Originally posted by IchabodCrane Their capacity and plans? I read many posts on this forum a couple years ago that made emphatic claims that Ricoh was intending to be "a dominant player in the camera business" or something essentially the same. To date, I've seen nothing on the marketing front that seems to support that goal.
You are close. Those who interpreted what they think they heard are close. Here's the actual statement:
Jim Maloclm said to me directly, in April, 2013, that Ricoh believes there is room for a third full-line camera company and they intend to be that company
over the intermediate term, defined as 5 to 7 years. The goal in the long term, which is 20 years, is to be the #1 camera maker - the dominant player.
You can find the thread I posted shortly thereafter, in which I quoted Jim, on the Q Forum.
When I write Ricoh is doing precisely what they said they intend to do my writing is based upon this conversation (and others I have had with Ricoh employees over the last several quarters). RIAC is doing much better in almost every way than they were two years ago. Apparently, though, they're not doing the things people here expect them to be doing (TV ads, magazine ads, staffing up sales reps, getting store distributions and such), so people here think they're not doing anything.
One thing for sure - they're not trying to be the third CaNikon. To the extent we expect them to do things CaNikon does, we'll think they're not doing anything if they don't do any of
those things. However, maybe they really mean they want to be different - to take a different path. If they're doing things on a different path, and we're not looking for those things, then we'll think they're doing nothing.
Or maybe they're just a group of benighted, bad executives who stumbled their way to the 500th largest company on earth. Or maybe they bought Pentax for something other than cameras (such as patents) and they're milking the brand until it dies its own, slow death.
I choose not to believe the latter two possibilities.
Kinda sucks to realiise that Americans are a spoiled, whiny, demanding bunch that a certain manufacturer might
choose to move to the end of the growth strategy, doesn't it?