Nothing has happened. The company just has a change of CEO and some change in sales strategy, mainly in Japan. Note that it does cost a lot to incentives stores to promote Pentax in Japan, and they probably think the balance has shifted towards just handling sales themselves and cutting out the middle-man.
Note that Akahane-san is also a returning leader, and in his former tenure he oversaw the introduction of the K-1 and additional batch of DFA lenses - staples of the professionals who use Pentax.
If the news is that brick and mortar stores are not so important, well that's not news is it? It's just the reality that Ricoh is facing up to with a plan. Those stores never handled servicing and support for Pentax properly anyway. Half the time they pushed customers away from Pentax and to the big brands.
I think it's wrong to assume too much at this stage. And also, if this was really a sign of Ricoh struggling, they wouldn't be making announcements months in advance and linking to the announcement on their Twitter account. There's no sense in teasing bad news. So obviously they think it is a positive thing for customers to look forward to.
---------- Post added 01-21-22 at 11:23 AM ----------
Originally posted by cdd29 I question if this legit. Look at the effective date, April Fool's Day.
April 1 is a normal date to start things in Japan. It's probably the most common date to start new business initiatives.