Friday, April 6, 2012

Everybody is upset in the US about Pentax lenses price increase. I am too.


 Hi Photographer friends,

Yes. we're all upset about the Pentax lenses price increase. I should have bought more lenses while they were priced within my budget. However, I believe that Pentax is not making the extra profit. If you ever noticed, in the B&H pages of advertisement in most magazines, the Pentax lens prices were never published. Pentax sell to the retailers, but the retailers always sold the lenses the prices they wanted to. Obviously, the big store were able to sell the lenses at a discounted price compared to other smaller stores.

This is probably one of the main reasons you hardly see any Pentax equipment in your local camera store. If they would carry the Pentax line, most of us would try the equipment in the local store, but purchase the equipment online because the discounted prices. With the new policy, I believe everyone will have to sell at the manufacturer's suggested retail price. That way, even your local small camera store can carry the Pentax line and make sales and profits.

Try and buy an iPad or any Apple equipment at any store country wide. They all sell the at same prices. I believe that Pentax is adopting the same policy. If the same focal length and quality lens is more expensive from Pentax, compared to Canon or Nikon, the marked will fix that problem quickly. I admit that Pentax is no Apple, but time will tell.

Thanks for reading,

Yvon Bourque

1 comment:

BigSquareHead said...

Yvon - you are exactly correct. I have a small B&M store near me that DOES sell Pentax bodies (amazing to find) that I try to support whenever possible.

According to the owner he can't compete with the online pricing for bodies & lenses. His margins on the K-r were less than $15 per body (around 3-4%) which didn't justify him carrying the entire line.


This price increase hurts the wallets of US buyer but more closely aligns to what's going on in Europe, Australia, & NZ.


Pentax will never get into any major retailer if they can't get their products priced consistently across all channels. I'm not saying I like it but I think it's a needed step to try to build retail credibility.