"Pentax had a Bigger Presence"
They have Zero Presence here in my tiny 400,000 person town.
Not sure how you can hold Salespeople accountable for selling gear they do not carry. Heck they do not carry Leica either, so why bother selling it too? Shouldn't the salepeople push brands they have instock, & that they carry instore? My HomeDepot lumber store has "Pentax" on their website, but not a single item instore. I get the Most Clueless expressions at HomeDepot when I bother to ask again where their Pentax cameras are ;^)
Savy Photogear buyers buy online. My first point & shoot digital came from BestBuy in 1999. And thats the last camera I bought from BestBuy. It served my immediate needs while I continued to shoot film thru 2006. It still works fine today. Exactly why do I need to buy a new camera every year?
My local proshops would talk absolute trash about B&H for years & years. I was so gullible & believed this crap for 9 additional years and it wasn't till early 2008 that I placed my first B&H order. Now I buy NO NEW Gear from any local shop, nor will I ever again. But I'm a savy shopper, not a newbie.
Pentax chooses to not be instores by requiring higher annual purchase minimums and offering no rep support whereas Nikon and Canon are just the opposite. Thats why the Big2 take 81% dslr market share and the rest happily fight over the remaining 19%. Instead of Pentax making more customers they've deployed the lens price increases to get more out of the existing user base. Less unit sales for more Coin. Lets face it pentax should be even more affordable as they've outsourced all their production lines out of Japan. I own new gear from both Canon and Nikon and its still"made in japan". Though I did buy a really exceptional & cheapo VR Nikon zoom made in Thailand but its was priced right due to being made at an outsourced factory.
Whether Pentax Logo'd gear is better or worse than Nikon and Canon does not matter. In shelf space ,hands on competetion they loose. Infact they don't even bother showing up to compete.
Originally posted by Rondec I wish that Pentax had a bigger presence in the big box retailers -- it is my feeling that a lot of people entering in to a DSLR go to Best Buy or some place like that to buy their first camera. If there were K2000's strategically placed and the staff was knowledgeable, it could make a big difference. Of course, after years of pushing Canon and Nikon, that's pretty unlikely to change...