Polychrome Corporation, a brainchild of Mr. Halpern, is now a major part of Kodak Co. and continues to live on. But the small company spirit died on Jan 1. 1998 when the company became a part of DIC-Kodak joint venture. This blog is dedicated to the memory of those who proudly call themselves "Polychromer". ..... Ken Shimazu shimazukenichi@gmail.com
Tuesday, November 21, 2017
Mr. Halpern
Mr. Gregory Halpern was born in Gdansk, Poland and immigrated to US before the WW 2. His major source of education was, like his very prominent contemporary Dr. Edwin Land of Polaroid, the New York Public Library. While Dr. Land was an inventor Mr. Halpern was a marketeer. I know his first venture was to sell inks for stencil process which he started with $500 borrowed from his wife Freda who was working for a telephone company at that time. (perhaps $50,000 worth at today's value?).
Although the Polychrome History 1935-1988 HERE (one of the most read post of this blog) does not mention it, the company grew through timely acquisitions such as Chromatone (offset ink manufacture ) and Speidel (diazo paper coating) and others. As Mr. Bob Gumbinner's memoir points out, Mr. Halpern often seemed to have acted on his hunch and intuition rather than thorough business analysis popular in business schools nowadays.
He has often overridden objections from his lieutenants to make his business decisions which caused considerable pain in business but as the history shows his decision turned out to be important for the company's success. (Although I was not there, formation of German company was mostly out of his vision and poured million of dollars as well as manpower to make it successful. Film venture is another example. Hardly anyone was in agreement in getting into the business. He railroaded through objections as well as pouring millions into the venture. I am quite sure that the film business was a very important part of later joint venture with Kodak. If there were no film part of business which brought immediate savings to the joint venture, Polychrome may have seen the same fate as once mighty 3M who quietly sold its plate business to the joint venture later on.)
Although Mr. Halpern lost control of Polychrome he may have a satisfaction of knowing that Kodak came out of bankruptcy focusing on the business around the graphic arts business Polychrome brought into the joint venture.