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Forum: Sold Items
08-25-2013, 07:49 PM
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I've replaced my lack of will power with a lack of funds.
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Forum: Pentax News and Rumors
06-21-2011, 05:28 PM
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After perusing the top 50 accounts owed by Ritz/Wolf at the time of Bankruptcy Pentax was not listed among them. Pentax would very much like to grow their business with the still plentiful number of photo retailers out there, but it just doesn't make a lot of sense for them to incur the expense of managing an account, shipping, billing, etc. if a store isn't going to make it worth their while. That might sound a bit on the greedy side, but why does a company go into business? It does so to make money. That's it's sole reason for existence. If it does not make enough or any money with a particular channel of sales then it makes no sense to continue with it.
Before one suggests this is another marketing failure on Pentax's part, it just might be that Pentax made a good business decision to put their focus on better money making efforts. It was their decision making that left them off the debtor list in the Ritz/Wolf bankruptcy.
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Forum: Pentax News and Rumors
12-04-2010, 09:17 PM
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Actually 1.2 million subscribed and even 25 times that number unsubscribed is an infinitesimally small number for sure. That would be smaller than 1% of just the US market. Add Canada, Europe, Asia and emerging markets and the engadget audience isn't even a rounding error.
I work in a camera store where we had nine colors of the K-x on display. While I have sold few of the color cameras, the colors are definitely responsible for many of the K-x sales in the store. Whenever someone commented on the camera, whether they were "camera people" or not, I pulled one off the shelf and put it in their hands. If it was night time, I would tell them to go outside and take a photo without a flash and see the result. I would shoot a bit of video of them and show them the result. Consequently Nikon, Canon, Olympus people have purchased the camera just for some unique feature in the camera, and people who were more inclined towards a point and shoot bought it because they were no longer daunted by a DSLR. The colors made the camera so successful that I sold more K-x kits than all the Canon EOS cameras combined since the K-x was released in Sept. of '09.
While my store's audience is as small to engadget as engagdet's audience is to the CE market, I promise you it's a preposterous underestimation of the camera market to say it's well represented by engadgeteers. You want to see what the camera market is like? Go to the Consumer Electronics Show and see the nearly incomprehensible variety of technologies that 100 engadget sites would never have the time and resources to examine. And then think that CES is a puny version of Photokina or any of the many international imaging trade shows. The bottom line is your opinion is perfectly valid. Your opinion representing a concensus opinion is delusional.
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Forum: Pentax News and Rumors
11-02-2010, 09:15 AM
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As someone who is trying to run a business in this industry, I don't begrudge Pentax, B&H nor any other retailer who attended the expo the chance to have a special promotion. It is a limited time, limited area event that takes a serious investment in time, staff and money. There is a lot of effort involved in participating in these events. It's completely reasonable for B&H to have those rebate cards when they committed to both Pentax and to the expo.
Last reason not to cast a negative eye on Pentax or B&H is that they have a dealer agreement just like every other authorized dealer and manufacturer. If some sort of arrangement between the two parties is made, that's not something another dealer can control. After having a day to think about the bitching I did to my sales rep., I realize that I can only control my own agreement with Pentax. If I find this particular rebate issue too unreasonable my recourse is to satisfy the terms of my dealer agreement and then terminate it. While I hate getting extra price pressure on anything, I especially hate it when the pressure is on something that is so hard to get. I actually see it as B&H leaving a lot of dollars on the table. Nevertheless, the Pentax brand, the products, the people and the culture that has grown in my store are so valuable that I would be off my rocker to toss it all over a rebate on such a limited number of pieces.
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Forum: Pentax News and Rumors
07-23-2010, 07:21 PM
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Many are with you on the full frame sentiment. Evidence of this is seen frequently in the forum marketplace. I also see it in the store where I work when a customer who has shot Pentax for years comes in to purchase some accessory for the other branded camera that uses 24x36. When the inevitable conversation comes up that they just wanted the features of the full frame, the conversation always includes some comment illustrating their regret the new camera lacks the color, depth of the image (whatever the hell that means) and the great ergonomics. They also tell me that they miss the enormous number of little differences like the creative filters, all the in-camera processing possibilities and some intangible inspiration they felt using a Pentax. The reality is that to a viable number of people, the Pentax brand actually does mean something.
These things don't necessarily mean anything to me. I shoot Pentax because I have a stable of lenses covering 12 to 500mm in some very nice glass. As a retailer I lack the credentials of an economist or accomplished photographer, so take what I say as you wish. Pentax has very much turned a corner where I will see fewer departures from the brand and more defectors to it. Whatever is causing this, I can't say for sure but I see it at more than at a end user level. I go to trade shows where the camera manufacturers are there representing their wares for dealers to buy. Last weekend I attended one in Cleveland and although Pentax showed no new products, nor even hinted at them, one thing was abundantly clear. They absolutely dominated the show. The prior year the Pentax booth was very sparsely attended even though they had just announced the K-7 and the W80, and Nikon's booth ruled. This year the Nikon booth looked like it was the company that is chronically on the brink. I compare these two brands because I see them at somewhat similar points in their product's life cycles. Yet dealers simply overwhelmed the Pentax staff. Even though both companies had the same number of people running their booths, Pentax needed to have Ned Bunnell and Mark Sherengo taking orders from dealers.
I realize that this doesn't give you that long overdue 24x36. I guess I am suggesting that Pentax will, at the very least, be much stronger this coming year. And that will be good even if all it does is give the bland, market dominating monoliths some ideas that are just a little different.
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