Kodak passes off Gallery printing service to Shutterfly for $23.8M

Just a month after filing for bankruptcy, Eastman Kodak Company is dumping some of its digital assets off on personal photo-publishing company Shutterfly in the hopes of becoming a more tightly focused company.

Shutterfly has agreed, by way of a court-supervised auction process, to purchase Kodak Gallery for $23.8 million, the companies announced Thursday.

“This sale is consistent with our objective of focusing Kodak on a core set of businesses in which we can most profitably leverage our technology and brand strengths,” Kodak CMO Pradeep Jotwani said in a statement.

Kodak Gallery is an online destination where customers in the U.S. and Canada can upload, share, and print their “Kodak moments” as keepsakes. Through the deal, the product’s more than 75 million users and their images will be transferred over to Shutterfly, though customers can choose to opt-out of the transfer and download images instead.

The Shutterfly deal is expected to close in the spring, but will first need to secure the approbation of the U.S. Bankruptcy Court. Other potential buyers can still submit bids for Kodak Gallery in the interim.

Earlier this month, Kodak announced that it would stop selling cameras.

[via TechCrunch]