[Racer X 69]

Ricoh should just put a piece of black tape on the back and under it print "What did you expect to find here?"

And cheers to you too!

[cpk]

I certainly don't mind Ricoh taking credit for saving Pentax by a small inclusion of their name somewhere on the camera. I didn't find the "Ricoh" below the live-view screen of the K-3 excessive, although I don't own one. As I recall, and please correct me if I am wrong, when Hoya took over Pentax, there was a flood of newly-released lenses available. I could be wrong here, but all of a sudden more Pentax lenses seemed to be available in Canada at least. They would have been developed before Hoya bought Pentax, but somehow the purchase enabled the release of the lenses.

[interested_observer]

Sure they did.
Been around since 1889.

... I'll drink to that! It looks like Asahi Optical was the newcomer to the name. By the way, does any know how the beer tastes?

• https://www.asahibeerusa.com/index2.php
• Alcohol Beverages | ASAHI GROUP HOLDINGS

[pathdoc]

Asahi is actually a pretty common name. I can't remember whether it was Keppler or Cecchi, but one of the two indicates that there was another company which briefly called itself a variant on Asahi Optical. The true irony can only be appreciated today, because that other company is (or rather, became) none other than Ricoh!!

[Racer X 69]

... I'll drink to that! It looks like Asahi Optical was the newcomer to the name. By the way, does any know how the beer tastes?

• https://www.asahibeerusa.com/index2.php
• Alcohol Beverages | ASAHI GROUP HOLDINGS

I have enjoyed Asahi beer many times while dining at my favorite sushi bar. The taste is unique, different than American or European beers, but very good. It compliments the fish quite well.

[Ariis]

One of the very rare instances where people in corporate marketing prove they have functioning brains.

Well, I'm not against changing the front brand name to RICOH. In marketing terms, it would makes sense :

• RICOH is mainly a photocopier and printer manufacturer, and now has (already had for decades in fact) a strong camera department, like another famous photocopier, printer and camera manufacturer : Canon. Being compared to Canon because of this similarity is all but a bad thing.
• Pentax is an historical brand, but had some average or bad press for years before the buyout. Professionals and journalist may be thinking "oh, that loosy brand, again.." when seeing new products. Changing from Pentax to Ricoh like Sony did when buying out Minolta is not necessarily a bad move in these circumstances, IMHO
• Ricoh was a rather small (if not very small) camera manufacturer for decades, but they were (and still are) very innovative. We, as a user, would still have some reason to be proud of this brand/products.

Think about the actual situation : we've started to name this brand/camera "ricotax" or other funny names, because they chose to put Ricoh in the website, on the manual, on fair's booth but Pentax only on the camera. This is terrible because old Pentax users and professionals/journalist still think that Pentax is a brand name, while it's only a product name now. Had they dropped Pentax entirely wouldn't have changed anything from a product point of view, only in the minds of the - small - user base (and I'm one of them since 2007), but marketing ads are there to fix that, theoretically.So it would have been a brand new era.

On the other hand, Nikon is a subsidiary of Mitsubishi (IIRC). You don't even know that when buying their camera and going to their fair's booth. Canon, Nikon and Sony shows only one brand, Panasonic has their LUMIX camera range, but they have been identified as a camera line from the beginning, that's why they put Panasonic and LUMIX on their camera. Ricoh is in a rather uncommon situation.

Anyway, whatever they decide to do in a marketing point of view, I thanks very much Ricoh for saving this brand and our assets.

/ a K-1 proud owner

[Rupert]

Name infatuation.....

[Ariis]

PS : Ricoh is finding its way with its now complete product line (well, I hope so), so what is printed on the body doesn't matter as much as it was by the time of the buy out.

[falconeye]

Did anyone complain when it was Asahi Pentax? That was right on the front.

Or with the big AOC logo on the pentaprism housing on the front and on the back (usually on the upper right) "Asahi Opt. Co."

You are all mixing apples and pineapples hoping to get a mango. When Asahi was on the camera, Asahi Optical was the name of the company - the original company that manufactured the camera. Asahi then adopted the brand name Pentax for their SLR line of cameras. ... and as a side note, Asahi bought the name "Pentax" from Zeiss.

+1

Asahi was the original name of Pentax, Pentax just being a brand name. Very similiar to Daimler-Benz and Mercedes.

However, Asahi licensing the name from Zeiss is a bit misleading. At the time, the company in question was Pentacon in communist Germany (now belonging to Schneider Kreuznach). Pentacon was formed from parts of VEB Zeiss Ikon which is the Eastern part of Zeiss after WWII. However, the company now known as Zeiss is its Western part. Pentacon did indeed invent the Pentaprism (in the Contax S camera, picking up on wartime plans) which is why Pentax very likely had a reason to license the name from them. OTOH, I really doubt any capitalist company ever cared about licenses hold by any communist company, or vice versa ...

[G_Money]

Reminds me of this.

[cmar]

There are other parallels. When Hyundai bought what was left of Kia from Ford / Mazda at the end of the Asian meltdown in 1999, they could have just indulged in a bit of judicious asset stripping and dumped the rest. They didn't, they knew Kia had had a long history of manufacturing expertise in Korea and still had a lot to offer. Hyundai made them a merged partner, they got to retain their own management and engineering sections, and were allowed with some restrictions, (they had to pick engines, body platforms etc from the Hyundai corporate parts bin) to continue design and build their own cars separately, and sell their products alongside Hyundai ones. The rest is history with Hyundai-Kia motors one of the most sucessful automotive partnerships in the last 15 or so years, which has really taken on giants like Toyota and GM.
I hope this also happens with Ricoh imaging and Pentax.