You actually have Pentax equipment in your store? I have to go over an hour away to find the closest place I can play with Pentax. How does it sell?

>>2705081
>>2705129
I do, I work in the lab. We have some Pentax stuff including the MF digital.

>>2705129
It sells very, very poorly. But we love pentax and we have a huge Pentax/Ricoh shelf that no one ever gives a shit about. I just have to walk past the 645Z all day and everyone and a while a gear enthusiast wants to touch it and talk about it, but never actually buy it.

>>2705081
I worked at a Best Buy with a camera experience shop. They have the full Canon, Nikon, and Sony lineup in the store (5DS, D810, A7RM2), and a ton of lenses to play around with. Even got the Fuji X-T1 and some of the Oly OMD. We get really damn good deals on Sony equipment too. Canon and Nikon aren't as nice to sales people. It's actually the best camera shop around, since next largest one only sells Canikon.

>>2705159
well it's fucking expensive, you can't really blame them
The 645d though, that's under $3000 now. I'm sorely tempted to drain my bank account for one.

I used to work backroom security in a Target, they always called me out to try and sell the cameras cause lol head office not handing out any info for their electronics.
It was fun for a while until big red shut down.

>>2705081
Do you get an employee discount, and at what percentage?

>>2705216
i came to this thread to ask this question and this question only

it would be the only reason i would want to work in a store

target and walmart are 10% discounts for employees.

I wish my damn town actually had a camera store. Sure we have all those electronic stores where they might sell some entry level canikons and kit lenses, but no real camera store.

>>2705129
Consider yourself lucky, I have to drive over 2 and a half hours and even then the Pentax gear is extremely limited.

>>2705243
I get 12% off cameras and 25% off anything else (cases, memory cards, tripods etc). I also get free guarantees on everything for as long as I work there that cover accidental damage and literally everything besides theft. It's pretty based.

Also for anyone wondering, our biggest sellers are Panasonic compacts and entry level canikon and m4/3 stuff. We don't even keep anything over £1000 on display. Also it really makes you realise how many customers just get the kit lens, for every 20 SLRs or mirrorless we sell we only sell 1 lens (and it's normally a cheap telephoto or nifty 50)

>>2705272
Oh also we do sell pentax and I try to big them up but it's really difficult when people come in set in their mind about wanting either Canon or Nikon. Also "which brand is better" is probably the question I hear most throughout my day

>>2705273
Overall which brand buyers ask the most stupid questions? Not newbie questions but genuinely stupid ones.
Also what demographic the Canon/Nikon/Pentax buyers are from? What kind of uses are they buying cameras/lenses for?

So many Pentax fags around these parts

Yet
>It sells very, very poorly.

>>2705293
>So many Pentax fags around these parts
Yes, because they make good cameras for an equally as good price.

>Yet it sells very, very poorly.
No fucking shit, give Pentax the same level marketing as Canikon and then see how much the sales increase.

>>2705216
>>2705243
For Sony, Canikon, and Sigma its around 45 -50%.
For accessory and gear brands its sometimes more.

>>2705272
Why wouldn't you're store carry more expensive stuff?

>>2705282
Canon, but its to be expected, they sell a shit load of camera more of the buyers are bound to be stupid just by matter of statistics.
You would believe the stupid shit people have said. Yesterday a guy couldn't figure out why he count get water to do that smooth long exposure look. We looked at his shots and it turns out he was at a small lake with no lake or rivers. We literally had to tell him that water has to be moving to get that look. He had a 5D3 and Sigma Art glass. We laughed our asses off when he left.

Its not so much that different brands have different demos, but different categories of cameras do. Whats most interesting is the antecedent to the statistical majorities. Most the of time when people come in and buy a compact they a boomers looking to photo grandkids, but occasionally its a pro looking for a second or third body.

We do a ton of M4/3 and mirrorless business these days, the trend certainly lagged getting to our town, but its here now.

>>2705196
Not just the 645, all pentax sells poorly for this reason: >>2705295.

>>2705189
>Canon/Nikon not as nice to sales people
Thats for sure, Oly and Sony offer commission on some models. Canikon have never given commission unless its a huge black friday blowout.

Also of note: most camera stores make nothing at all on camera sales. If you pay by card buying an A7II give the camera store itself less than a 7% margin. Filters, bags, used inventory, and the like are where all the money is made. Plus the development and video transfer labs, that stuff is 80% easy.

Can't contribute but have a question:

Is photo retail dying or growing? I get the impression it just went through a huge slump, but blogging and internet journalism and shit it's coming back?

>>2705316
I'll cut you a deal, you get me the Sigma 18-35mm f1.8 for half price and I'll give you $500 in return. You make an easy $100 and we're both happy.

>>2705329
In some places it is, some it isn't. Photo printing and development is holding pretty level, and we do a shit load of that, but we expect a downturn in the next 4-5 years.

As for the actual retail part, it did slow down in the 00s but in some cases its picking back up. The manufacturers set the price, so its the same for us as it is for Amazon and B&H, and people are starting to figure that out, and coming in more.

A lot of people still feel like they are getting a better deal online when its literally the exact same price, and if it isn't then we just missed a sale announcement and have to go check our mail from the manufacturer's distribution listings, and we change the price to what amazon has it at.

Only college kids and enthusiasts really pay attention to the bloggers. So gear nuts and enthusiasts come in to buy what ever the new hype item is, and college kids come in and just buy nifty fifties and mirrorless bodies.

>>2705316
>>2705324
>>2705349
Sorry for typos and grammar
>mobile posting

>>2705349
Sound assessment, cheers

>>2705081
I did for about 10 years ... why?

I worked at a hunts for a bit

I'm curious, for those that work in a place that sell Fujifilm and Samsung, how do those do?

I know samsung's just kacked it, but how does Fuji, the smallest apsc player, do?

Is it really only instax shit that sells?

>>2705386
We do Fujis as well. Believe it or not the best selling Fujis are the Finepix compacts. Fuji correctly understands what entry to mid level compact buyers want, speed. I sell F850s all the time, they have ok-ish glass, ok-ish sensors, ok-ish features and bodies, but really fast processors. Customers want low shutter lag and high non speed priority frame rates above most other things at that level.

As for the X cameras, we sell them only occasionally, and almost exclusively to people who know what they are before they walk in. Some times a would be Oly buyer can be persuaded into a fuji but not often.

We do however sell tons of instax film packs.

>>2705282
I can't think of any really stupid questions off the top of my head but the really dumb shits tend to buy Canon bridges no matter how often I tell them not to because "Canon make cameras, Sony and Panasonic make tvs", and because "bridges look like pro cameras". Morons. I get a lot of people ask why some newer cameras have fewer megapixels and then ignore me, because we don't advertise dynamic range, iso performance and colour depth since no one (including the manager) knows what it means and people still think more megapixels=better pictures.

Even though I prefer Nikon myself I have to concede that nikon users are often arseholes and tend to hunt for staff, ask them which they use until they find a Canon user and go on about how they should have bought nikon. It's infuriating. Canon users never come back, which leads me to believe they use the camera entirely for black and white bathroom mirror selfies.

>>2705316
We get most of our sales from our website and if we sell them there we get more money than in store since we don't get paid commission for it, so it's just a cheeky way of denying us commission, though officially it's because of the risk of theft

Re mirrorless, we probably sell more Olympus and Panasonic than anything else, we're a student area and people want something easy to use and I get so annoyed when people shoot in automatic that I tell them to buy mirrorless instead.

>>2705329
I think part of it is cameras being more accessible, entry level SLRs and CSCs are only £300, about the same as a decent compact. So we get a lot of one off purchases, and very little at the extreme high end.

For anyone still interested my fave customers are the film lot, since they're always in and have no social life so are always down for a chat. There's one guy who I always see on my way to work, and he's always taking a pic of the same flower in the botanical gardens. He comes in every week to buy a new roll of film saying he'll get it right one day.

>>2705324
Yeah, Canikon's accommodation prices for bodies and lenses are still higher than grey market equivalents. Just look at all the shit Sony gives. That's a 30-40% off the employee price, which means Sony is making nothing on the sale.
https://associaterewardportal.com/Learn2Earn/EligibleModels.aspx

>>2705386
Fuji's P&S barely sell at our store. X-T1 and X-T10 have been selling decently for the amount of space they have, but nowhere near the likes of a A6000 or even the M4/3 (there's huge Oly shill at our store though). We never even got the NX1 in our store, but did have people placing online/pickup orders in our store for whatever reason (just do that at home fucking tards).

>>2705386
Samsung have always done terribly, we still have a load of NX300s which we're flogging off crazy cheap but no one wants them. We also got delivered a metric fuck ton of NX Mini's when that came out, and some guy from Samsung came round to give us training on how to sell them, but we've still never sold one. We get a lot of Chinese girls look at it, flip the screen up for a selfie, ask how to zoom, and then immediately put it back down again when I tell them it's a fixed lens. Their compacts used to do alright since they have wifi and autoshare, which people seem to like. Never sold a Galaxy camera though since they take 5 minutes to switch on.

Fuji do really well on the instax stuff - the paper from that could keep us in business for another 10 years, seriously. They do alright in the X series but the lenses are too expensive for most of our walk in customers and we tend to sell more of those online. As I say, most people tend to go mft for the cheap lenses.

>>2705488
>Sony is making nothing on the sale.
they have to break in somehow

>>2705488
Sony offer us free trial cameras and stuff - they basically hope we love it and then rave about it to customers. It's a good strategy

I work in a dinosaur of a Walgreens in a wet creative lab. Develope 35mm and take online orders throughout the day for calendars and Postcards and shit: Pretty comfy desu.

>>2705821
What's the weirdest shit you've seen someone take a pitcher of?

>>2705852
Probably just when guys bring in their wife's lingerie shots. Why you'd want that in print form is beyond me. I've never had someone bring really bizarre stuff but personally I'll put through anything. Other employees are more prudish and will complain about that kind of thing. Then again, I did make myself a Pepe wood block so maybe the answer you're looking for is me.

>>2705860
>I did make myself a Pepe wood block
kek
post pics plz

>>2705793
What's the nicest thing they've given you?

>>2705886
seconded

>>2706243
Erm I got an RX10 II last week, still prefer the FZ1000 though.

>>2705159
It sells like hotcakes compared to other medium-format systems however.

>>2705295
Part of it is that Pentax doesn't have very strong presence in the USA, for the time being, if your 645Z breaks you'll have to ship it off to Japan for repairs.

Does your store carry the 28-45mm f/4.5 monster?

>>2706355
I'm a Sony fanboy but I agree there. RX10II is only better for the much better EVF and slow motion. Hope Panny releases the FZ2000 sometime soon.

>>2705464
jokes on you, most rabal user use live view to shoot anyway. might as well get a mirrorless.

>>2706982
I know. I tell them to. Honestly so much of the camera industry is entirely superficial. I had one girl buy a 700D because Taylor Swift has a Canon. She tried to bring it back a week later and I told her I could only swap it for another camera and made her buy an OMD

>>2706998
Personally I think cameras are seen as a 'status' symbol, people think big camera = expensive. Or is that just my skewed perspective?

>>2708409
to the non-photographer, fuck yeah dude. Big lens, hotshoe flash, large camera, lens hood, red line lens. Have all those and everyone thinks you're some kind of fucking pro

I do.

>>2708518
This is another of those bits of stupid that people keep repeating. Any slr looks pro to those who don't know. Long lenses look like perv though.

>>2705821
how'd you get the job?

do they let you make personal prints in their lab (when not working obviously)?

>>2705081

I did for two and a half years in a large electrical retail store in UK. It was awful.

Basically just sold P+S cameras to people and had to try con them into buying overpriced accessories to make up for the low margin cameras.

Thankfully I left that job, got a degree and haven't had to take a retail job since. If you are currently working in retail and aren't seriously contemplating suicide on a daily basis there's something wrong with you.

>>2708607
>got a degree and haven't had to take a retail job since
tell us more

what degree allows you a job with lots of free time for photo

>>2708874
Gender studies faculty job

>>2708874
Petroleum engineering. After your first couple of years, you work 30 on 30 off (half the year).