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Re: [OM] Re: Why the OM decline? (the OM-10 story - long!)

Subject: Re: [OM] Re: Why the OM decline? (the OM-10 story - long!)
From: clintonr@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Date: Wed, 11 Apr 2001 19:14:01 -0500
Chris O'Neill wrote:

> > >... Olympus did some stores dirty in
> > > the recent past, which has probably left some store owners with hard
> > feelings...
> >
> > The owner of a local (Wichita) camera store told me things began to go
> > downhill with the OM10.

> > For whatever reason, Olympus

> > determined that this would not be covered by warranty.
>
> A former dealer here in Edmonton told me that at one point, not sure when,
> Olympus tried to "strong arm" dealers into pushing more equipment.
>

Ah, memories, memories!

Let's start at the beginning of all this -- the OM-10.  Prior to this model,
Olympus Camera Corporation (OCC, Olympus' US Distributor) was going "great
guns".  The OM-1 and 2 had established the Olympus name as one of quality,
overcoming the resistance of a consumer market where "bigger is better", and the
intransigence of the "professional" market as well.

The OM-10 was designed as an economical amateur camera.  Inside, it has plastic
gears and shafts where earlier OM's had metal parts -- and _that_ I suspect was
where the problem started.  To make the shutter work "smoothly" (my analysis),
the plastic gears were liberally doused with shutter oil (an indisputable fact).

This (over-oiling) was fine for a while.  But in a year or so, particularly in
warmer climes, this lubrication began to migrate, eventually saturating the
armature and electromagnet of the shutter.  OM-10's began to pour into the (5)
Olympus repair facilities, all with the same problem -- erratic exposures.

At the time, some may recall, Olympus OM products distributed in the US by OCC
were covered by a 2 year warranty.  I don't know about the other facilities, but
in Dallas (where I was Customer Service Manager / Technician), this was
recognized as a warranty defect, and serviced as such.

Our first instructions to correct the problem were to simply wipe the excess
lubrication off the armature (I wouldn't be surprised if other facilities
received different directions -- sort of a "test marketing" of different repair
methods).  This worked fine for a while, but inevitably, in a few months, the
cameras came back again as more lubrication seeped onto the armature.

It quickly became evident that the only reliable solution to the problem was to
completely disassemble every OM-10 with an erratic shutter, completely flush the
excess oil from the shutter, soak the electromagnet coil in solvent to remove
the lubricant trapped in the windings, the reassemble and re-time everything.
That was the procedure we began to use in Dallas, and our actual re-work
percentages for OM-10's dropped dramatically.  Again, I don't know what other
offices were doing to address the problem by then.

But it was, of course, too little, too late -- the reputation of an otherwise
good model was severely compromised.

At the same time, foreign exchange rates were such that US dealers could buy OM
cameras from non-US sources cheaper than they could from OCC (resulting in the
so-called "grey market")!  Thus, OCC found themselves fixing OM-10's they'd sold
with a two-year warranty again and again, as well as servicing non-US cameras
with their one-year warranty (this may have been the source of some dealer
complaints that Olympus wasn't recognizing their warranty) for which they'd
received absolutely no economic compensation.  Something obviously _had_ to be
done!

OCC management decided to do two things to balance their books, essentially
"shooting themselves in the foot" -- first, they dropped the two-year warranty
(clearly the only advantage customers had for paying extra to obtain a
legitimately imported camera).  Then they created a "special" Manual Adapter
with the "FC" ("Full Control") marking for the OM-10 that was included with the
US models (along with a little US flag emblem on the body), and they raised the
price of the accessory Manual Adapters an outrageous amount -- the idea being
that "Grey Market" camera sellers would have to buy Manual Adapters from OCC to
"compete" with OCC's cameras.  This was, of course, an abject failure.

With the resulting losses, OCC had to cut expenses.  This meant (to OCC's
management) closing offices and laying off personnel.  First they closed the
Dallas office, then the office in Atlanta.  Next came the warehouses in LA and
Chicago.  Finally, sales regions were "consolidated", sales positions
eliminated, and so on.

At the same time, OCC was determined to increase profit.  Prices were raised
without considering the marketplace, and sales quotas were increased in the face
of growing dealer resistance -- to many dealers, it seemed as if Olympus wasn't
long for the US, if not the world!

So that's the story from my perspective -- others may disagree, but that's what
I saw.  Except for a few minor blemishes, though, Olympus' products are superior
by far -- otherwise they would have never survived.


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