Vivitar

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Vivitar

logo
legal form Corporation
founding 1938/1979
Seat Oxnard , California , USA
Website www.vivitar.com

Vivitar was an American optical company with its last headquarters in Oxnard , California . Founded in 1938 as Ponder & Best, Inc. , the company mainly produced and sold photo cameras, lenses and electronic flash units as well as various photo and video accessories. After the death of the owner, the company changed hands repeatedly. The company has been dissolved since 2008 and is only operated as a trademark by Sakar International .

Company history

Foundation and war years

Vivitar was founded in Hollywood in 1938 as Ponder & Best, Inc. The founders were two German Jews, John C. Best and his brother-in-law Max Ponder, who had fled Germany because of National Socialism. Initially, the company was a regional supplier of photo items of European origin, mainly from Germany, Czechoslovakia and Switzerland, which they imported via the American west coast. The retail business, which was initially operated from a car, grew rapidly, and as early as 1940 Ponder & Best had their own catalog for their increasingly extensive range. At that time, however, the war brought imports from Europe to a standstill, and by 1941 the young company had to switch completely to suppliers from the USA. As early as 1939 they had additional filters manufactured according to their own specifications, but the American industry was far less equipped for the production of more complex goods such as cameras, for example. B. There were no qualified manufacturers at that time, nor were there any lenses. During the war years, the company therefore limited itself to trading in photo accessories, Ponder and Best took every opportunity to acquire a few items and went so far as to buy unused pieces of film from the Hollywood film studios, re-roll them and prepare them as films for Photo cameras for sale.

Expansion and the creation of Vivitar

After 1945, the company immediately resumed contact with manufacturers from the German-speaking area and became the distributor for Rollei on the west coast; The offer also included items from Voigtländer and the US company Sawyer's, for example . In addition, the company gradually expanded its program to include the first items of Japanese photo technology, for example products from companies such as Petri or Olympus .

In 1963 Ponder & Best lost the distribution rights for both Rollei and Olympus; the company therefore developed its own trademark. In 1964 the name “Vivitar” was introduced, the suffix “-tar” was reminiscent of the then common names of lenses, especially German production (e.g. Biotar , Protar , Ernostar ). This was the name under which the company began selling interchangeable lenses for the increasingly popular SLR cameras , which were mainly imported from Japan. It was there in 1957 that the company later known as Tamron developed the T2 connection . This connection was a simple thread that the dealer could easily adapt to almost every common camera. The company, which was only founded in 1950 and later called Tokina , also produced for this standard and quickly became an important lens supplier for the new “Vivitar” brand. Ponder & Best also cooperated with other partners in Japan such as Kobena , Mamiya / Sekor and Sankyo Koki . By assembling enlargers from various individual components, they built up a segment of items from their own production. At the same time and as the program expanded, Ponder & Best opened offices in Chicago and New York and expanded beyond California to become a nationwide company.

With the increasingly prevalent automatic spring shutter , which had to be triggered by the camera, the "universal" connection T2 was soon no longer compatible. The lenses increasingly required specific bayonet connections , and for Vivitar this meant developing alternative competitive advantages. During this period of upheaval, in 1969, Max Ponder died after more than 30 years in the service of the company.

The end of Vivitar

Vivitar brought out the "Series 1" in the 1970s; this lens series gave the company a good name until the 1980s. In the early 1980s, however, Vivitar's star began to decline. In 1986 the company was sold to Hanimex , and the company was sold on numerous times. Vivitar was troubled by the unrest in the ownership situation, which was exacerbated by the new challenges of digital photography, which the company was not up to. Vivitar became increasingly a trademark without its own profile, with the acquisition of Vivitar by Sakar International in 2008 and the dissolution of the actual company, this process came to an end. Vivitar no longer exists as an independent company.

gallery

  • Vivitar 35mm f / 2.8 Auto Wide Angle

  • Vivitar Series 1 28-90mm f / 2.8-3.5

  • Vivitar Series 1 70-210mm f / 3.5

  • Vivitar 200mm f / 3.5

  • Vivitar Series 1 600mm f / 8 mirror lens

  • Vivitar 35EE camera

  • Electronic flash unit Vivitar Auto Thyristor 283

proof

  1. ^ UCLA Library, Center for Oral History Research: Interview of John C. Best , p. 55, accessed April 6, 2015
  2. ^ UCLA Library, Center for Oral History Research: Interview of John C. Best , pages 82-88, accessed April 6, 2015
  3. ^ UCLA Library, Center for Oral History Research: Interview of John C. Best , pp. 9-102, accessed April 7, 2015
  4. ↑ a b c d Christoph Jehle: Vivitar - great cinema | photoscala.de , accessed on April 5, 2015
  5. ↑ a b Vivitar Corporation: About Vivitar Corporation ( Memento January 12, 1998 in the Internet Archive ) , accessed April 5, 2015
  6. ↑ Sak Onkvisit, John J. Shaw: International Marketing: Analysis and Strategy , 2004, ISBN 0-415-31132-2 , p. 316
  7. ^ UCLA Library, Center for Oral History Research: Interview of John C. Best , 75, accessed April 6, 2015

Web links

Commons : Vivitar  - collection of images, videos and audio files