Originally posted by derekkite Great interview. Nothing new, but interesting how the common ground was covered and we got a slightly deeper understanding of what they are up to.
I wonder if the US distributor got a call. The US is a large consumer market and they seem to be underperforming. Maybe some tuning up from head office is in the works.
Before I begin, remember, I KNOW NOTHING ABOUT THE CAMERA INDUSTRY.
It appears from the outside that Ricoh Imaging Americas can only spend from its local market cash flow. It appears Ricoh doesn't seed them (much) with any market development money. What a lousy, chicken and egg situation - you can't grow without more money and you don't get more money unless you grow. Your only equity capital is work equity - and that will eventually pay off - but it takes
a lot of time. I think that's why the mantra in the USA is, "BE PATIENT."
Hoya absolutely decimated the entire US distribution architecture. In addition to canceling almost every Direct Dealer Agreement (or making the terms impossible to meet except for the big three and box stores - it was even called the 'Box Store' structure) Ned Bunnel released the employees and outsourced literally every single function of the company aside from Parts (which is
one person). Then he moved the paltry 50 remaining people from the historic Golden, Colorado location to an office building in downtown Denver.
The Pentax Webstore isn't really Pentax. It is actually a third-party dealer operating a website portal to buy Pentax items, but Pentax doesn't
absolutely decide what is posted, stocked, or how much (see uploading 645 lenses in the interview). Customer Service at the Webstore isn't Pentax people at all - though they are on 'the account.'
I believe I've read there were only two sales people - the USA was divided in half. Probably Amazon, Adorama and B&H were National Accounts covered by Ned or JC - Ned featured on his blog a Holiday Gift sent to him by the Adorama CEO as thanks for their special relationship. Ned actually had a 'Box Opening' sequence, like it was a gift K3.
Thinking about the 645 lenses issue, if the products part of the website mentions the availability of FA 645 lenses but the webstore doesn't inventory them - you have a problem. People might read about them and want them but they can't get them. I wonder how many 645D have actually sold in the USA anyway.
I doubt USA operates with such independence that this wasn't known by
some Ricoh executives. In this case a different Japan executive might actually not know some things about the sales channel that have been decided and agreed on for the time being.
Originally posted by Uluru Before they launch anything worth mentioning, they'd better fix those damn websites. Only website that is good is Japanese, everything else isn't. Can't they just replicate Japanese information in their particular languages, use same CMS with different subdomains and finally get their heads about what they're communicating?!?
The website was sourced by Hoya to an outside company and it appeared to be simply ignored afterward. I wrote a long post when the K-01 was introduced contrasting the USA website (which didn't even upload the K-01 until release date) with the major websites worldwide, which were much better.
FWIW, Canada and Europe are good - much closer to Japan than USA was. Last summer Pentax USA hired a deeply experienced web presence professional to do just what you describe. Immediately a lot of the Japan content and visual imaging appeared on the USA website. USA is much more part of the family of websites now than it was before the new person came aboard.
But you can't fix everything at the same time when your market share is as tiny as Pentax is in the USA. It really almost isn't even here. They're actually building a much stronger foundation for the future in Denver, doings things we don't see, than we really know. I don't think Jim Malcolm expected the depth of anger he experienced in the Dealer community when he started calling on them to restock Pentax. The universal first response was, "Oh. Hi. There's the door. Let me show you how it operates. Click."
MAP pricing is all about giving dealers a reason to stock Pentax; profit. They aren't competing with an Amazon computer on price any more. If you think about what a store really is - it's just cubic feet of space on shelves. A store owner only cares about profit per cubic foot, and really doesn't care what product goes in the cubic foot as long as it goes in and out quickly. All the shelves are already full, so at the margin, to get back in the stores, Pentax has to convince the owners to kick something else out of a cubic foot - which the other guy isn't going to take lying down. Given the last twenty years of Pentax behavior in the USA, would you trust them after one sales call?
When sales volume increases to a certain level Pentax can move more functions back in-house, or pay more for higher-service outsourcing, and things will be snappier and better looking. THe K3 helps, but we need several more K3's in a row to make a convincing case. At the rate of product introductions it will take some time.