[Pål Jensen]

Why do you think so many camera stores DO close? Where I live, apart from the three or four generalist electronics stores (Mediamarkt style), there are like 4 camera stores, one of them being a Leica dealer. On a city that is more than 600k people...

Where I live there are no camera stores anymore. Cameras are sold in big consumer electronics stores along with fridges and microwaves. This is good for the likes of Sony and Panasonic as they are present in every such stores on the planet already. They can release a piece of junk and still sell a lot of it cause they are ever present. This is more of a problem for Nikon particularly, but also Canon. Pentax only sells to the informed anyway....

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Last edited by BigMackCam; 07-03-2019 at 04:35 PM. Reason: Vulgarity

[mee]

Where I live there are no camera stores anymore. Cameras are sold in big consumer electronics stores along with fridges and microwaves. This is good for the likes of Sony and Panasonic as they are present in every such stores on the planet already. They can release a piece of junk and still sell a lot of it cause they are ever present. This is more of a problem for Nikon particularly, but also Canon. Pentax only sells to the informed anyway....

This is the situation where I live too. No dedicated camera stores, instead we have big consumer electronics stores that carry the bigger brands and models. Ironically, we also have a large rental service located roughly a mile down the main road from one of the large consumer electronics stores (actually the only that I know carries a variety of cameras)... and a decent photography scene, but no dedicated retail stores. They left around a decade ago.

Last time I went in the electronics store, I trialed all the gear available then made my choice by going online to buy. The salesman in the store wouldn't give me honest answers to questions I had (where I already knew the answer) and the sample model camera I was interested in had issues that he resolved by smacking the camera hard with his hand. haha I'll go elsewhere if this is how you handle photographic gear...

[monochrome]

Cameras are not products sold at the mall jewelry store that have 300 to 600% mark up. I suspect perhaps 30% on higher end models to less than 5% margin on entry level camera kits.

I think the total markup from factory loading dock to MSRP is roughly 100%.

Ricoh Japan sell to its Regional Distributors like RIAC at Factory price, which is profitable to RIcoh Japan. The distributors mark up (to cover distributor costs and make a profit, which is returned to RIcoh) and sell to Retailers (who get volume price discounts). The retailers mark up again to make their profit.

Specials and Deal pricing are just volume incentives. Except recent USA 50% haircuts on DA20-40 Limited, which is discounted by a payment from RIAC to the retailers in lieu of unsold ‘Return Merchandise’ allowance.

[Serkevan]

The Pentax vitrine in the only electronics store that even carries the brand is full of cameras! Buuuut they are all from the 60s. Think Practikas, Exaktas, Rolleis.

I have only ever seen in the flesh a K-70 with 18-135... no sign of the KP, K-1,K-3 or any other lens.

[biz-engineer]

No one makes 2-3x on these things

2x is very common here for all business, they need an average of 50% gross margin (gross margin = ( selling price - buying price) / ( buying price ) ) to be able to pay themselves a salary and various costs of operating. The income statements do not lie, anyway, it's easy to check. 50% gross margin means the selling price is at least double the cost.

---------- Post added 04-07-19 at 07:56 ----------

For the smarter ones it means a lot of price competition between those mirrorless makers who dont want to be the ones left behind.

I only see increasing prices so far. Tokyo is small, it looks like they decided not to compete on price, but more on advertising budgets. Sony likely have the biggest promotional budget and make you pay their promotion expenses what you buy the camera (basically, you pay for being convinced LoL).

[clackers]

Ricoh Japan sell to its Regional Distributors like RIAC at Factory price, which is profitable to RIcoh Japan. The distributors mark up (to cover distributor costs and make a profit, which is returned to RIcoh) and sell to Retailers (who get volume price discounts). The retailers mark up again to make their profit.

Wouldn't the distributors sell to the retailers at 100% who then sell to us at another 100% markup, Monochrome?

Of course, discounts, specials, etc.

[Serkevan]

So I ran the numbers again really quick:

From the "Production" section to the "Shipment (Worldwide) section:
-DSLR: 257€/unit -> 332€/unit. 30% increase.
-MILC: 430€/unit -> 607 €/unit. 41% increase.

Should we assume that the markup from Production to Shipment is the manufacturer's profit, then? However I don't think the average price paid for a MILC unit is 1200€ (~$1350) in store; at least here only the FF models are more expensive than that, and the top sellers are, judging from what you see people using, in the range of the a6000 series, or small DSLRs. So... around 800€ for MILCs and 500€ for DSLRs. Monochrome's numbers seem pretty reasonable; 100% margin over manufacturing cost.


In the end, the thing is that DSLRs are falling much faster than MILCs. Whether we like it or not (and I don't. EVFs are a headache, literally), the future is shaping up to be mirrorless. I doubt DSLRs will become as small a niche as rangefinders (is there anyone apart from Leica?) because they are fundamentally different, while MILCs are literally rangefinders without parallax problems. We will see...

[beholder3]

I only see increasing prices so far. Tokyo is small, it looks like they decided not to compete on price, but more on advertising budgets. Sony likely have the biggest promotional budget and make you pay their promotion expenses what you buy the camera (basically, you pay for being convinced LoL).

The base prices for the mirrorless early adopters of the last years have been hiked, yes.

I did refer to the discounts from there on. Just look at the discounts on Nikon Z cameras. These did fail to meet customers expectations so much the prices dropped like a stone. In Germany you get a full discount of -1,400 EUR on a Z7 versus what the foolish early adopters paid. That is five months after market introduction. Epic fail.

After five months the K-1 was still sold out and selling at full intro price.

Most people wouldnt want to pay 1400 EUR in total for a camera at all, let alone watch their investment loose all value that fast.

But for those who smartly waited and are willing to wait more all this is great.

[Jonathan Mac]

Large-sensor cameras have been good enough for long enough now that upgrading brings fewer advantages than it did in the past, and those advantages are generally nice-to-have things such as eye-AF or wifi rather than big jumps in image quality or AF speed/accuracy.

The contraction in the market shows as higher-priced gear in general as manufacturers and retailers increase price to compensate for the loss in volume.

[beholder3]

In the end, the thing is that DSLRs are falling much faster than MILCs.

No. they only were falling faster in the past, but the last half year MILC didnt perform any better to convince customers. Watch the distance between the two curves:

And the most recent massive -15/-20% in one year drop in customers and sales value doesnt look good for MILC as well.


MILC future is looking even worse when you consider their total customers are shrinking even while there were a lot of converts from DSLRs, so they lost a massive amount (more than the combined volume of switchers) of prospects versus the previous years when there were much less switchers.

If the MILC products were any good you'd see a massive growth over time, given the huge marketing dollars that are invested/wasted into them.

Instead of massive growth you see -15/-20%, which is a catastrophe, which will surely show up on MILC makers quarterly figures, just the same as Sony's camera profits plunged by > 70% recently in a single year.

[Serkevan]

...The chart literally shows MILCs being very stable over time (hovering around 300k-400k units per month) while DSLRs fell from 1.1 million to 500k. Come on, total market losses is a parallel line to the DSLR drop: MILCs are almost constant. From the CIPA chart, DSLRs dropped a whopping forty percent in the first half of the year compared to 2018, while MILCs dropped half of that and increased their value. Seriously, it's all there. 105% sales value compared to last year. DSLRs? Lol, 56% in value. That's almost HALF THE REVENUE gone.

The entire market is a catastrophe. People holding off and not jumping ship massively to MILCs doesn't mean that they keep buying DSLRs, it means they are not buying anything. And when they eventually replace, it's a mirrorless.

To be clear: I absolutely agree that the mirrorless bet is NOT paying off: the R&D costs are massive and the major players are bleeding money on all sides because people are not switching nearly as much as they have to for the investment to pay offf. But pretending that the DSLR market is strong is covering your eyes and ears.

[MetalUndivided]

And the most recent massive -15/-20% in one year drop in customers and sales value doesnt look good for MILC as well.

That's some poor data interpretation. This kind of logic would lead you to conclusions like "MILC ARE TOAST, SALES ARE PLUMMETING" back in 2014 based on the numbers from 2012-2014 range.
If anything, this chart shows that MILCs are doing quite well - they keep their numbers pretty stable in an ever shrinking market. Can't say the same about DSLRs. Also, considering that Canikon are developing their new MILCs at the expense of their DSLRs, unless at least one of them backpedals out of it, there simply won't be a manufacturer to sell DSLRs in considerable numbers in a decade at this rate.
The future is mirrorless. Whether there's room for any of the current big DSLR players is a different matter.

[MarkJerling]

The future is mirrorless.

Only if mirrorless viewfinders improve exponentially.

[Serkevan]

Only if mirrorless viewfinders improve exponentially.

That's the problem: The future is mirrorless... and the future sucks. Any EVF with enough resolution to not make me want to gouge my eyes out with a spoon is gonna need a mini power plant to work.

[MetalUndivided]

Only if mirrorless viewfinders improve exponentially.

Do you expect them not to?
I don't think there are too many people who would exchange great AF capabilities for an optical viewfinder that doesn't even stay clean.