> Perhaps, but less than $14 of it (I'm assuming 18% VAT). I don't know
> how guilty Olympus is in this case. Sounds to me like the villain is
> Luton Camera.
Luton Camera is partly guilty. However, what the situation is that the
distributor doesn't want piecemeal orders. The attitude is that if you
are a dealer, then you need to take this seriously and stock stuff.
Unfortunately, what happens is that they can't get anything from
Olympus until they have an order large enough to meet the threshold.
So, for them to order that lens hood, they have to end up stocking a
whole bunch of stuff that they aren't going to be able to sell.
The way many industries (including photography) work is that the
manufacturer works with distributors. The distributor stocks the large
quantities of gear and then sells the individual items to the stores.
This, however, does drive up the cost to the customer as there is
another middle-man involved who gets his cut. In the USA, there used
to be several distribution networks that carried the non-mainline
brands for this purpose, but companies like Olympus stepped in and
destroyed those networks because of gray market products. The stores
also moved away from buying from the distributors because of price
competitiveness. The end result is that almost ALL Olympus products
sold in the USA are sold exclusively through B&H.
Doesn't this remind anybody of when British cars were imported into
the USA through some obscure guy with a garage down in Florida?
AG
--
Ken Norton
ken@xxxxxxxxxxx
http://www.zone-10.com
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