When looking at new releases, be it the E-M5 from Olympus or Canon 5D3 or whatever, it seems like no one really knows when they will be in stock until they are pulled off the truck at destination.

Aren't the various camera manufacturers at least willing or able to tell a big retailer like B&H what is being loaded on to a ship for B&H? I would think you'd know a few weeks out that you will be receiving X number of black E-M5 kits with 12-50 lens and X number of Panasonic 20/1.7 lenses, etc.

Maybe I'm missing something, but it seems like everyone is in the dark along the supply chain.

Thanks to B&H for participating here and for the anticipated lesson in logistics!

In http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/read.asp?forum=1021&message=41140764 a former Nikon USA sale rep has confirmed that Nikon USA does not tell their employees or authorized retailers when shipments are due nor the quantity to be expected. Our experience bears this out. The same problem cropped up during the initial release of the Asus Transformer Prime; Canon USA's difficulty with the EOS 5D Mark III has been similar.

My current philosophy is we know when they're coming when the truck reaches our loading dock and we know how many when we've offloaded it.

I suppose the next question is why do vendors and suppliers treat retailers this way? It is a mystery to me too.

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Henry Posner
B&H Photo-Video

Wow. That runs so contrary to all of my experience in the business world (which is totally unrelated to cameras/consumer electronics). It puts retailers like B&H, who are very committed to customer service, in a very precarious position.

Thank you for sharing that Henry. It is good to understand how this process works (or doesn't).