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Endpoint: Gaf (Film Division)



02:29
Videos (9)
created on: 29/05/2023
by: bob (9184)
 
 

Brand properties

General info :
Gaf is the brand name used by Gaf Corporation, an American manufacturing and roofing company founded in 1886 that was briefly a producer of film and super 8 cameras in the 1960s and 70s.
Gaf originally stood for General Aniline & Film and until 1968 the company's name was General Aniline & Film Corp.

The company has historically been primarily focused on manufacturing of roofing materials for residential and commercial applications.
At one time GAF was also active in manufacturing photographic film as well as cameras and projectors (both still and motion picture), and was the manufacturer of the View-Master, the famous line of 3D transparencies, viewers and projectors. Briefly in the 1970s, it was the official film of Disneyland and Walt Disney World.
The photo company was headed by Jesse Werner, an organic chemist.
By 1977 GAF film division had suffered an unprecedented quarterly loss of $49.5 million. Its amateur camera and film business was being dismantled - with an accompanying pretax writeoff of $98.3 million. Ultimately, 1,900 workers were laid off or transferred and the division was closed.
Aside from its antitrust suit against Kodak - trying to break up the big “yellow box” company and force it to give up its trademark - making Kodak a generic term like aspirin - GAF normally received little national publicity. In 1970, however, the corporate calm was shattered when Paul Milstein, a GAF shareholder, sued the company on behalf of all of its stockholders, charging “gross mismanagement.” In 1972 a settlement was reached, calling for GAF to modify a controversial stock purchase plan for its executives, with a resultant savings estimated at the time to be a potential $3.3 million.
Since the 1960's, GAF's photographic group has lagged badly behind both its chemicals and building materials lines of business in profitability. In 1972, the photo and reprographic group showed an operating profit of only $11.5 million on sales of $296.3 million.
By contrast, the chemical group showed a profit of $24.4 million on sales of $193.6 million, and the building materials group earned $48.1 million on sales of $278.6 million.
In later years, the contrast has been even more vivid. In 1975, for example, the photo group earned only $4.8 million and in 1976, for the first time, it used red ink, reporting a $2.8 million loss on record sales of $371.1 million.
It had an address listed at GAF Corporation, 140 West 51 Street, New York, N.Y. 10020
It had a Canadian subsidiary, GAF (Canada) Ltd. located at 2403 Stanfield Road, Mississauga, Ontario, Canada.
Relations :
Brand name used by : GAF (Canada) Ltd.
This endpoint is new to the database, please check he (it) is not in with a similar endpoint name association (and use the ENA function if necessary).
Brand name used by [1968 - 1977] : Gaf Corp.
This endpoint is new to the database, please check he (it) is not in with a similar endpoint name association (and use the ENA function if necessary).
Source :
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ENA's

Magazines

(4 items)

Item number : 56909

Submitted by : bob (9184)
on : 29/05/2023
Refined by : bob (9184)
Last updated on: 29/05/2023