I had a customer yesterday who was looking for a small pocket camera. Since I do not deal in pocket cameras I recommended Target, Walmart, and Best Buy for those types of cameras. She said she had just come from Walmart and they no longer sell cameras, and that the attendant there recommended them to come to me. WTF???
Well on the way to work this morning I decided to stop by and take a look for myself, and sure enough, no cameras, AT ALL! The display rack was there, lots of sale and closeout tags on the shelves, even the cabinet doors below were unlocked and empty. Make you wonder. The electronics department employee had no idea if they were just sold out or were all done with cameras, all she knew was that they had a big in-store sale on them last weekend and sold everything they had. All that was left were a few film packs for the Fuji Instax cameras and one Vivitar bubble packed video camera for $7.00 closeout.
Makes you wonder if the camera phones have finally driven pocket phones down to such a small market that Walmart won't even mess with them anymore???
I've noticed the shrinking camera department at Walmart. Whenever I'm there I always stop by to see if they have any cameras on close out. I picked up my old D3100 at Wally World (on close out) for $289 with the kit lens included.
The first thing I noticed was that Walmart no longer carried Nikon cameras. I wonder if they sell them online (I'm not going to look).
I've also notice that there are almost no cameras left at Walmart stores here in Missoula. In addition, the number and kinds of camera accessories are almost nil.
Walmart also sells smartphones with cameras. The two didn't mix well for profits. Their cell phone business is most likely still thriving. Cameras not. Walmart is different than Best Buy for consumers. Target Store is not exactly Walmart either. But close enough. And Walmart sells items online, that are not on store shelves. Maybe cameras?
wdross
Loc: Castle Rock, Colorado
MT Shooter wrote:
I had a customer yesterday who was looking for a small pocket camera. Since I do not deal in pocket cameras I recommended Target, Walmart, and Best Buy for those types of cameras. She said she had just come from Walmart and they no longer sell cameras, and that the attendant there recommended them to come to me. WTF???
Well on the way to work this morning I decided to stop by and take a look for myself, and sure enough, no cameras, AT ALL! The display rack was there, lots of sale and closeout tags on the shelves, even the cabinet doors below were unlocked and empty. Make you wonder. The electronics department employee had no idea if they were just sold out or were all done with cameras, all she knew was that they had a big in-store sale on them last weekend and sold everything they had. All that was left were a few film packs for the Fuji Instax cameras and one Vivitar bubble packed video camera for $7.00 closeout.
Makes you wonder if the camera phones have finally driven pocket phones down to such a small market that Walmart won't even mess with them anymore???
I had a customer yesterday who was looking for a s... (
show quote)
I have stated here many times on UHHs that the Wal Mart camera shelves have been getting extremely small. I don't know if every Wal Mart will get rid of all direct camera sales, but it is highly likely they will. Cellphone cameras have literal wiped out the P&S market which was the mainstay of Wal Mart's camera market. Even the Olympus rep at a recent class noted how the cellphone had wiped out Olympus' P&S department. The only reason that the TG-4, TG-Tracker, and Olympus tough series still exist is because the cellphones are not as tough - yet.
My guess would be that they will be vying with Amazon.com with a line of digital cameras online. If you go to walmart.com and then put in digital cameras in the search engine, you will find
quite a selection.
About 2 years past when I was in a Walmart store I noticed cameras on display had no lens attached. I asked the attendant why no lens were attached to cameras anymore. She told me that between midnight and 4:00am gangs of kids (she guessed between the ages of 15 and 18 years old and sometimes 5 to 10 in a group) would come into the store and remove the lenses from cameras put them into their pockets and leave the store. {Walmart store open 24 hours).
But I think today that more people are buying online. Some of our best camera stores in the Kansas City area are now closing down due to lack of customers.
G Brown
Loc: Sunny Bognor Regis West Sussex UK
'Click' and 'Collect in store' has cut an awful lot of 'stuff' from supermarket stores. Some hardware stores even suggest a less than 4 hour wait if not actually in a particular branch stock.
Our local 'Tool Station' (Owned by B&Q) has a 200 page catalogue but only 4 racks of storage Yet rarely says an item is unavailable for longer than an hour....Go figure!
This may be a trend we're seeing. My local Costco, while not having gotten completely out of cameras, has significantly reduced their selection of DSLR's especially in the mid to higher price range.
Same thing here in the Rio Grande Valley, no cameras in four Wal-Marts that I have looked at. I went to the one I call 'my' Wal-Mart and asked the gal in the photo center for a box 4x6 glossy premium paper. She had no idea what I was talking about. Finally she told me that it was not stocked in the Photo Center but if the store had it, it would be in the stationary dept. I went back to my camera store and got what I wanted.
The local, hometown camera stores are driving the big box stores out of business?
LFingar wrote:
The local, hometown camera stores are driving the big box stores out of business?
Now wouldn't THAT be cool!!!
tramsey wrote:
Same thing here in the Rio Grande Valley, no cameras in four Wal-Marts that I have looked at. I went to the one I call 'my' Wal-Mart and asked the gal in the photo center for a box 4x6 glossy premium paper. She had no idea what I was talking about. Finally she told me that it was not stocked in the Photo Center but if the store had it, it would be in the stationary dept. I went back to my camera store and got what I wanted.
I had that exact same experience. I had to go to the stationery department.
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