Originally posted by MikeH Where do you live, lesmore? I'm in Edmonton myself.
The big box stores are not places to buy photographic equipment. Specialty stores have educated salespeople (in my experience with McBain and Vistek). A good consumer will know this and would buy from a photography store. The masses will probably buy a Rebel anyhow... I'm betting that most Pentax users are more savvy than those from the Rebel/D40X camp.
OTOH Pentax should push to have their cameras for sale in places like Best Buy also, to expand their horizons.
I'm convinced that Pentax doesn't see the big box stores as an attractive outlet, for at least two reasons:
1. It takes a tremendous amount of working capital to build up an inventory to stock the large big box chains, working capital that Pentax, as a smaller player, historically didn't have available. Also, Pentax doesn't have the manufacturing volume capability that the larger corporations have.
2. Big boxes are notorious for squeezing supplier prices to the last tenth of a percent, leaving virtually no prospect for profit from the sales. That situation will not set well with Hoya, which has an emphasis on high sales margins.
I am sure there are other reasons as well. Therefore I doubt that we will ever see Pentax DSLR's at Best Buy, etc.