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Future of "Bricks-and-Mortar" Optics Stores? (1 Viewer)

I totally agree with Brocks first sentence. I'm not sure if going into a store to try out optics - and then buying the same on line shows contempt for the owner / staff ( just treating them like objects that are there solely for your convenience ), a strange kind of twisted 'logic' ( "I like your optics butthe same ones I buy on line are 'better'" ) or stupidity ( you've got the optics in your hands, tried them out, liked them, decided you want to buy them then walked away, gone all the way home, spent time searching the internet, put in your order and then waited for delivery, with the possibility you may have to return them and wait even longer ). It may take a good few hours, for some people to get to their nearest store but it's still a damn sight quicker than ordering on the internet, and you get to choose the individual piece of optical equipment there and then. How did people buy their optics before the internet arrived? I'd lay odds on that many / most travelled to a store.
 
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chris butterworth said:
I totally agree with Brocks first sentence. I'm not sure if going into a store to try out optics - and then buying the same on line shows contempt for the owner / staff
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I don't see it that way. I as a consumer don't owe anyone my business, and I won't hand over my hard-earned cash to a shop just to be "nice."

We live in a market economy, and if a seller can't compete on price, service and other basics, then that seller doesn't deserve my business.

Charitable contributions I reserve for the Red Cross. :t:
 
...and for the record, If the shop in which I was trying out the binoculars could offer me a better price, service, warranty etc. than I could get online, I would of course consider buying them in the shop! :t:

Still, I don't approve of the attitude of certain posters here, who I'm sure would enjoy living in some Soviet-style police state, where customers would be forced to buy whatever products they were offered, and window shopping was punishable by at least 10 years hard labour...
 
HighNorth said:
I don't see it that way. I as a consumer don't owe anyone my business, and I won't hand over my hard-earned cash to a shop just to be "nice."

We live in a market economy, and if a seller can't compete on price, service and other basics, then that seller doesn't deserve my business.

Charitable contributions I reserve for the Red Cross. :t:
Click to expand...

Hej HN

Steady there. The sun will be coming soon and this bad feeling will go away.

I agree with Brock and Chris but I don't see this as charity.

If a shop provides a service such as letting you handle and perhaps test several pairs of bins they are providing a service (and a building within which you can enjoy this service) and if I was to repeatedly use this service and not pay for it in some way, I would feel as though I was stealing.

This is a different service from an on-line seller. Ths two optics shops I use (one for bins, the other for photo stuff) offer advice, go out of their way to obtain products for me,give advice, offer decent 'trade-in' prices when I want to sell them my gear in order to buy new kit from them. These are all services that I enjoy and think it is worthwhile paying for. I could save some money on one or two deals by buying on-line but over the years I have saved time and money in other ways by dealing with these shops.

And that is without factoring in what happens quite regularly when a friend of mine buys on line. What he gets turns out to be not what he expected or wanted. Like a Canon lens supposedly in stock in Ireland but took 5 weeks to be delivered and turned out to be from a Far East market. Or a lens described as internal focusing, despite the fact that the objective lens moves backwards and forwards. These and other stuff have had to be packed up and sent back and the products ordered from another dealer.

I think my time and energy have a price on them too and this sort of hassle is too 'expensive' for me.

Hej

Lee
 
Troubador said:
This is a different service from an on-line seller. Ths two optics shops I use (one for bins, the other for photo stuff) offer advice, go out of their way to obtain products for me,give advice, offer decent 'trade-in' prices when I want to sell them my gear in order to buy new kit from them. These are all services that I enjoy and think it is worthwhile paying for. I could save some money on one or two deals by buying on-line but over the years I have saved time and money in other ways by dealing with these shops.
Lee
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Well, that's good for you, but my experiences haven't been the same. Hence why my approach is different.
 
Troubador said:
If a shop provides a service such as letting you handle and perhaps test several pairs of bins they are providing a service (and a building within which you can enjoy this service) and if I was to repeatedly use this service and not pay for it in some way, I would feel as though I was stealing.
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Well, I don't feel the same way. I'm sure that if shops thought this was problematic, they would start charging people for trying out their bins.
 
HighNorth said:
Well, I don't feel the same way. I'm sure that if shops thought this was problematic, they would start charging people for trying out their bins.
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Well, I do know a shop who acts that way because he went crazy by folks who came for advice and shopped elsewhere.
If you come into the shop you have to take a paper number.
A green colored one is for the biggest discount, but it's cash and carry within 1 minute (boxmoving).
The white one is 5 minutes time, but you buy and get middle discount.
The orange one is unlimited time of help but no discount.

Next time I talk with him I'll ask wether his great-great-great grandfather was Wikki the o:)

Jan
 
chris butterworth said:
...How did people buy their optics before the internet arrived? I'd lay odds on that many / most travelled to a store.
Click to expand...

Except in the really really big cities (New York, London...), and before Cabela's opened up some stores in smaller cities in the USA, I never experienced an optics store that carried high-end sports optics. Oh, I guess there was one store in Kansas City, MO that had some Leica bins, but the prices were almost double the going rate elsewhere (the store apparently catered to rich people for whom price was of no concern). Cameras and camera lenses were another matter, and were much more widely available (no longer the case, as most camera stores have folded, and big-box stores like Best Buy only carry cameras with built-in or kit lenses, no accessories, lighting equipment, or other lenses). The only way to obtain high-end optics was to place a special order through a camera store that carried cameras of the same brand, or to order it by mail from a catalog. So nearly all of my optics purchased over the past 30 years have come from B+H Photo, Adorama, Cabela's and Eagle Optics via their catalogs or their price listings in the back of Modern Photography and later Popular Photography. Nowadays all these places allow orders to be placed on-line but I still place all orders by phone because it is quicker for me and I think more reliable and maybe faster to ship (they check stock and put the order in while I'm on the line, the wireless phone line that is!).

--AP
 
jan van daalen said:
Well, I do know a shop who acts that way because he went crazy by folks who came for advice and shopped elsewhere.
If you come into the shop you have to take a paper number.
A green colored one is for the biggest discount, but it's cash and carry within 1 minute (boxmoving).
The white one is 5 minutes time, but you buy and get middle discount.
The orange one is unlimited time of help but no discount.

Next time I talk with him I'll ask wether his great-great-great grandfather was Wikki the o:)

Jan
Click to expand...

Well, if he can make that work, then good for him! :t:
 
HighNorth said:
I don't see it that way. I as a consumer don't owe anyone my business, and I won't hand over my hard-earned cash to a shop just to be "nice."

We live in a market economy, and if a seller can't compete on price, service and other basics, then that seller doesn't deserve my business.

Charitable contributions I reserve for the Red Cross. :t:
Click to expand...

Would you be okay with your employer taking the same approach. That paying you for your labor is charity?
 
perterra said:
Would you be okay with your employer taking the same approach. That paying you for your labor is charity?
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Well, in this case, the employee gets paid regardless of whether I buy the bin or not, assuming he/she gets paid by the hour. If the employee works on comission, then he/she should try being a better salesman/woman if he/she wants me to buy the bin! ;)

It's not the customer's duty to pay an employer's employees!
 
HighNorth said:
Well, in this case, the employee gets paid regardless of whether I buy the bin or not, assuming he/she gets paid by the hour. If the employee works on comission, then he/she should try being a better salesman/woman if he/she wants me to buy the bin! ;)

It's not the customer's duty to pay an employer's employees!
Click to expand...

Where does the money come from to pay the employee?

The playing field is not level, the online buyer has nothing but an office, sometimes not even inventory. Just has it drop shipped. No overhead at all, so if you just use a brick and mortar just to decide what to buy online, the brick and mortar will close, no other way around it.

My line of work is very service intensive, but if that service is of no value to the customer, then I wont offer it. Because my labor is not a charity, it is no different than a consulting service. The customer doesnt buy from me because I am cheaper, he buys from me because he wants input from me on what he needs. When he is falling behind on production he wants me to give him options to increase his throughput in a time of decreasing employee head counts and increasing cost of production that he may not be able to pass on. If he thinks the knowledge I have is of no value, then I wont give it to him. He can work it out on his own. I dont work for free, nobody should have to.

I'm not telling you how you should live your life, I dont really care, my answer to the question from Brock was how I live my life.
 
HighNorth said:
Well, in this case, the employee gets paid regardless of whether I buy the bin or not, assuming he/she gets paid by the hour. If the employee works on comission, then he/she should try being a better salesman/woman if he/she wants me to buy the bin! ;)

It's not the customer's duty to pay an employer's employees!
Click to expand...

HN,

Try to see it this way;

Every webshop or retailer offers a product with a calculated margin because rent, labor, investments etc need to be paid.
If the customer wants to get his product via one of those routes it's just fine.
It's a different story when the customer sucks all info etc out of the retailer, knowing he will go on the Web because of the price difference.
He knows the price in a shop the minute he steps in.
What you want is the red carpet treatment and the cash and carry price.
NO can do!! Costs won't allow it.
It has nothing to do with where you bring your hard earned cash but everything with how you want to spend it.
No hard feelings when you buy online, but don't parasite on the other guy.

Jan
 
I may be lucky living on The Wirral but there are two "bricks and mortar" places I use. Focalpoint is about 1•5 hours away by road and overlooks farmland. The staff always make time to discuss optics, make suggestions and generally make each customer feel "special". In Focus is inside WWT Martin Mere and I tend to go by public transport ( I'm old enough to qualify for a travel pass ;) ) , plus an excellent walk across the SW Lancashire mosses. Their premises overlook open water, reed beds and damp grazing. Yet again, no pressure and brilliant service plus the bonus of getting your entrance fee back if you make a purchase, no matter how small. The interaction with another human being, particularly one who is interested in what you are after is priceless, in a world that is becoming more isolated ( misanthropic ? ) as time goes on. BTW, before anyone says " It's all right for you but I don't have the time". I split my time between working in Japan, where I can often start my first lecture at 0700hrs, and often finish around midnight plus research and supervising doctoral students. I'll admit my lecturing hours are shorter in the UK but I still do about 60 hours a week. I also have a full social life and, spending so much time away from my partner means I have to make a special effort to be with her, and I find time to go birding. "Don't have time"? Rubbish. There is always time, if you want it.
 
perterra said:
Where does the money come from to pay the employee?
Click to expand...

The money comes from the customer, IF (and only IF!), the employer/employee do their job, and provide a service that the customer is willing to pay for!

If the employer/employee DO NOT provide a service that the customer is willing to pay for, then their business has no lease of life; simple as that!

So by all means: start charging customers for "window shopping", but don't accuse customers of being "immoral" for using a "service" that is rendered for free!
 
jan van daalen said:
HN,

Try to see it this way;

Every webshop or retailer offers a product with a calculated margin because rent, labor, investments etc need to be paid.
If the customer wants to get his product via one of those routes it's just fine.
It's a different story when the customer sucks all info etc out of the retailer, knowing he will go on the Web because of the price difference.
He knows the price in a shop the minute he steps in.
What you want is the red carpet treatment and the cash and carry price.
NO can do!! Costs won't allow it.
It has nothing to do with where you bring your hard earned cash but everything with how you want to spend it.
No hard feelings when you buy online, but don't parasite on the other guy.

Jan
Click to expand...

See my reply to perterra in post #57
 
HighNorth said:
The money comes from the customer, IF (and only IF!), the employer/employee do their job, and provide a service that the customer is willing to pay for!

If the employer/employee DO NOT provide a service that the customer is willing to pay for, then their business has no lease of life; simple as that!

So by all means: start charging customers for "window shopping", but don't accuse customers of being "immoral" for using a "service" that is rendered for free!
Click to expand...

I dont think I said anyone was immoral, I think I said it was in poor taste, and it is. Cultures are different, here we dont even use the restroom in a convenience store without purchasing something from them, just the way we are turned...
 
perterra said:
I dont think I said anyone was immoral, I think I said it was in poor taste, and it is. Cultures are different, here we dont even use the restroom in a convenience store without purchasing something from them, just the way we are turned...
Click to expand...

If the convenience store is dumb enough to let non-customers use their rest rooms for free, then that's just their bad. That's my take on things.
 
...and if "brick-and-mortar" optics shops can't find a business model that's profitable (i.e. providing a service that customers are willing to pay for), they deserve to die out. That's also my take on things.
 
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