Not to mention that the camera store has gone the way of the Dodo.
None to be had around here; the last (Ritz) folded two weeks ago. The
only local places to buy camera gear (and I use that term loosely) are
Walmart and Best Buy and they both treat the camera departments like
vestigial appendages.
Charlie
On Tue, Oct 9, 2012 at 9:58 AM, Ken Norton <ken@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>> 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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