Originally posted by Jean Poitiers I was at the Paris Photo Salon/Expo last Saturday and I stopped by the huge Sigma booth to look at the new full frame "fp".
I told the rep that I was not happy at all that Sigma had stopped supporting Pentax ... to which the rep replied, "We didn't stop supporting Pentax, Pentax stopped supporting themselves."
Then he added, "Where are they?" ... to which he was quite right.
Pentax did NOT have a booth at the annual Paris Photo Salon/Expo.
ZERO. NADA. ... and with 100 years to celebrate as well ... ZILCH.
Who was there? Canon (huge booths), Nikon (huge), Sony (huge), Fuji, Olympus, Leica, Hassy, Tamron, Samyang, Irix, dji, French national camera chains, resellers of lighting/strobe equipment, etc., etc., etc.
NO PENTAX ... sorry to break this news to you, but it's the reality here.
The conversation with Sigma conflated two separate issues as a result of the Sigma rep shamelessly passing the buck.
Sigma pulled out of K-mount because it wasn't selling enough K-mount units - period. It is Sigma's decision, Sigma's responsibility, and Sigma's fault that our favoured brand and mount no longer has its support. For the rep to wriggle out of that by inferring it's Ricoh / Pentax's fault is utter tosh and diversion. Having said that, I fully understand the decision, and if I was part of Sigma management, I would probably have voted in favour of that decision. The company is in business of making money, not altruism.
Ricoh, too, is in the business of making money. However, whilst I understand attending shows and events costs money, and Ricoh Imaging may rightly believe that it does not get sufficient return on such costs to justify attendance, I think this element of its strategy is short-sighted. Time will tell whether Ricoh's strategy delivers results both in isolation, and in relation to other market participants.
But I'll say again, these are two separate issues.