While close to 400 Kodak employees worldwide were notified on Thursday, actual layoff process has started from Friday.

Kodak claims the layoffs are due to cost-cutting requirements and come one and a half months after applying for bankruptcy protection.

While employees were aware of the impending layoffs for about three weeks, knowing about it and seeing it happen are quite different experiences.

91 employees have received notices in the first round.

The layoff follows the company’s decision to stop making digital cameras for consumers. So, workers in that particular workspace would be hard hit.

However, experts say that more layoffs are bound to follow. Financial expert George Conboy told the media “As Kodak goes through bankruptcy; it needs to be able to turn profitable or have a plan for profitability to emerge from bankruptcy. In order to do that, it will need to shed some workers. Some will be from business units that get shut down, like the camera unit, some will be will be from units that Kodak expects to keep and make more profitable. Such as digital printing”

On Thursday, Kodak had issued a statement in the afternoon stating, “”A number of areas continue to make adjustments in their workforce in response to business conditions. When we made that announcement, we said that there would be significant impacts among the 400 employees worldwide who are dedicated full time to that business.”

Kodak had 17,000 full-time employees when it filed for bankruptcy and with the radical measures and changes in policy, almost half the number can lose their jobs.

A number of employees at different offices of Kodak have been encouraged to go on 90-day furloughs. Almost a 100 employees facing layoffs are from the Rochester area.

The news is sad for another prestigious American brand that had become almost synonymous with great photography.