[Serkevan]

I have only bought online and second hand, at that... PhD salary doesn't go that far. To make matters better, my local retailers have (sometimes!) a K-70 with 18-135 in store. The rest of the Pentax cabinet is filled with old GDR cameras. I mean the Prakticas and Pentacons look cool but they aren't weather sealed.

[Wasp]

In South Africa, Pentax is something that you hardly ever see on a store shelf. Nikon and Canon entry and mid level stuff can be found in every department store. The specialty shops cover all the levels. Sony and Fujifilm gear as well, but precious little Pentax.

[btnapa]

The current "we can order it for you" store experience is not a service. I can order it on-line myself.

Right on. It is a shame because I bought my first Pentax, an MX, after trying it at a retail shop in Boston. That was some 39 years ago!! My local shop here in Vegas has a huge section for Leica, perhaps the biggest display in the store but no sign of Pentax.

---------- Post added 09-17-19 at 09:37 AM ----------

After a customer has come in and taken a lens off the shelf to play with and gone home without purchasing it much now be sold as a demo at reduced price. It costs store money to do that. It's much more likely the average customer coming into a store is going to cost you more than you make from them with current practices.

Normhead, right on again! It is a shame but we have learned, thanks to B&H and Amazons of the world to kill retail trade. I am just as guilty. I tried to buy some SD cards locally, so that my local guy can get some biz from me. The price was twice what I could buy it for on line and I had to pay taxes on it on top of the much higher price. I ordered it from Amazon and had it in front of my door the next day without even getting out of my house. How can you beat that? I asked my local shop if they would stock Pentax. The answer was no. However, they offered to order it for me and get it in a few weeks.... duh!!

[AggieDad]

You worry about only one Pentax dealer in Norway. Do not fret. From where I stand, you are lucky.

Consider this. The Houston, Texas metro area is approximately 7 million folks (Norway about 5.5 million), and there is only one camera store in the city and one or two outside the city – none of them selling Pentax!

Oh to have one store selling Pentax.

Don

[house]

In Sweden several online stores have reduced their Pentax offer in the last two years or so. Some seem to be selling off only old stock whilst another only order the items after you order resulting in long delivery times. Regardless of new products it will be difficult to claw back lost presence.

[lesmore49]

I buy my new Pentax stuff at a camera dealer in town. They order it from the Pentax distributor and call me when it's in. I could order camera equipment myself, but I do what I do, as I want to do my part to keep this bricks and mortar store in business, I do so as I appreciate the expertise / advice of the staff , one in particular at the store and I like having a camera store nearby that I can check out and see what's new, not from Pentax/Ricoh...but from Canikon, Fuji, etc. I'm a camera enthusiast, plain and simple.

I've been patronizing camera stores since '68 and I 'like' this tradition. I also like to keep business in town alive , if I can, particularly the businesses I like to patronize. When it comes to a camera store, I like to walk in, check out the wares...it's always been sort of a treasure trove for a gear aficionado like myself.

I could.... order everything online and I do order a lot of stuff (non camera equipment) online. But for camera equipment, it's different. In my fair burg we've gone from about 8 traditional camera stores a decade ago...to three and I'm not sure about their longevity.

I would have no hesitation ordering photography equipment online, if I lived in an isolated area. It's handy, quick and to your door...or the local post office, if you choose. Convenient.

But that's me. Others may differ.

[Adam]

As much as it might take away from the experience of being able to handle the product before you buy it, I think Ricoh is embracing a marketing and distribution strategy focused on e-commerce, in order to reduce sales overhead. This has been their approach in the Americas for quite some time, and it's possible that we'll see a shift toward it in Europe as well.

Adam
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[Rondec]

Camera stores are few and far between in the US. Even if Pentax managed to get into most camera stores, I don't know how much it would help them here as they just have trouble competing with online retailers like B and H and Amazon. Even big box stores like Best Buy are in trouble, as people come in, check out the products and then order online to get cheaper prices and avoid sales tax (although that last part is probably going away for many states).

[KX-Digital]

As much as it might take away from the experience of being able to handle the product before you buy it, I think Ricoh is embracing a marketing and distribution strategy focused on e-commerce, in order to reduce sales overhead. This has been their approach in the Americas for quite some time, and it's possible that we'll see a shift toward it in Europe as well.

The approach in Europe, since the Hoya takeover, seems to be focused on disappearing completely. In fact, the 2001 introduced MZ-S didn't catch on here (overpriced?, downgrade from Z-1 which was already downgrade from LX), and from then until the K10 introduced in 2007 i would not have stepped in as Pentax was not offering anything worthwhile buying (except lenses, of course the FA limiteds). Showing the path upward the K20 and k200 were developed before the takeover of Hoya, the first batch tagged "Pentax Corporation" but soon bottom-tagged "Hoya Corporation". They closed all Pentax branded importing and representative offices giving importership to companies* that handled several dozens of brands, clearly had other interests and usually lost items sent in for (warranty) repair. (e.g. De Beukelaar, now down to 26 including Kodak, Minox, Braun, Kenro, Ilford, Tamron)

Ricoh seems to do better in bringing out attractive slr's and lenses but visibility in the brick-and-mortar stores is not improving (still virtually none, maybe 2 in the country) and the number of webstores carrying Pentax is declining too.
In those webstores that do still carry Pentax, the assortment of Pentax gear is declining too. The 18-55 and 50-200 they all sell but very little that is better.

[gazonk]

Oh to have one store selling Pentax.

They’re an online store, though... (although I think it’s possible to make an appointment to visit them).

[MJKoski]

Pentax gear availability here in Finland has dropped dramatically during last few months. In June 2019 Samyang Pentax-K lenses, for example, were available from multiple stores straight from the shelves but now everything seems to be available on order only if even that.

[maleek]

Yes, I too notice this trend and can vouch for how the situation is in the swedish market. The last "push" and sucess, which (I am only going on my own observation) to increase brand visibility on online stores was the K1D. I am very lucky that the local camera shop in my own town has a long standing tradition to vouch for Pentax - due to their ruggedness and price to performance ratio.

[luftfluss]

.....

[SSGGeezer]

.....

Head North! Hunt's usually has some Pentax in stock. I use them for accessories while talking about Pentax so they know what i am looking for. Last time I was in they had already sold out of their GR-III s. So I bought a Peak Design strap instead.

[ThorSanchez]

You worry about only one Pentax dealer in Norway. Do not fret. From where I stand, you are lucky.

Consider this. The Houston, Texas metro area is approximately 7 million folks (Norway about 5.5 million), and there is only one camera store in the city and one or two outside the city – none of them selling Pentax!

Oh to have one store selling Pentax.

Don

I live about an hour southeast of Washington DC, which is only about another 40 minutes from Baltimore. The entire metro area stretching from Northern Virginia into Pennsylvania has around 10 million people. There's one camera store an hour and a half from me that stocks some Pentax. After that the next closest is B&H or Adorama in New York over five hours away. Buying online is really the only option. I'm not going to burn half a day to physically hold a Pentax lens I may or may not wish to buy at a price almost certainly higher than I could get online.

---------- Post added 09-19-19 at 03:35 PM ----------

Even big box stores like Best Buy are in trouble, as people come in, check out the products and then order online to get cheaper prices and avoid sales tax (although that last part is probably going away for many states).

It doesn't help that Best Buy tends to display a small handful of beat up Canikons or Sonys that are tethered to the counter with a steel cable, and only have a kit lens attached. Maybe they have some other lenses squirreled away somewhere, but it wasn't obvious when I looked. They stock more kinds of 32" TVs than they do cameras. And I certainly wasn't going to ask the kid from the cell phone desk or the Xbox aisle to come over and talk photography, I'm sure I knew more about the Sony mirrorless than he did, and I don't know anything about Sony mirrorless.