The Impossible Project bought Polaroid's brand and brought instant film back to life

Polaroid, founded by Edwin Land in 1937, went bankrupt in 2001 and ended instant film production in 2008, leaving a famous name with no working product.

A group of Dutch entrepreneurs and Polaroid veterans took over the lease of the last Polaroid film factory in the Netherlands as The Impossible Project. The patents were gone, so they reinvented the chemistry from scratch.

In May 2017 The Impossible Project purchased the Polaroid brand and intellectual property. In September it relaunched as Polaroid Originals with the $99 OneStep 2 camera and new i-Type film.

In March 2020 the circle closed: the company renamed itself Polaroid and launched the Polaroid Now camera, completing a 12-year journey from film savior to brand owner.

Film revivalists became brand owners: the OneStep 2 and i-Type film launched in 2017; in March 2020 the company renamed itself Polaroid with the Polaroid Now camera.

Keeping instant film alive preserved the ecosystem that made the brand worth owning.

Buying the brand in 2017 reunited the name with real production instead of licensing.

New cameras and i-Type film gave the revived brand hardware to sell, not just nostalgia.

Saving a dead product can be the path to owning the whole brand: Impossible kept the film ecosystem alive for years, so when Polaroid's name went up for sale they were the obvious buyer.

Polaroid Originals, then Polaroid, kept releasing new cameras and films — OneStep 2, Polaroid Now, Now+, Go — and the brand again stands for working instant photography rather than a logo stuck on unrelated gadgets.