E-p1 "Just fashion accessory" (rant)

Probably has more to do with what the store is trying to move most aggressively and the incentives they give their sales people to sell that stuff. I sold cameras retail for a couple of months in a past life and there was no money in Canon or Nikon - that stuff sold itself so there was no margin in it and NOTHING extra for the sales people. We were pushing Ricoh and Minolta real aggressively, and Olympus and Pentax sort of aggressively, at that time, IIRC (this was 25 years ago, almost exactly). For the high end stuff, I couldn't try to move someone away from Canon or Nikon with a straight face - it was that much better than anything else. But for most of the consumer line stuff we sold, the stuff we were pushing was every bit as good so I had no qualms about trying to push it and make some extra money in the process. Sell a mid-range Ricoh and get a $30 spiff, sell a high end Nikon and get bupkis. That's just the way it was.

So maybe nobody's pushing Olympus right now, or at least the more or less discontinued EP1. Or they might be pushing them pretty hard and be accommodating as hell if they have 'em in stock, but if they're out and not getting any more, I'm not shocked that he'd do anything he could to try to steer you elsewhere, even to the point of risking losing your business.

The camera business is not that different than any other business. Lots of small decisions all geared around making a buck right now.

-Ray

 

I eluded to this in another thread. It seems locally, that Ritz and Best Buy are steering customers away from the cameras.

I worked in sales a for a while, and the way to sell equipment and have long lasting relationships with the customers is to qualify the customer. Sure, the mFT does have limitations, but it does have many advantages, too.

 

I agree, and you tended to do this with the hard core folks, but they usually had a good idea of what they wanted anyway. If someone wanted some high end gear, they usually had one or two options in mind already, I'd pull 'em out and talk about the relative differences, but I never tried to steer those folks, I just tried to help 'em. And sell 'em what they wanted.

A lot of folks just wanted a camera to take pictures of their kids, had heard Canon and Nikon was the best, but had no idea what they were looking for or at and I could both satisfy their wants and needs and my own wallet by selling them a competing brand without any pangs of conscience. I was very honest with 'em and I'd say 'Canon and Nikon earned their reputation at the professional level and their high end gear is worth every penny, but for the kind of camera you're looking for, they're overpriced (because of their well earned names) and no better than a Ricoh or Minolta or Pentax or Olympus)'. And I wasn't BSing them either.

That was true, at least of the gear in those days. Remember, autofocus was BRAND spanking new and only on one model of Minolta that no pro was interested in (yet), aperture priority was only available on a few models. Unless you were talking about high end cameras that took high end glass and could shoot at 1/2000, there wasn't a whole lot of difference in features or price. There were differences in reliability, but we never had much incentive to sell stuff we knew came back a lot and I wouldn't do it anyway.

So I was qualifying the customer and selling them the appropriate camera. Just not always the brand they had in mind when they walked in to the store.

But hey, I literally did that for about two months between graduating from college and getting my first full-time permanent job in my profession, so my expertise in the camera business is VERY thin. I have no idea what its like in the shops today. I don't think there are many shops like that one around anymore anyway with internet sales being what they are. We were a big shop with three or four stores (local chain I guess) with 5-6 guys working the counter in each of them. So not a little one man shop and not even a Ritz type shop. Can you find places like that today? I haven't seen 'em...

-Ray

 

Ray,

I agree, but I'm talking sales in general. I never sold cameras. I worked at Radio Shack for 8 months and then I worked in the retail and contractor paint business for 6 years. It doesn't matter what you are selling, qualify the customer, even if the customer doesn't know what they want, is important.

I think the bottom line here is that most shops rely on kids who know little about camera equipment and know that if they sell a Canon or Nikon, 90 percent of the customers will be happy enough. Yet Oly, Pentax, and Sony make affordable SLR's too.

To answer your last question, its not just Camera equipment, its anything. The little guy is losing. Its really a sad state of affairs, but it is hard to compete with the big box stores or online retailers.