If I ran a camera company, I would do these things.
I would perform market research to determine who is, or might in future, buy a camera, and what their buying criteria are. I can just buy a handful of reports to get most of this.
I would then segment the market, generating descriptions of groups of potential buyers with similar key buying criteria, who talk to one another. This may mean they attend the same parties, or that they read the same blogs, or that they literally talk to one another.
Then I would size the potential of those market segments and match them against my ability to deliver one or more Whole Products which meet or exceed the key buying criteria of the segment.
Then, if there appeared to be a viable path forward, I would start building those products.
Why would I do this? Because this is how business is actually done. Failure to recognize that there are multiple market segments with radically different buying criteria is universal along photography bloggers, which is why every single blog post purporting to perform industry analysis is stupid and why most of them are not even wrong.
This is why all these jerks are not running Nikon, they're writing blogs.
The reason I am not running Nikon is because I've actually done some of the above and I find it to be roughly the worst job in the world. Except for farming and mining, which are definitely even worse. Nikon keeps calling and I keep turning them down.
Been to any shows lately?
ReplyDeleteSo what if you applied your camera company process to us making and selling prints. .. yes Prints, to hang on the wall. Surely some segment of the market still will do that? And sucess with that concept may well be more in reach than Nikon putting you in charge anyway. ... and we, ok I, would find it way more desirable. You'd likely not have time to pontificate with us if you had the tiller at Nikon. ... I'm just saying.
ReplyDeleteYou can totally apply this process to the print selling business. The process is however not guaranteed to produce an answer you like. You may find that there is a viable business in making prints you hate, or that you need to invest a million dollars in capital, or that there simply is no viable business.
DeleteThe process produces answers, but neither guarantees nor happiness ;)
Well the point of the comment was to try and entice you into running the process for us on the prospect of reigniting print selling. I imagined you ferreting out who is, or who might in the future actually purchase a picture to hang on the empty wall space. I'm sold that you have the expertise to accomplish this, just by reading how you'd steer Nikon. I feel under qualified to produce a workable plan to revive such a retro concept ... I can come up with some decent prints ... so till you decide to take it on I suppose I'll just keep calling them Limited Editions and giving them away. BTW I've only just recently discovered your blog and am doing a daily read to catch up. So a thanks for the thoughtful conversation is in order here. Thanks
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