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'Vultures' Battle For The Polaroid Name

There's not much left of Polaroid besides its brand name, Peter Lattman and Jeffrey McCracken report. The company employed 21,000 workers at its peak in 1978; last year, 70 people were on its payroll. But Polaroid generated about $400 million in revenue, nonetheless, with its name slapped on low-cost Chinese TVs and DVD players.

Figures like that attracted two "vulture" investors to a St. Paul, Minn., courtroom Thursday, where they battled for three hours for the corporate remnants. "After 28 bids and counterbids -- in the third round of bidding in just the last three weeks -- Lynn Tilton of Patriarch Partners emerged as the victor, agreeing to pay $88.1 million for the once-iconic American brand," Lattman and McCracken write.

Iconic seems to me to be the kind of condition that you never lose once you contract it; in other words, it can be managed but not eradicated. Why else would anyone spend good money for it?

As for the company, Tilton says she wants to "make Polaroid a center for technological excellence," and carries around a prototype of a Polaroid digital camera with a built-in printer as an illustration of what she has in mind. "I don't think a branding strategy is wrong, but the brand will lose much of its former glow if you don't own any product," she says.

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