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Published on January 17, 2008

In May 1991, Matthias Fiegl, Wolfgang Stranziger and their classmates returned to Vienna from a trip to post-Velvet Revolution Prague with a rare Russian artefact.

Little known beyond the Iron Curtain, they had acquired a quaint little camera that took even quainter photographs. No one dreamed, then, that the usually unreliable Saint Petersburg-made Lomo Kompakt Automat would quickly become a must-have for any self-conscious hipster.

Once back in Vienna, Fiegl and friends began taking their newfound Soviet companion to parties. The high-contrast and amateurish pictures produced by the super-sharp glass lens, designed to shoot in low-light conditions, soon became the darling of trendy Viennese.

So in 1992, the Lomographic Society International was born to promote "lomography".

Demand for the robust little 35mm film cameras, a Soviet copy of a Japanese compact device called the Cosina CX-1, began as a trickle, but orders soon began to pour in. Stocks from the Eastern Bloc quickly dried up, so Stranziger and Fiegl forged a trading relationship with the state-owned manufacturer, Lomo, which also made, among other things, medical optics. However, there was a big problem: Lomo was bent on discontinuing the production of its cameras.

The team in Vienna managed to persuade general manager Ilya Klebanov to reverse the decision with a fax that happened to arrive on April Fool's Day.

"It took them a while to realise that this was not a joke," Fiegl says.

Then there was a second, more serious attempt to stop production, after the factory and the founders failed to agree on an adjusted price. In desperation, the couple flew to what was then called Leningrad to personally plead with the powers that be. The man of the moment, who held the fate of lomography in his hand, was the little known vice mayor of Leningrad: Vladimir Putin.

Fiegl and Bibawy managed to convince Russia's future president and Klebanov, who would later become Putin's vice premier and president of the Northwestern federal district, to give the company a much-needed tax break. Lomography was saved.

"Years later, when Putin was in Austria on an official visit, an Austrian journalist gave him a Lomo camera as a present. And he said: 'I use this. I am a lomographer too'," Fiegl says.

The story makes good publicity.

"It is very important [for a company] to be able to tell a good, true story," says Sally Bibawy, managing partner for brand and product development.

In its early start-up days, the founders managed to persuade producers from the UK's BBC Four to make a one-hour documentary on the new photographic movement. (The entire programme can be seen on YouTube.) The documentary, along with a favourable article in Art Forum, a heavyweight art magazine, placed the company firmly on the map and attracted the attention of so-called opinion leaders.

Any enterprise, regardless of size, can learn a trick or two from these business renegades, who are crazy enough to compete with the big boys in an era of digital photography - and to succeed in creating a coveted customer base of educated, well-travelled 20-somethings with a "cosy income".

Without a Nikon- or Canon-sized budget, word of mouth and community-based marketing would cement Lomography's brand foundation and growth.

"It was important for us to form a community of like-minded individuals," says Fiegl, who was in Bangkok last year for the Thai Creative and Design Centre's annual "Creativity Unfold" symposium.

"[Because of the cameras' low-tech specs] lomographers need to get close to their subject. And that makes [human] contact much easier," he says.

And lomography communities became a support group, much like Tupperware parties. Like Apple's legion of hardcore fans, the Lomographic Society was integral to the company's marketing and sales functions.

Today, the Lomographic Society International owns six galleries, six franchised stores and 75 Lomography embassies, has more than 500,000 lomographers as active members around the world and has held photo exhibitions from Beijing to New York. Still headquartered in Vienna, Lomographische, which runs the society, sold 300,000 cameras last year and reported ¤10 million (Bt492 million) in turnover.

Having fun is another key success ingredient, Bibawy says. The founders try to create a family, rather than a corporate, culture. Fiegl, who used to work for Austria's Green Party, sees his role as essentially "making people's lives happy". By fostering mutual respect and honesty without sacrificing a sense of fun, the company is able to have open communications at all levels, across departments.

This is particularly helpful in new-product development. The integration of various departments is essential to coming up with novel concepts and ideas. Once a concept is arrived at, "everybody sits around the same table and chips in".

But to get ideas flying about in the first place, Lomography hires the right people.

"We don't hire professionals [for example] in marketing," Fiegl says. "We look for amateurs who must come from photography" - or be lomographers themselves.

But a good business system needs to be in place as well.

"This is business. This is how the world is working today. And we have to use this framework," Fiegl says.

Business rationale also dictated that manufacturing be moved from the Lomo factory in Saint Petersburg to China. All new Lomo Kompakt Automat cameras - the company's staple product - are now made in China.

But ideas can also come from outside. Bibawy noticed that many lomographers had adapted fish-eye [ultra-wide angle] lenses to their lomo cameras. So the company developed the world's first compact camera with a built-in fish-eye lens. For photographers - amateur or professional - it makes no sense to have such a wide, distorting lens permanently in place. But, defying the law of common marketing sense, the camera's lack of versatility soon caught on with lomographers, who embraced it with religious zeal.

And what if, in this digital age, Fuji and Kodak stopped making 35mm film for still cameras?

"We will make film," says Fiegl, straight-faced.

Ki Nan Tsui

The Nation