[biz-engineer]

Well, Pentax almost have a good approach , but only almost. The only thing that prevent from buying online is the lack of being able to see and try the real product, or the return cost and effort if I make a wrong purchase decision. At Canon and Nikon shops over here, the products are all displayed in the shops but you can't try them out, and if you ask questions to the sales guys they answer less than google, which is a pity. Pentax get it right with the concept of their Pentax store in Paris that is more a kind of show room where all Pentax products are presented and eventually you can try and you can also buy only, it pulls sales anyway, so even if the Pentax shop owned / sponsored by Ricoh isn't profitable with product sales , Ricoh get the investment back. I believe, Ricoh imagine should do this kind of Pentax store (like Apple Store, or Nespresso) in a lot of capital cities, and those would also be a contact point for servicing of Pentax products. Not need to deploy in every shop, but instead have a excellent Pentax store with service in most countries. If I remember correctly, Ron mentioned the idea of the Pentax store in New York, that would be good.

---------- Post added 10-11-16 at 07:31 ----------

if you don't provide something interesting, an experience, people will as well shop online.

Yes, the point is to generate sales in one way or another, with a cost reduced cost of fulfillment. If I go a the local photo shop over here, they kind of order online... so I could do the same from home. The value of going into this shop is 1) to be able to try before I buy, and 2) if anything goes wrong with the camera I want an easy way to return it. As a consumer, it is not really my problem to know how much it cost to Ricoh for the distribution, if the method cost less, but I can still have 1) and 2), I'm fine with that.

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Last edited by biz-engineer; 11-09-2016 at 11:32 PM.

[Nicolas06]

If I remember correctly, Ron mentioned the idea of the Pentax store in New York, that would be good.

This is great idea, first biggest/city of key country etc. Then a presence in regional cities would be quite interresting... Meaning like 3-4 shop in key countries, maybe a dozen in US or Japan.

[Rondec]

It is maybe going a little away from the theme of this thread, but the United States is a very different market from Europe, particularly because of the fact that large swaths of it are rural with no easy access to large cities. I have over an hour's drive to Louisville, Kentucky. I believe there is a camera store there that doesn't carry Pentax, but even if they did, I would be more inclined to order on line than to drive that distance only to find that they didn't have any high end lenses in stock.

As to whether photo stores will survive, they need to figure out a way to offer services that on line shops don't. Photography classes, maybe lens rentals -- things that get photographers to turn to them before going to B and H and Adorama.

[mecrox]

It is maybe going a little away from the theme of this thread, but the United States is a very different market from Europe, particularly because of the fact that large swaths of it are rural with no easy access to large cities. I have over an hour's drive to Louisville, Kentucky. I believe there is a camera store there that doesn't carry Pentax, but even if they did, I would be more inclined to order on line than to drive that distance only to find that they didn't have any high end lenses in stock.

As to whether photo stores will survive, they need to figure out a way to offer services that on line shops don't. Photography classes, maybe lens rentals -- things that get photographers to turn to them before going to B and H and Adorama.

It's not that dissimilar here. The distances may be smaller but the traffic queues are probably longer and anyway the few remaining camera stores tend to be in the big urban areas. My nearest big one frequently has demo afternoons with a team from a manufacturer, a full range of products to handle, brand ambassadors (i.e. professionals) giving workshops and so on. These may be free or pay-for and attendees may or may not be given, say, 50-buck vouchers against the purchase of a new product, etc, etc. It's certainly likely to be a draw for some people, especially since the next stop for some may be a session with the brand ambassador's own, more dedicated workshop programmes elsewhere. So there is that in it for the professional coaches too. However, this all costs money for the manufacturer and presupposes a decent-sized marketing team and brand ambassadors competent and well enough known to bring in the customers.

While this is clearly just what some brands do and pay for, I don't see that it has really been the case to date for Pentax or at least to nothing like the same degree. I suspect we always come back to the same point here: Pentax don't have enough of a market overseas to make this all that worthwhile for them and so far they don't seem interested enough in boosting their market overseas to pony up the seed money to kick off the process. I guess, as always, the figures just don't add so long as they can hit their targets mostly from sales at or very near home.

[RonHendriks1966]

It's not that dissimilar here. The distances may be smaller but the traffic queues are probably longer and anyway the few remaining camera stores tend to be in the big urban areas. My nearest big one frequently has demo afternoons with a team from a manufacturer, a full range of products to handle, brand ambassadors (i.e. professionals) giving workshops and so on. These may be free or pay-for and attendees may or may not be given, say, 50-buck vouchers against the purchase of a new product, etc, etc. It's certainly likely to be a draw for some people, especially since the next stop for some may be a session with the brand ambassador's own, more dedicated workshop programmes elsewhere. So there is that in it for the professional coaches too. However, this all costs money for the manufacturer and presupposes a decent-sized marketing team and brand ambassadors competent and well enough known to bring in the customers.

While this is clearly just what some brands do and pay for, I don't see that it has really been the case to date for Pentax or at least to nothing like the same degree. I suspect we always come back to the same point here: Pentax don't have enough of a market overseas to make this all that worthwhile for them and so far they don't seem interested enough in boosting their market overseas to pony up the seed money to kick off the process. I guess, as always, the figures just don't add so long as they can hit their targets mostly from sales at or very near home.

Overhere Pentax had a few of those meetings in stores over the past 2 years. They don't have enough people to do that and lack budget to support it.

From Thom Hogan. Canon, Nikon and Sony would have 91 % of the ilc market. So that leaves 9 % to share among Panasonic, Olympus, Fujifilm and Pentax. From these 4 Pentax is the least active in promotion, so they are likely to shrink. Olympus had some sales people from different country's, working in large stores, take a flight to Spain to meet and work with the new OMD-M1-ii. That does make them enthusiast.

[photoptimist]

Maybe Sad but that the way it elvolve... 150 years ago, it was the small shop complaining after the big center of city big shop. Recently it was after wallmart and equiv. Now it is the only shop... Tomorrow will be what? An hollow shop?

Anyway just to say that life still continue and we are not that bad

And by the way, even amazon open shops. Brick and motar does have value, but you need to do something about it. if you don't provide something interresting, an experience, people will as well shop online.

You are 100% right that brick and mortar does have value but they are having an increasingly hard time converting that value into profits. A shop might have a convenient location (which adds costs), great experience (which adds costs), knowledgeable sales people (which adds costs), hands-on product demos (which adds costs), etc. but if the consumer can simply step outside and save 10% by clicking on an app, the shop's investment in experience is wasted. To me, that's the sad part by which some percentage of consumers who really do value the presence of retailers are also the ones destroying those same retailers by buying online.

In the end, consumers will get what they pay for and if they don't pay for brick-and-mortar service, they soon won't get it.

And you are 100% right that new retailing models will arrive such as manufacturers directly subsidizing brick-and-mortar retailers (or setting up their own shops) to create the touch-and-feel experience without concern for how the consumer subsequently buys the product because the manufacturer gets paid regardless of who the consumer buys from.

[Kunzite]

From Thom Hogan. Canon, Nikon and Sony would have 91 % of the ilc market. So that leaves 9 % to share among Panasonic, Olympus, Fujifilm and Pentax. From these 4 Pentax is the least active in promotion, so they are likely to shrink. Olympus had some sales people from different country's, working in large stores, take a flight to Spain to meet and work with the new OMD-M1-ii. That does make them enthusiast.

And Olympus reported declining sales and a 1.4 billion yen loss in the last quarter. But it's always Pentax who is doomed, right?

[RonHendriks1966]

And Olympus reported declining sales and a 1.4 billion yen loss in the last quarter. But it's always Pentax who is doomed, right?

I do wonder how long Olympus can run. Still Sony invested 600 million dollar in them, so maybe it is not all gone yet. There was a time that Olympus had a marketshare for themselves of 8 %.

[biz-engineer]

I do wonder how long Olympus can run. Still Sony invested 600 million dollar in them, so maybe it is not all gone yet. There was a time that Olympus had a marketshare for themselves of 8 %.

Do you have figures for Panasonic cameras. I'm always amazed that they continue doing those GHx u4/3 cameras and people buy them.

---------- Post added 10-11-16 at 21:15 ----------

Pentax who is doomed, right?

Size and financial results are two different things. You can be a small and tightly managed company and be profitable. You can also be a large company making money but having a negative cash flow and filling for bankruptcy. Companies like Canon and Nikon were so fat and throwing money out the windows when the market was growing that they have to re-learn how to develop camera models without breaking the bank. The advantage of large companies is firepower, but the advantages of small companies are reactivity and the ability to do things with smaller budgets. For example , I am sure that there is NO way Canon could design and commercialize a full frame camera with the budget used by Ricoh imaging for the Pentax K1, and in terms of financial ratios, maybe Ricoh imaging with the K1 beats Canon with the 5DIV (Canon have to pay for the sensor development NRE, Ricoh don't have to pay especially using the 36Mp sensor of Sony after Sony NRE being paid off by Nikon and Sony camera business) and investors look at that. When you run a company as large as Canon, every step you do must be designed into a process and documented , which slows down operations and resource efficiency. Dog companies do exist, tightly managed financially, some of them never die, and Pentax could be one of them. Canon especially is a Japanese company , I can imagine how long it takes to get stuff signed by the many level of the hierarchy. At Pentax on the other hand, you may just cross the corridor and get your budget signed immediately. Ricoh imaging may use a lot less resources than Canikon for developing the same kind of camera, so this is not proven that the financial ratio of Ricoh imaging as worse than the ones of Canon or Nikon.

[Kunzite]

I do wonder how long Olympus can run. Still Sony invested 600 million dollar in them, so maybe it is not all gone yet. There was a time that Olympus had a marketshare for themselves of 8 %.

Sony invested in the medical part, IIRC.

[RonHendriks1966]

Do you have figures for Panasonic cameras. I'm always amazed that they continue doing those GHx u4/3 cameras and people buy them.

Not recent, but they did very well in 2014.

[Nicolas06]

Do you have figures for Panasonic cameras. I'm always amazed that they continue doing those GHx u4/3 cameras and people buy them.

---------- Post added 10-11-16 at 21:15 ----------


Size and financial results are two different things. You can be a small and tightly managed company and be profitable. You can also be a large company making money but having a negative cash flow and filling for bankruptcy. Companies like Canon and Nikon were so fat and throwing money out the windows when the market was growing that they have to re-learn how to develop camera models without breaking the bank. The advantage of large companies is firepower, but the advantages of small companies are reactivity and the ability to do things with smaller budgets. For example , I am sure that there is NO way Canon could design and commercialize a full frame camera with the budget used by Ricoh imaging for the Pentax K1, and in terms of financial ratios, maybe Ricoh imaging with the K1 beats Canon with the 5DIV (Canon have to pay for the sensor development NRE, Ricoh don't have to pay especially using the 36Mp sensor of Sony after Sony NRE being paid off by Nikon and Sony camera business) and investors look at that. When you run a company as large as Canon, every step you do must be designed into a process and documented , which slows down operations and resource efficiency. Dog companies do exist, tightly managed financially, some of them never die, and Pentax could be one of them. Canon especially is a Japanese company , I can imagine how long it takes to get stuff signed by the many level of the hierarchy. At Pentax on the other hand, you may just cross the corridor and get your budget signed immediately. Ricoh imaging may use a lot less resources than Canikon for developing the same kind of camera, so this is not proven that the financial ratio of Ricoh imaging as worse than the ones of Canon or Nikon.

Canon could likely sell the 5KDmark IV for half of its current price and provide some entry level FF for $800 if they wanted. But why would they do that. The market is skrinking, people do not buy regardless of price. The few that stay like you or me and a few other are quite easy to convince to spend thousands on gear.

[biz-engineer]

Canon could likely sell the 5KDmark IV for half of its current price and provide some entry level FF for $800 if they wanted. But why would they do that. The market is skrinking, people do not buy regardless of price. The few that stay like you or me and a few other are quite easy to convince to spend thousands on gear.

I don't know if your comment is related to what I wrote or unrelated. Ok, so, how is that related to cost of R&D ? Do you mean every one should do MF camera priced 5K ?

[Nicolas06]

I don't know if your comment is related to what I wrote or unrelated. Ok, so, how is that related to cost of R&D ? Do you mean every one should do MF camera priced 5K ?

There no reason to think 5KMark IV or Pentax K1 to have very different cost in R&D. If I was to guess, I would suspect K1 to cost more in R&D because it is the first FF body of Pentax for years. For Canon it was just a different mix of technologies to make a new variation of what they have done for years. Maybe Canon spent much more, but that would be because they could and that may be also mostly on marketing or stuff like that. And I think the return of investment is there.

Manufacturers could have a single model, have unique price and be done. But usually you make more money by going on with market segmentation. People like to have the cheap, almost as good one or very expensive a bit better one. The whole FF vs APSC, great AF, bad AF, can I do 3 frame exposure braketing or 5 or 7 and so on are based on that. So even if there already some APSC body in Canon that is basically a 5DMarkIV and that cost 1/3 of the price and that maybe extending to FF could justify $300-500 markup in price, Canon ask for $2000 more. because they can, and that a way to get more out of the R&D, even if it was offered first on an APSC body.

If you think K1 is the same. K1 is a K3-II with almost the same of everything, a 36MP old school sensor and some research to improve the high iso that been already retrofited into K70. Other than that there basically the mirror box and the design to keep the AF compact and a real new SR mechanism. But it is because FF is new overall.

If Pentax was to make another FF tomorrow, they could reuse everything except the one of 2 things they would change. If it a different sensor, that only the cost of the part. if it better buffer it is only again the cost of the memory so like 50$ for a buffer of 120 36MP photos. If it is about shutter speed it is basically buying the shutter/mirror from dedicated manufacturer...

And while we still pay a premium for the K1, the K70 has the same pixel shift and same improved high iso technology but they are asking half the price on it! And to justify they removed on purpose the advanced AF in the K70 even through the cost may be exactly the same for manufacturing. this is just this AF module introduced with K3, they don't want to provide it as too low price so people want to upgrade...

[biz-engineer]

People like to have the cheap, almost as good one or very expensive a bit better one.

The market is skrinking, people do not buy regardless of price.

The few that stay like you or me and a few other are quite easy to convince to spend thousands on gear.

Thats what you wrote.

---------- Post added 12-11-16 at 15:02 ----------

There no reason to think 5KMark IV or Pentax K1 to have very different cost in R&D.

I am sorry , but if you compare the cost of pizza van with the cost of the industrial pizza factory, both are able to make good pizza, but the pizza factory is way more expensive to build , however, the unit cost of pizza is lower from the factory than it is with the pizza van. What you say is generally true, although, if is was absolutely true, only the market leader would survive, all other companies would die. Some smaller companies are able to outsmart the larger one, and that's how they can survive with smaller budgets. Go on yahoo finance and compare the bottom lines of different companies from the same sector. How do you explain that some small companies make big profits and larger one lose money?