Ken Norton wrote:
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The biggest weakness in Olympus sales and marketing is Olympus America.
This is the corporate entity that is woefully out of touch with reality.
Since the mid-80's they completely abandoned the OM line, even though
Olympus Japan continued to develop new products. I had worked photo
retail
for several years and was appalled at their total lack of interest in
their
own products. It was as though they conceded the entire market to
Canon.
They were unresponsive and could care less about supporting the dealers.
They were enamored with the department stores and pushed the P&S line
there
and ignored the camera stores that sold "systems."
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Ken, not only do I agree with you 100% about Olympus America, I have
heard that sentiment from a very large ex-Southern California photo
dealer and career ex-photo sales manager of some very large operations.
His comments were that Olympus America got very greedy around either the
late 1980's and early 1990's or so. They made it impossible for dealers
to compete and forced them into the gray market for inventories. That
was why for many years even the best USA dealer price was higher than
the international street price. This of course lead to many large
dealers losing interest for the OM line. Not only was the OM line going
way up in price, Nikon and Canon were killing them with innovation and
keeping the prices to the dealer reasonable. To make matters worse
Olympus America started a major effort to rid the market place of gray
merchandise (probably buying up as much as they could). Since Olympus
America generated the lion's share of Olympus's sales it seemed like
Olympus Japan could not feel comfortable competing in the high end (pro)
SLR market so they just went into this current holding pattern which has
only hurt the company's efforts if they are ever to regain future
support from the pro user.
I'm sure Olympus could introduce a new OM5 if they wanted to, but with
Olympus America's greedy attitude it would not be priced competitively.
Right now, any pro can buy a brand new USA warranty Nikon N90s for
around $700.00 or less. This is a modern state of the art body that will
accept tons of lenses and accessories of high quality. Service and
support from Nikon are impeccable. No, these are not "classics" with
the look and feel of the OM pro series. However, they are modern tools
necessary in toady's world of pro 35mm photography. They get the job
done with the least amount of fuss for a reasonable price. I'm sure
those who use Canon professionally have the same comments about that
product.
The only thing I can say is this. OM Zuiko lenses have never been
beaten by any manufacturer in my opinion. It is just a shame to abandon
these fine optics and other system components for a newer system
(especially if they were purchased in the 1980's before the large price
increases). It would be great to see Olympus come ot with a new modern
OM5 body built in the OM tradition with the idea of competing feature to
feature to Nikon/Canon. Olympus is a big enough company to do this in a
heartbeat. However, I think you hit the nail squarely on the head ....
the problem herein lies with Olympus America.
Phillip Franklin
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