sdai said:
This makes perfect sense business wise for Zeiss and their distributors, considering the extreme low volume of RF gears going around, less competition is great ... and apparently, Zeiss has overwhelming confidence that many folks will still buy no matter what.
Really? Distributors are not your competition, they are your partners. Otherwise, Canon and Nikon would have cut off B&H years ago
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Limiting your distributorships only cut off the avenues of purchase for your customers, thus lowering your own competitive edge. Particularly in a field where the volume is very low to begin with, how much savings are you really going to get in limiting distribution avenues versus the increased flow you could have enjoyed with Steven Gandy? Not to mention that Gandy's website is a mecca of information for all things RF, thus, a very well-traveled source of free advertisement. Now Zeiss has lost that too.
With business acumen like this, I'd be hard pressed into buying into their cameras or lenses. How long can this business model last? And what service support will there be in the future? Is Zeiss Ikon well established enough (as Leica is) to have the likes of independent 3rd parties like Krauter and DAG servicing them? Who knows.
I hope Zeiss Ikon survives. More real competition in the M-mount analog and digital arena is always good.
Maybe Zeiss will straighten this out. But to "strongly" suggest to Gandy that he should stop in the interim, seems like bad business sense and practice. You lose revenue stream, ad space, and customer good will. I hope the pennies are worth it. But then again, this is the same company that naively used the phrase "Final Solution" in their most recent ad campaign
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So I'm not holding out much hope.
