Cameracraft magazine – Taking your practical photography further
Action camera maker GoPro has decided to withdraw from retail shops, we learned today from Park Cameras (UK). They will be restricting themselves to ‘direct’ channels which these days means on-line sales, presumably excluding on-line retailers (no third party vendors of their products).
Well, I asked for it. Ten years ago I suggested on one of Alamy‘s forums that stock photography was nothing like art, photo club or personal photography. You might have pictures which have won contests, pictures good enough for a friend or two to have asked for prints and still have them on the wall. You might have pictures from a decade or two during which you have happened on some wonderful sunsets or visited great places at just the right time.
But you might not have anything which would work in the stock image market for unreleased editorial or released royalty-free, the two big volume markets which exist.
Continue reading »Following the lead of Sony Style – the direct selling mechanism which allows Sony to retail direct to on-line customers – Nikon is to roll out a brand new on-line dealing platform, with a channel for retailers ordering Nikon gear but also a direct shop for consumers.
The company has signed a deal with hybris, a supplier of multichannel vendor software, to install hybris Multichannel Commerce Suite for Nikon Europe (www.europe-nikon.com).
Nikon made the following statements through a press release issued by hybris (www.hybris.com)
Laurent Christen, Head of Direct Sales at Nikon Europe, explained, “This is our first official pan-European-driven direct sales initiative. It’s a strategic tenet of Nikon’s commercial strategy that enables our loyal dealers to purchase Nikon gear online, provides our assortment of imaging products directly to consumers across the Continent, and supports better our nationally based distributors. This is a truly multichannel scheme – not only does it underpin our online B2C and B2B businesses, it also includes sales over the phone and our internal Nikon store which provides merchandising and PoS materials to our multiple European geographies. For a multichannel program on this scale, hybris was the ideal technology partner for us to help facilitate this.”
‘Nikon DealerNet’ provides dealers across Europe with their own personal B2B purchasing solution fully equipped with critical product and personal pricing information in real-time. In addition to the eCommerce solution, ‘Nikon DealerNet’ also offers dealers a new streamlined ordering process and enables them to see and manage orders, track shipments and invoices. The ‘Nikon Store’ is a series of online stores for consumers enabling them to purchase Nikon’s high quality imaging and sport optics equipment directly from the Company. Working in fair alignment with Nikon’s commitment to its business partners, these stores offer a response to consumers seeking direct interaction with the Nikon brand. It provides an additional choice for consumers to order their favorite gear, accessories, software or merchandise products.
Nikon has also confirmed, today, that the company will be at Focus on Imaging and will for the first time concentrate entirely on professional equipment, showcasing the D4 and D800 and new lenses. Focus has previously been seen as a 50/50 consumer and pro show.
Chris Cheeseman writes in Amateur Photographer, reporting on figures released by photo industry analysts GfK, that Sony interchangeable lens camera sales in the UK have overtaken Nikon, moving the company into second position behind Canon.
In the Japanese home market, Canon remains top, Nikon second and Sony is third with over 15% of the market share. No attempt is made by AP to analyse the importance of Sony having a market share which is roughly half that of Nikon and Cano respectively, in that market.
The figures relate to the year 2010 – a calendar year – and it needs to be considered that Sony’s NEX system effectively went on sale slightly before midway during that term, and the SLT system one quarter later. Some Sony models were only introduced after photokina, in the final three months of the year.
In fact, it’s almost impossible to judge Sony’s impact when 2010 is viewed as a year rather than in terms of monthly or quarterly figures. If a graph was to be drawn with four lines on it – Nikon, Canon, Sony and ‘everything else’ – it looks as if the 11% overall decline in Nikon and Canon would contrast with a steep late year climb from Sony.
The Japanese camera and photo product manufacturing association CIPA has issued a press release PDF, containing a table of predicted figures, relating to 2009-2011 projections. Here we reproduce the text and the table (as a JPEG).
Continue reading »
News tonight from Sony UK – great news for UK buyers…
As of the 1st of April 2008 the UK Sony Style business will transfer from a Belgian to a UK based company.* This will not affect your statutory rights or data protection in any way. This change will create a range of benefits for any future purchases that you may make. Continue reading »