When I bought my first OM-1, Olympus products were imported by a company
called Ponder and Best, which also was the U.S. agent for Vivitar - back
when Vivitar was also highly regarded.
When did Olympus leave Ponder and Best for their own U.S. agent ? Was the
change initiated by Olympus, or was Ponder and Best in financial
difficulties ?
/Dave
----------
From: PCA Cala[SMTP:PCACala@xxxxxxx]
Sent: Wednesday, March 25, 1998 12:51 AM
To: olympus@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: [OM] Olympus in Tokyo
Hi Tomoko and others:
<< If Olympus America can do a better job of recapturing some
segment of the
photography market for the OM system, we would all feel more
comfortable about
the future of our cameras. >>
It is no wonder that the market for new manual focus camera
equipment has all
but dried up in North America. First and IMHO foremost, most
Americans buyers
favor the latest and (according to successful marketing) "greatest."
John
P.'s commentary on the Darlington is a great case in point
illustrating the
herd principle of folks following what appears to be the choices of
the
masses. Microsoft's product dominance with MS Office suite
applications would
be a parallel comparison in computing. Only the rebels, die hards,
price
conscious, uninformed, and other hard to market types buck the trend
and use
competing products and fight (or ignore) the "fear, uncertainty and
doubt"
that Microsoft's marketing machine instills upon us. I offer that
Canon and
Nikon, and the banner carrying photography magazines, have sold many
on
systems that may not really suit their needs and temperments.
(Example, who
needs a motor driven 35mm camera for landscapes!). Furthermore,
their
marketing dominance have led us to question the shelf life of
competing
products.
Second reason for the dying product lines: there is a strong used
equipment
market, esp. with road shows. If you want bargains without much
shopping
effort, this is the place to go! Low demand for new = higher unit
prices. So
why buy new?
Third, selling and buying over the Internet has seen explosive
growth. Do we
not see equipment getting bought right here just minutes after
appearing in
our e-mail boxes? Net result is that the manual equipment is easy
to get,
albeit the bargains may slip through our fingers. So why buy new?
Faced with those three realities, how can those camera companies,
who flooded
the No. Amer. markets with manual focus products in the 1970s
through the
lates 1980s, see their product lines survive? They can't! There is
SO much
used manual equipment available in certain parts of the world that
is a simple
matter of supply and demand. The Internet-based vendors now seem to
be
contributing to more equally distributing the supply worldwide. The
high
prices we Americans often see in many Shutterbug advertisers and on
their WWW
sites are much more attractive to foreign buyers. And the stuff is
flowing in
that direction. When used equipment stocks start getting low there
might be a
chance for a new initiative. But there has to be something in the
product
that commands our attention. WE know what it is in the OLY OM
lineup, but
other folks may just have too much fear, uncertainty, and doubt.
Clearly, OLY
America's marketing hasn't done much to fight that, even with some
stellar
products.
I've also heard that OLY America blew it by requiring a rather large
minimum
equipment inventory to be an OM dealer. That greatly decreased the
sources
for new equipment, prices increased and demand dropped. But that is
a
different story which has perhaps been discussed here before.
Gary Reese
Las Vegas, NV
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