The Paper Mill That Outlived Three Photography Extinctions

Felix Schoeller has supplied the substrate beneath photographic imaging since 1895, surviving the collapse of darkroom printing and home inkjet printing without ever wagering on which camera technology would dominate.

That discipline carried the family-owned manufacturer past €1 billion in annual revenue by 2021.

Most executives treat technological disruption as a question of prediction: guess which format wins, invest early, and claim the spoils.

But even sophisticated bets on cameras, printers, or chip architectures can evaporate when the underlying technology shifts again.

Building legacy through positional patience requires a different wager: supply what every competing technology needs rather than backing any single one.

For more than a century, Felix Schoeller has done exactly that, positioning itself beneath the technology race instead of trying to pick its winner.

Case Study: How Felix Schoeller Survived Three Imaging Extinctions Through Surface Supply

In 1895, Felix Herrmann Maria Schoeller took over a small mill near Osnabrück and founded a paper company around an emerging industry: photography.

The company specialized in the base paper beneath photographic images. It did not need to know which camera maker or chemical process would dominate. It needed to make the surface they all depended on.

When Schoeller died in 1907, his sons inherited the business and continued expanding its paper expertise while keeping photographic materials at its core.

That position was tested dramatically with the rise of digital photography.

As consumers abandoned film cameras in the early 2000s, demand for the silver-halide photo paper that had defined Felix Schoeller for generations began to fall.

The company could have treated digital photography as the end of its market. Instead, it asked a more useful question: Would whatever replaced the darkroom still need a surface engineered to hold an image?

The answer pushed Felix Schoeller toward inkjet.

Its expertise in coating paper translated into substrates for digital printing, allowing the company to serve both old and emerging imaging technologies rather than betting everything on one.

But the next disruption was already coming.

As photographs moved from printer trays to phones and cloud albums, home photo printing weakened too. The technology Felix Schoeller had embraced to survive film's decline was itself losing ground.

This time, the company pushed its coating expertise beyond photography, including into release liners used in industrial adhesive applications.

The result is a business considerably larger than the photo-paper company it began as. Felix Schoeller surpassed €1 billion in annual turnover in 2021, 126 years after its founding.

And the cycle is still repeating.

Under fifth-generation CEO Hans-Christoph Gallenkamp, Felix Schoeller launched RubyPaper in 2026, a substrate designed to give high-speed industrial inkjet printing the look and feel associated with traditional photographic paper.

The important part is not that Felix Schoeller repeatedly predicted the next winning technology. It is that it didn't have to.

Film could lose to digital cameras. Home printers could lose to smartphones. One printing process could replace another.

Felix Schoeller kept asking what the next system would still need underneath it.

That is what makes the company's moat positional rather than technological. It does not need to own the camera, the platform, or the winning printing standard.

It needs to occupy a layer the winner still has to use.

For leaders thinking in generations rather than product cycles, that may be the more durable position: not winning the technology war, but becoming useful to whoever does.

From Picking Winners to Equipping Every Contender

1. Occupy the Step Every Rival Must Pass Through

Most strategists treat a technology race as a contest to call correctly: pick the architecture most likely to dominate, then commit before everyone else does.

Applied Materials takes a different position. Its equipment helps chipmakers deposit, shape, and modify the materials used to manufacture semiconductors, putting the company inside the production process regardless of which chip designer or architecture comes out ahead.

When every contender needs the same step, owning that step can be more durable than picking the winner.

2. Build the Connections Every System Still Needs

Technology changes quickly. The physical need to move power and data between components changes much more slowly.

That has given Amphenol an unusually durable position. Its connectors, sensors, antennas, and interconnect systems sit inside products spanning communications, automobiles, aerospace, industrial equipment, and computing.

A particular device, platform, or manufacturer can lose its lead while the underlying need for reliable connections remains. The winning product may change completely while the infrastructure connecting its parts stays indispensable.

3. Profit From the Verdict, Not the Contest

Most companies have to care deeply about which product wins. SGS has built a business around something nearly every contender needs before that question is settled: verification.

Founded in 1878 as a grain inspection business, SGS now tests, inspects, and certifies products across industries around the world.

Its neutrality is the advantage. SGS does not need to manufacture the winning product when competing manufacturers still need independent proof that what they make meets the required standards.

4. Sell the Tools Used to Design the Next Winner

Before a new chip reaches a factory, engineers have to design and verify that it will work.

Synopsys supplies tools used in that process across the semiconductor industry. Its position does not require one chip architecture, device category, or manufacturer to dominate permanently.

As computing shifts from one generation to another, somebody still has to design the chips powering it.

That makes the design layer a powerful place to sit. Instead of wagering on which semiconductor becomes the next winner, Synopsys can benefit from the race to create it.

From strategy to legacy

The deepest competitive advantage often belongs not to whoever predicts which technology will dominate, but to whoever supplies the layer beneath the contest, the substrate, the standard, or the component that every competing version still requires regardless of which one ultimately wins the market.

There is a particular kind of humility required to build a business whose value depends on never knowing which technology wins.

Felix Schoeller's century of coated paper demanded no foresight, only position: beneath wherever the next disruption lands. Organizations mastering that discipline discover permanence by refusing to guess.

What layer beneath your own product has never needed to be right?

- Legacy Beyond Profits