Given recent events covered ad infinitum in the news, our intrepid
Publisher and I recently started talking about the “YouTube” and
“My Space” phenomenon.
Just when you thought the industry couldn’t do any more stupid things to kill a DVD market that has
been their oyster for the past few years, along comes yet another Big Brother scheme.
Many retailers in Canada live or die by the sales they can make in the 4th quarter. It’s getting
harder every year to compete against the big boxes for this business but it can be done.
Now, I have to accept reality. If a customer lives a half mile from a Big Box and they need
something basic it may be game over, but certainly on larger and more significant purchases
independent retailers still have a chance.
Ian Macfarlane is Vice-President and General Manager of the Consumer Imaging Group at Canon
Canada Inc. In this position he oversees all aspects of consumer sales, marketing, and service for
all digital imaging products.
The value of a trade show is going to depend on a multiplicity of
factors: your expectations, your needs, some kind of cost/benefit
ratio, and probably a number of intangibles only you can define. Those I
talked with at PMA Canada Expo 2006 were uniformly positive about it.
Like many Canadian retailers, we opted not to attend Photokina in Germany, as a result of a
number of domestic trade events and limited budgets. However, for this report we talked to
retailers, manufacturers and distributor representatives who attended Photokina. We also
talked with colleagues from Europe for which Photokina is the show of shows.
In our family, my birthday and Pam’s birthday are only two weeks apart, (end of September
and early October), so clearly some larger celebration, usually involving travel, is in order.
No, it’s not another Chicken Little cartoon, it’s just another round of silly season scrambling
for manufacturers! Factories push for production, export managers push for more containers
and regional office managers push retailers for more floor space. Y,es, it’s the vicious circle that
keeps our wonderful industry driving volume and in turn driving prices lower and lower,
forcing retailers to sell more and more to keep pace with last year!
Advertising in videogames is nothing new. I remember the first time
I saw an ad in a videogame: 1982, while playing the Namco/Atari
racing game Pole Position in an arcade. I’m zooming around in my
car, when I pass a billboard for Centipede, another Atari game.
I spent last week training a client to
distinguish actions that produce customer
dissatisfaction, satisfaction, and delight. A little
smack of reality and some poor and great
treatment can bring those theoretical
comparisons to vivid life.
It’s 4 pm on a Saturday afternoon. Tiger is taking the lead in the tournament, so naturally
the phone rings. It’s one of those dreaded dead-air calls that you know is an automatic dialer,
and that a live voice will only come on after you have picked up.
In 1998, the Bluetooth SIG (Special
Interest Group) partners started developing a
technology that still today, remains relatively
unknown to the non-initiated. It seems to me
that there was a lot more behind the name
than what I’ve heard over the past years...
Cool Gear of the Month
Each month, C.E.BIZ brings you what's best and coolest in consumer electronics. Here's our monthly selection (PDF) :
C.E. BIZ is a leading Canadian trade publication, specializing in the Consumer Electronics and Photography industries, with a focus on products, trends and opportunities in the domestic retail markets. Published in both official languages, C.E.BIZ is distributed 10 times a year, to over 10,000 individuals. Our mailing list includes Canadian C.E. and photo retailers, distributors, manufacturers, manufacturer reps, and most importantly, retail sales personnel. C.E.BIZ will also include a consumer-oriented Gift Ideas Supplement in November.
Our mission is to provide Canadian Consumer Electronics and Photography retailers with relevant information and opinions specific to the C.E. and Photography retail industries. While C.E.BIZ features major product launches and innovations in the Cool Gear section, our primary focus is addressing business issues, such as training, merchandising, new technologies and Internet in an informative and entertaining way.
