I was reading a discussion of Pentax Marketing and service now that so much of the business is done online. Partly because there are so many fewer stores to show products (the Mom and Pop business is all but gone).
With Pentax Marketing what it is, are we a group of older shooters in general? People who learned to shoot for the first time on a K1000 or Spotmatic and have some brand loyalty or a closet full of backward compatible lenses?
Are they missing the boat with the new, younger customer looking for the first camera? Not because the KM (K2000D) isn't a great camera but because it's not hyped much and on fewer shelves. My recent issue of Outdoor Photographer has 2 full page ads for Sigma (sure they have a large lens lineup) and one for Olympus near the front of the mag. Even Tokina has a full page ad and they are a very small company.
Nothing from Pentax, even though the camera is featured in one article and Kerrick James is featured in a seperate multi-page article and discusses Pentax a little. It would have been a perfect month to advertise in that magazine. Kerrick James showing off his stuff and the fact that Pentax makes weathersealed bodies and lenses suited to the Outdoor Photographer audience.
So is the line supported by older shooters that knew Pentax back in the day when millions of Pentax cameras where out taking pictures? (Remember when Pentax was the first company to hit 10 Million SLR's in sales?)
When you vote, I'd be curious to know if you brought a Pentax because you had lenses from older cameras or just chose the brand for other reasons. I had older gear and just evolved to Digital's from film.
Last edited by Peter Zack; 01-29-2009 at 01:11 PM.