Originally posted by Rondec Ricoh has pretty much given up on the United States as a market. They are content to sell whatever they can through a number of online sellers like Amazon, B and H, and Adorama, but maybe because they don't understand the US market, they aren't willing to invest much otherwise.
Honestly, that really doesn't sound any different to the UK. We have a few major Pentax dealers - SRS, Wex etc. - and a few smaller dealers who carry a reduced number of items, or will get stock in to order. And then we have Amazon UK. Similar to Precision in the USA, there's a third party service official service operation, Johnsons Photopia Ltd., and Ricoh's European hub is in France.
I don't feel like Ricoh has given up on the UK... it's been this way since I switched to Pentax back in 2010. But I'd agree that Ricoh seems happy to sell what it sells here, and the way that it does so. It could achieve so much more with good marketing, but maybe that's just not the plan. I'm OK with that...