[Jean Poitiers]

Hi ... just wondering.

Was Ricoh/Pentax present at CP+ 2023?

DPR makes no mention of them and I asked on the comments section.

One person said that they were not in attendence.

Any info ...?

[c.a.m]

Any info ...?

List of exhibitors: ??????CP+2023 ?????????????????????CP+??????????

- Craig

[bladerunner6]

Trade shows have really declined in importance. I am not surprised by Ricoh and other vendors not attending.

[Mistral75]

Hi ... just wondering.

Was Ricoh/Pentax present at CP+ 2023?

DPR makes no mention of them and I asked on the comments section.

One person said that they were not in attendance.

Any info ...?

They were not.

[lemono]

According to the information I got, all the products of Ricoh Image originally scheduled for this year have been postponed.
This may be one of the reasons for not participating in CP+ this year.

[JPT]

The answer Ricoh Imaging has given here in Japan is that they are focusing on online marketing, their Club House location in Tokyo and doing their own events across Japan all through the year. I personally think that CP+ is a good event and they should do it, but given that it was cancelled three years in a row and they don't seem to have a lot of new products yet, I'm not entirely surprised.

What has struck me this year is that none of the other makers really made a splash at this event. Also, the global press hardly reported on it. It seems that DPR sent one staff member, but he only produced a "live" report (supposedly "live" but published 3 days after the event closed), which consisted of a slide show with 10-15 lines of superficial text for each major exhibitor. If that is all Ricoh would have got for their expense, they might have made the right choice.

It is in fact true that Ricoh has done more of their own events over the past year, Pentax has events at rented event spaces in major cities at weekends (last weekend was in Osaka). There is something almost every week. GR are doing their GR meet 47 series (where they plan to hold events in all 47 prefectures of Japan, Nagasaki was last weekend) and their occasional GR Snap Weekend, which is more like an intensive weekend of online and face-to-face events with photographers.

The general approach seems to be to take their products out to regional locations, rather than to expect people to come to Yokohama to attend CP+.

Reports on Pentax events can be seen here: https://pentaxofficial.com/past_event/
Reports on GR events can be seen here: ARTICLE??? | GR official | ??????????????

[jersey]

It is not like this was source of information for their abroad customers Well, I got used that I am third rate eat leftovers type of customer :P

According to the information I got, all the products of Ricoh Image originally scheduled for this year have been postponed.This may be one of the reasons for not participating in CP+ this year.

Now any reasonable source of information? Cause if it is right it will be "Pentax is doomed" again.

[Kunzite]

Cause if it is right it will be "Pentax is doomed" again.

Or if it's wrong

[jersey]

Or if it's wrong

Pentax is Doomed, what else :P

[Mistral75]

(...) the global press hardly reported on it. (...]

One exception is Phototrend, which published a series of reports and interviews:

CP+ 2023 : tous les articles (in French)

[texandrews]

Big trade shows are in decline almost everywhere with just a few exceptions it seems. One big exception is art fairs which have grown in size, number and importance. It's a good example, I think----these art fairs provide one-stop shopping for curators and collectors (and for the collectors enjoyable travel) and also allow dealers to scope out their competition and see new artists.

But if your trade show can't offer these perks---or there are other outlets to review things---then they have little to justify their expense, which can be considerable. And part of that considerable expense are the rates for space in the halls. If municipalities were smarter, they'd start reducing those rates drastically and/or fund the rentals (in non-municipally owned halls)---considering the fact that many (U.S. at least) cities seem to be whining that their downtowns are in distress from telework.

[Rondec]

I don't think these sorts of trade shows make much sense for anyone at this point. The cost versus the number of new users that develop out of this sort of show skews strongly negative.

The best thing you can say is that if you have a new product to announce you "might" get a little more buzz doing it at a trade show than doing it at a separate press conference. I'm not convinced that that is true and plenty of other brands now release gear as it is ready and don't wait to launch it around some artificial date like CP.

[btnapa]

Big trade shows are in decline almost everywhere with just a few exceptions it seems.

WPPI is taking place in Las Vegas right now and the only camera company exhibiting is Fuji. Nikon and Canon "reserved" two of the biggest spaces but I am not sure if they showed up. I am going there tomorrow and will find out. Pentax has been absent from the show since 2017 or so. Attendance is way down too. In its hay-days, the show attracted some 13-14K attendees, most of them professional photographers and camera gear buyers. I would be surprised if they see 3-4K people show up this year. It is a shame because this was one of the few occasions where you were able to try gear first hand.

Sony is in town and holding court at the only camera shop left in town. They have been there since Sunday, offering free sensor and camera cleaning and firmware updates. They are also holding a bunch of seminars at the shop's dedicated classroom space. I counted six Sony reps. at the shop. They also had a bunch of cameras and lenses available for a test drive at the shop.

I think we are going to see more events like this targeted to specific users. The shop held another event a few months ago which was attended by reps from Tamron, Sigma and almost all the camera manufacturers. Sadly, the shop never carried Pentax gear.

[jersey]

In Poland RI and Pentax are pretty active at photo events with their gear, they are even sponsoring some of photo workshops. There will be portraiture workshops in April and at the end of march exposition of Pentax gear with Polish ambassadors lectures. It sucks that the second one is in middle of week, otherwise I would go. Don't know how it looks like for rest of the world, but surprisingly as much as Pentax Poland online presence sucks, life evens are hold regularly.

[texandrews]

In Poland RI and Pentax are pretty active at photo events with their gear, they are even sponsoring some of photo workshops. There will be portraiture workshops in April and at the end of march exposition of Pentax gear with Polish ambassadors lectures. It sucks that the second one is in middle of week, otherwise I would go. Don't know how it looks like for rest of the world, but surprisingly as much as Pentax Poland online presence sucks, life evens are hold regularly.

I think this points to the possibility that regional Pentax presences have some leeway in what they do. Seems like these Polish guys are proactive, although it makes no sense not to have a reobust online presence here in the 3rd decade of the 21st century