So what’s the verdict on the PMA@CES mash-up? Desert bloom or CPR Las Vegas?
Depends on the folks you talk to and what their perspective happens to be. CES was happy: the 153,000 attendees set a record for the show. PMA reports satisfaction: Gary Pageau in the group’s editorial and marketing research units reports satisfying attendance at education sessions, social functions and trade exhibits. But the four dealers I talked with at our virtual roundtable expressed a decidedly mixed bag of impressions, opinions and conclusions, from which you might be able to discern the shape of shows . . . or even an industry . . . to come.
Pull up a virtual chair. You won’t need 3D glasses.
Chris Lydle
Chris’ Camera Center South, Aiken, South Carolina
I went because we hadn’t had a trade show in a couple of years and I feel it’s important to stay in touch to know what’s going on. I spent almost all my time at the Venetian, where PMA was, and to me it was very disturbing that the major camera manufacturers were over at the other part in the Las Vegas Convention Center. There was lots of glitz and glamour at that show, but the stuff I really had to get done was more at the PMA part.
And what you had to get done was with suppliers other than the major camera companies?
Well, they are smaller companies who are less oriented toward selling through the consumer electronics channel, and they give us more of a chance to make a profit. On the other side, I really needed to talk to Fujifilm. But as far as Nikon and Canon, why should I spend time at a show to see stuff we can sell at a loss every day? The big two, we’ve got to have them, but we feel they don’t have any loyalty to the people who helped make them strong. Besides, everything that’s announced at a trade show from the big guys we’ll find out about online or from our customers. And I actually have a Nikon salesperson who is quite helpful and a Canon phone and Internet sales guy who is pretty good.
Who were you interested in seeing on the PMA side?
Dot Line, OmegaBrandess, AAA Imaging and others who are more photo-oriented. I was interested in looking at a lot of small flashes and lighting equipment, and they were there. I also had a lot of conferences to attend, and there were a lot of good educational programs, though many of the educational sessions and meetings were at a third location, Bally’s, so there was a lot of running around.
Do you think the strength of PMA’s educational sessions indicates the organization’s future?
PMA has got to be educational. The role of PMA has greatly changed from primarily a trade show organization; now it’s much more about education, marketing tips and networking.
And that will draw you back next year?
Oh, sure, but I’m concerned that next year it’s going to be the same physical division, and I wish it were possible to have everything in one location. I would have liked to spend more time wandering around the CES part of the show, but it’s the PMA side, and the PMA people, that I needed to see; those are people in my business. I had great get-togethers, great chances to interact with people who had the same concerns I have, and I saw a lot of that in the [educational] sessions. It seemed that the physical area allocated to PMA was small, but the people who were there on the PMA side seemed to be pretty serious about doing business.
Paul Rentz
Oregon Camera, Corvallis, Oregon
I was there as a consultant for the Independent Photo Imagers (IPI). I’m a consultant to them on video services, and our effort has been directed to helping our members in the future.
In what specific areas?
In gathering information for the members to be able to use in helping their customers with the video they’re shooting with little point and shoots. If they’re shooting with a DSLR or a video camera, they probably have an idea what they’re doing, but if they’re shooting with a point-and-shoot camera, a lot of them have no idea. So I was going vendor to vendor, asking, “Okay, what do you expect consumers to be doing with this stuff?”
So, then, in your role as an investigator and observer, what was your feeling about the success of the CES-PMA joint venture? Was the town small enough for both of them?
It was a little difficult getting back and forth between the two. PMA used to be Canon, Nikon and all the rest under one roof; now having two roofs to go to was not the easiest thing. That was my biggest impression—the frustration in that aspect. Dealers who are camera dealers were facing that more than dealers who are printers, although they might want to see the cameras, too. And it seemed like a fairly small area for the PMA, and the CES staffers were not as knowledgeable about PMA as I thought they should be.
You mean staffers giving directions, information . . . ?
Yes, the people CES hired as “Ask Me” people. If you asked them about PMA—where things were and when things were taking place— they kind of had a blank look. There were a lot of us thinking that the Venetian was just PMA, and it wasn’t, and if we’d looked at out maps and done our homework better, we’d have realized that the Venetian was part PMA, not all PMA. But that was a first-year thing that’ll get straightened out.
And in the area of video outlook for IPI, what did you find?
Well, it’s kind of in development stage so I can’t get into much detail, but I can tell you that IPI is looking for ways to help consumers deal with their HD video, which looks to be a nebulous area for a lot of consumers. Sometimes they’re hitting that video button without even knowing it.
What exactly is IPI’s interest?
Providing a service. For years we’ve been the ones who customers bring videotapes to for transfer to DVD, and now they have memory cards . . .
From which to transfer video to DVDs so they can watch their movies on their TVs if their TV doesn’t take a memory card?
Exactly.
And you figure the better their videos are, the more likely they are to transfer them? You want to be able to teach them, encourage them?
There are a lot of file formats, and a lot of confusion about what HD is. You’ve got a lot of customers who if you give them their still images on a DVD, they think they’re going to be watching a movie.
You need to bring them into the present—and the future.
Here’s the thing that’s been going on for years: we transfer all these tapes from years ago, and on the tapes are all these kids who are now graduating, getting married, having their own kids, and they’d like a little video to show at the wedding or the birthday or anniversary—with them as kids, their first birthday and so on—and they have all this physical stuff, the tapes. But 20 years from now are they going to have physical stuff? And what will it be? Are their parents going to hand them memory cards?
And how would they play them?
Right.
So your message to them is, get it onto DVD?
Well, they’d better get it to some format we’re using today, and some format that’s moving forward. DVD at some point will get converted to something else, but who knows what that is. But first we’ve got to figure out what the customer wants; they’re not really sure. They’re uploading some clips to YouTube, but are they going to tell their kids, “Go to my YouTube account that I haven’t used in 10 years and find those clips”?
So you talked about this to the major players at the show—and what did they say?
This is really funny, because every year I purposely go to the people that are standing in front of the little point-and-shoot cameras, every one of which shoots HD video, and I ask them what they expect their customers to be doing with the videos. And they kind of give me a blank look. I say, “Think about it: you shot video and you gave your kids a DVD. What’s going to happen in the future?” And they don’t know.
Maybe it’s all going to the cloud, and IPI could provide cloud storage for all these videos from point-and-shoot cameras.
I’ve thought of that. And some manufacturers seem to be thinking of providing a more compressed file format.
So you think they’re thinking of cloud storage?
The only thing I can tell you is that they should be thinking of something. The people at the booths don’t seem to realize that people 50 and up don’t have a clue what to do with all those videos. It’s only people 20 and up that have a clue, but they’re not thinking about the future. They don’t future-proof anything. They upload those pictures to Facebook and that’s about it. Ten years from now, when they have kids of their own, they’re going to go, where did we upload that file? Where is that stuff?
Stephen Weiss
Creve Coeur Camera, St. Louis, Missouri
I attended both CES and PMA and spoke at DIMA. We attend because we get a great deal of information from our vendors and we can purchase non-camera items.
Non-camera items like?
Lots of technology items—TVs, DVD players, photo accessories—lots of different bag and case manufacturers are at CES, and in the past a lot of the manufacturers were there and we could get a leg up on PMA.
So how did you feel about PMA being there at the same time?
Having PMA at the same time as CES created a substantial conflict for our organization. We spend a tremendous amount of time looking at the entire electronics industry, not just the camera business. CES is so large you could spend four days or more; with PMA there, it was difficult having to go to a completely different area, away from CES. And in the front of the PMA area there were some camera-type booths . . . it was too broken up, too scattered. It was difficult for someone who goes to multiple companies, multiple locations. If they’d been truly combined, all in one area, that would have been much better.
So you don’t think much of the PMA move.
I think PMA is trying to keep its head above water.
Maybe all of our heads above water.
Well, I’m concerned that we’ve lost too many single stores in the last two years in this industry, too many small companies, and even ones that aren’t small keep closing. Somebody has to figure out how to sustain these companies. This is an industry that has some big turmoil in front of it. Most retailers don’t get it. They think it’s all about cameras, and it’s not. We were at Fry’s [a large western states electronic chain] and a huge photo retailer was there looking at what they had. We’re in the camera business, but we’re also in the computer business, and if you don’t relate to things other than cameras, you’re not going to make it. The camera manufacturers are getting squeezed, and we’re getting squeezed, and we’ve got to derive profits from things other than cameras.
What do you see for the future?
My assumption is that PMA needs to do what we did several years ago: cut expenses, cut overhead, cut people, scale back and figure out how to be a viable resource for the camera industry.
Like an education resource?
An overall resource—education, connection with the vendors, all of it. They have to completely reinvent themselves.
And still include a trade show?
A trade show at the same time as CES in my opinion is not viable; have the trade show in August or September . . . that’s perfect. It allows us to be with the vendors and beef up for the big fall season.
Mark Comon
Paul’s Photo, Torrance, California
I was very happy with the whole deal. I think our industry held our own and did our thing and we showed the big boys that we can do it better than they can.
The big boys being CES?
Exactly. There was a lot of excitement and a lot of buzz at PMA and a lot of business going on. At CES there was no real business going on. There were a lot of people playing, trying out the new this and that, but I didn’t see a lot of people deciding what they wanted to buy.
You generally go to CES?
I generally don’t, but I wanted to see both this time.
How did you feel about the major camera manufacturers being with the big boys?
I think they lost out. I didn’t see a lot of action, and as big as Canon and Nikon are, they’re a spit in the ocean on that other side of the fence. The Canon booth was a great booth, and right next to them was Panasonic with a booth four times bigger.
They’re playing in the wrong sandbox?
I’d like to see Canon and Nikon come back and play with us; that’s where they belong. Even Sony—the camera part was sort of off in the corner and PlayStation was at center ice. I’ll tell you—I’m selfish, I care about photo and I want to see our guys all get to eat next month. What I would really like to see next year is PMA at the convention center, all of us together. I didn’t like that a lot of the little photo guys were in the big CES and they were kind of lost. You go there looking for all of it; I wanted to see the new Canons, the new Nikons, of course, but the reps are going to be around with that anyway. I went to those booths mostly to talk to the head guys at Nikon and Canon because I don’t get to see them very often.
What did you talk about?
About business, about what happened this Christmas, about the market, about changes.
You’d prefer the shows under one roof?
I want photo all together. There has to be a photo area—not a thousand guys selling iPad cases and chargers and everything else all mashed in with photo.
How did you feel about the seminars and educational programs?
I’m on the DIMA board, and I always give sessions. I never saw so many people at DIMA before—new and different people, a group of people we’ve never seen before. I’m the photo class and photo trip guy—how to do classes and photo trips. We were one of the first to do classes. We’re one store, one location and I have 250 students a month in classes at all levels. And we do trips and workshops—we went to Africa last summer; we’re going to Death Valley. It’s a moneymaker, but I don’t do it for that. I do it because it’s how I built my business, The people we want to attract and have as loyal customers can always find a Canon 5D Mark II for less, but they can’t find a trip to Africa with me for less because I’m the only one doing it. I teach them what to do with their equipment, what to do ahead of time and while we’re there. I work hard to be a positive influence, to give them the best experience. I’m in it for the long term.
