“Retro” is such a nice word. It describes something that was “in” years ago, than disappears and comes back years later. In fashion we all have seen this phenomenon in various versions of cloth-styles that popped up and you wonder “that´s back?!? WHY?!?!”.
Or take the comeback of Vinyl. Year passed where you hardly find any “new” vinyls in stores. Out of sudden they were back and now even big tech stores like SATURN in Germany offer a large collection of vinyls in there stores. Even in times when mostly everyone has a Spotify or an Apple Music account the demand on Vinyls is so high that manufactures have serious problems to keep up with the demand.
So far, I had say “yes, ok vinyls are back…that s one thing.” But more or less at the same time another “thing from the past” rose again: Analog cameras. For years, it was a small niche of photo enthusiasts (like me) that could not let go of this kind of photography. This kind of photography that forces you to slow down, to carefully consider what you want to photograph because you have only 36 shots per roll and every “click” costs money.
But then these kind of cameras became attractive again. And since some celebreties jumped on that hype some filmcameras reached insane prices. Need an example: Contax T2 released in 1991.
These are the prices for this filmcamera today:
The filmproduction companies were not prepared for this kind of demand. Companies like Kodak or Fuji that produced for this small niche were confronted with a massive demand that they could not satisfy and there were times that I could not get a single roll of colorfilm in Frankfurt. Now they have stocked up but prices went up insane. A roll of Kodak Color 200 that I bought 3 years ago for for 5,49 EUR per roll because it was more or less “the cheapest option”.
Here is my recipe back from 2021:
Today the same roll:
Than came the “comeback of Fujifilm”. Their latest release of the Fujifilm X100 VI was such a success that the demand is way higher than even Fujifilm expected and now the company officially announced to increase the production to satisfy all the demand. Older Fujifilm cameras have reached and/or exceeded the retail price back when they were released. I know what I m talking about, when I bought my Fujifilm X20 (a 11 year old camera) this year and I was “lucky” to get mine only a few Euros cheaper then the release price back in 2013. The models I found today while writing this article on marketplaces are around 450 – 500 EURs today. FYI: The retail price back in the days was around 550 EUR.
Now another “hype” wobbles through the web: Digital Cameras. And I don´t speak about the high-fly, latest in tech, the ones that cost an insane amount of money. I m talking about the digital cameras from the 90s. The Canons and Panasonic ones. The 30 – 60 EUR digital cameras with a crapy sensor and only a few megapixels that every low budget smartphone could beat. But if you search on Instagram or TikTok for the term “Digitalcamera” you will find tens of thousands of pictures and people with their “new” old tech and their flash-images.
Ok, that s a lot of “Photography”-talk….what s the bridge to the headline. Simple: Who started those hypes? Who started those comebacks. It wasn´t the elder generations. Not the Boomers, not the Gen X Gen Y. The Millenials and the famous “Gen Z” were the drivers of those comebacks. Their love for this “nostalgic” tech was the reason why companies celebrate a comeback that came (at least for me) by surprise.
But WHY? Why is a generation that is constantly bombarded with the latest tech so fascinated by things that is sometimes as old or older as they? A generation that worships the latest iPhone as much these days as a crappy 40 EUR pocket camera.
Is there something we might miss out? Is it maybe that with all this latest and greatest in innovation we miss a need that can not be satisfied? In a world where new products were thrown on the markets always be promoted as “the best there is…. now x% faster, better, more beautiful”. Do we reached a level of satisfaction that bore the new costumers and they start reaching out to things that are “not as perfect” or “not the latest and greatest”? Could it be that deep inside this generation there is yearning for “imperfection” and uniqueness? Or is it the world of today with all it´s challenges that especially the younger generations drive them to look for what their Dads and Moms used when they were in their age? Compared to todays challenges I have to say that we had way less issues to struggle with than this generation. Maybe (just maybe) the younger generations look to this decades the same way, and this is their way to express this.
We live in a world where products need to be promoted always in the “bigger, better, faster” way although we know that the improvements are mostly barely recognizeable. Who cares, if I can open Whatsapp 0.002 sec faster because I have now 12 GB of RAM and a faster processor? Maybe (again just maybe) we underestimate this generation. Yes, newer products (esp. in Tech) have their segment in marketing with this generation. But, I think this could be some sort “message” in a way that “perfection” and improvements are becoming less and lesser the top intention to buy a product. Maybe it s something more “reliable”, something more “unique” this group of costumers is looking for. And marketing should have an answer to this. And not only marketing, but companies in general. Maybe spending some research on their product portfolio is not a bad idea what makes their products back in the days the way they were. Because maybe that´s what those costumers of the future might look out for.
Just a tought.
Photo by Armen Aydinyan on Unsplash
