3500 of us. It was a great experience, and I’d do it again. From the First Flush that held an image for around 2 hours before it faded in to nothing to the breakthroughs in color film, it was fun to be a part of. When Impossible Project continues to put out a product that I want, that I pay for, but is always just short of where it needs to be, faith that it will improve is at least as important as the product itself. What troubles me now is I’ve lost faith.
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