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From the school of Nikon Canada
I received this information from a Henry's contact in regards to the 5D2 and how initial shipments MAY be sold in Canada.
Firstly, the 5D Mark II is the most preordered camera in Canon's history. Initial shipment forecasts have been miles off. This is great news for Canon for sure. Not great for the consumers.
The Bad News
Canon Canada could be looking at a way on how to distribute the low initial stock “fairly”. A couple of ideas being kicked around are.
1) The 5D2 can only be sold by pro dealers. Henrys, Aden, Vistek, Downtown Camera… etc etc. This would eliminate selling in mom & pop stores as well as Best Buy & Future Shop.
2) There might be a criteria that CPS & pro photographers get the first batch of cameras. Nikon did this with the D3, dealers were basically forced to implement Nikon's requirements.
*Note: I have no opinion as to whether or not #2 is fair or a good idea. Just writing what I'm being told.
3) Canon doesn't expect quantity to meet demand until SPRING 2009.
4) Canon might give exclusivity to one store chain in each province.
5) The camera may only be distributed to major urban centers across the country.
All these thoughts are purely for Canadian customers. I cannot find anyone in the US or Europe that has heard the same thing.
Some of this may seem out there, however there really could be some truth to it. The camera has truly exceeding Canon's expectations.
cr
I hope this wasn’t the big news!
Spring 2009? JEEZUS
Greg
hey.. it could be big news to a lot of buyers!
:)
Just sold my 5D the other day expecting to get my mark II in the very near future. I placed a pre-order maybe a week or so after the camera’s announcement through my retailer of choice (Black’s). I hope they stick with a first-come, first-served mentality because any other options could alienate customers.
I would not go for specific/exclusive stores if I were them, my primary goal would be to simply fill pre-orders in the order they have been received. I’m not sure how Canon would – through retail chains – enforce a CPS / Pro requirement, this just doesn’t seem feasible.
Canon would be good to follow Nintendo’s example on this one. The Wii is still a hot commodity going into another (its 3rd) holiday season and they’ve managed their distribution initially by filling pre-orders (which were not allowed after the release day) and simply be distributing them to retailers based on sales volume.
Good luck with this one, Canon :) As long as I get my camera this year I’ll be a happy man.
Wow… not the most exciting news around.
I hope Canon won’t disappoint point another time… come on Canon, do your best shot here.
The difference with Nintendo, price is 10x lower and prod is way way more. We are still doing 70 000 piece a day !!! That is a lot of Wii around.
I’m sure this could be big news to some. I was more “hoping” the big news was “they are shipping tomorrow” ;)
Greg
Amen to that… next time I’ll rephrase “big news” when it comes to potential bad news.
If canon and or the three companies, that I ordered the Canon 5D Mark II with, do not ship, I will sue them all.
I orderd on the first day of release and cant see, why they should pick who gets one. Impossible to cherry pick customers. I have my early order numbers and canon told me last week on the phone, that official release date is Oct. 18.
It is beginning to sound like Canon won’t have enough production to even deliver cameras initially to the first day buyers. That large 21mp sensor probably has a low production rate, and ramping production up is extremely slow and expensive.
I ordered Body only from Adorama the first day, but didn’t get a order number until the next day. I’m hoping to get one sometime in the first couple of weeks into December.
I tend to agree that Canon should pick customers with care, since many are just buying them to turn around and resell on ebay for a big profit. Quantities should be limited too. The initial deliveries should get into the hands of users, not ebay sellers. How they might do this, I don’t know.
Woohoo!! I’m a CPS member and live in a city and have 2 pre-orders with different retailers…And I bet I still miss out! I too sold my 5D ages ago in anticipation of the Mk2, been stuck with my 40D’s for too long now…Hurry up Canon!
On the plus side this will give us all long enough to assess RED’s ‘massive game changing’ announcement that’s coming on the 13th November with respect to a totally new Digital Stills and video system for around the same price as a 5D MK2…
As a Canon dealer, I was told today that Thursday was the first day that any 5DII orders were able to be entered into Canon’s order system. It was up in the air as to when and or if we would get the cameras. When we get them it will be on allocation. In other words order 40 bodies and get 4 or maybe 2 to sell. I’m not kidding, I’ve seen it many times before. So the the price drop dreamers, keep dreaming. That’s why the price increase means nothing to most consumers and to Canon. My best personal guess is end of November is dreaming, but that’s a guess. Ask for a deal on the body before April ’09 and be prepared to be laughed at.
BTW Pre-Orders with deposits are not binding and in theory illegal, so be prepared.
Fred, I’m laughing right now… You might be right, and if so, I understand better why canon profit were down by 26% last quarter… If they can’t meet the demand, they might not solve their profit issue soon.
Overall, it’s a bit of a shame. The first 5D was release in August 2005 and we might get the 5D MKII only 3.5 years after that (for those that will get it in February 2009)… I guess they really have some marketing issue. I’m sure that Nikon are laughing as well.
see, this is EXACTLY why rumour sites like yours are so useful to Canon. it’s like free hype and advertising for them. I still shake my head at why they’d wanted to shut you down a while ago…
@Rox, I am laughing as well. I have been told the same by some canon dealers in here. What a shame.
@David,
Canon doesn’t like some of viewers amount us. Keep telling Canon up to sh*t. That maybe one of the reasons.haha…
People are mistaken when they say that this ‘undersupply’ is bad for Canon’s business. In game theory, there is this game where one person has 10 red cards and 10 other persons each have one black card. For each combination of a black and a red card, the first person gets $10. The 10 persons need to negotiate with that first person in order to sell their cards to him, so that first person can make his $10.
What is the best thing that can happen for this first person? First, he needs to publicly burn two red cards. By doing so, the 10 persons know that at least two of them will not be making money out of this deal, while if no cards where burned, they are certain that the first person would accept some unfavorable deal (because something is better than nothing). When the two red cards are burned, the 10 persons become competitors and they will try to lower their price to get a deal (because something is better than nothing).
So when no cards are burned, the first person makes something like 10*0.5, while if two cards are burned, he makes something like 8*0.8.
This is what happens in this situation: Canon uses dealers to sell their 5D mark II. If they would supply the entire market in a reasonable amount of time, the dealers are very powerful, because each dealer is needed to supply all of the cameras. But by undersupplying, the dealer knows that there are chances he will not make any profit (because he cannot sell a camera if canon does not supply him with one), so he will agree to a less favorable deal than if there was no undersupply.
It COULD be, of course, that there are production problems. They happen independent of strategy. But often big companies claim to have production problems (e.g. Microsoft with the XBOX 360), just to ‘change the game’.
Remember: Canon gets its profits by selling to retailers. Not by selling to customers.
Who cares… 1D Mk IV?
Coupon Program!
You buy the coupon from the dealer, Mail it to Canon, and Canon Ships you a camera
next year economics will be really bad, 50% ppl will lost their jobs. still buy luxuries without care? they will surely cry.
It may be that Europe gets priority because we pay more for the cameras.
Hence it is in Canon’s interest to supply us before those who pay less.
greetings,
Canon has not raised the price of the 5D MK II. They are priced in Yen, not Canadian dollars, and Canon North America must pay in equivalent Yen. The Canadian price increase adjusts for the value of the Canadian dollar against the Yen and is still lower than almost any country in the world, including the US.
I have a lot of background with manufacturing, and you can’t just turn up a dial and spit out twice as many products a day, much less 10 times as many.
As I recall, there are about 2,000 parts in a DSLR, and every one of them must be ordered from suppliers well in advance. Some of them are common easy to get parts, but others are custom made. Long lead custom tooling is often required for custom made parts, and their production rate cannot be vastly increased without more tooling.
A manufacturer estimates the quantity of parts he will need and places these long lead items on order at a rate of “X” pieces a month. The suppliers do the same for their raw materials and sub assembly parts. The supply chain can be quite long. This rate can be adjusted more or less by a reasonable percentage, maybe 15 or 20%.
One of the big bottle necks is certainly the sensor. It is made in only a single billion dollar + facility, which has a certain capacity. To exceed that capacity, it takes a new plant, and years to tool and build it. That would be fine, except that after the initial demand for cameras, the quantity sold will drop off sharply and production must be cut back. you can’t build a new plant unless it will be kept busy, or you will go out of business real quick.
Even if all parts were available, the camera assembly facility has a limited capacity. Workers must be trained to assemble a very complex piece of equipment, test equipment is limited, its just a nightmare to increase a planned production rate, and its impossible to do so in a few weeks.
In order to keep things running smoothly, one answer is to buildup a large initial inventory, stocked in warehouses to meet the expected initial demand. If that initial demand is higher than expected, there will be a backlog for a few weeks.
In the case of the 50D, they were accurate and most stores now have them in stock.
In the case of the 5D MK II, the initial demand is apparently unprecedented. This is partly because Canon priced them agressively low compared to Sony and Nikon. As a result, they are not even close to filling initial demand, so the backlog will last for months instead of weeks.
The same thing happened to Nintendo with the Wii, and they are still struggling to meet the demand which apparently continues to exceed forecasts. No one expected the huge popularity of the Wii.
You can’t just build a million or a hundred million units in a few weeks and then shut down production. The cost of doing this would be incredible.
My point from my previous comment is that Canon is not alone out there and it surely not have the same influence as before. Here are 2 objectives observations :
1- Within the last 6 months, 5 different friends came to me with questions regarding what kind of SLR to buy. Of course I’m a Canon guy, so my talk was a bit pro Canon. On 5, 2 bought Sony, 2 bought Nikon and only one bought Canon. No one had any kind of lens before, so I think it shows something. Of course it’s not a real study, but I thought it still show that Canon is far to be the ultimate supremacy right now.
2- I went to New York City last week-end. I’ve decided to count how Canon SLR vs Nikon I was seeing in the street. Obviously, the vast majority were tourist with consumer (not pro) model (less than $1500). I was in shock… about 2x more Nikon than Canon. It was not like that 2 years ago.
So my point again, I believe Canon is loosing ground and they should do whatever they can to at least keep their current loyal customers as happy as possible.
My 2 cents.
Ed, another to point to add is that Canon didn’t release any new affordable FF since August 2005… They obviously created that demand and that backlog. This is where I’m angry about them. More than 3 years between upgrades was surely a mistake, but waiting another 6 months after the first announcement might be a greater mistake for the hardcore Canon consumer. Anyway there is nothing I can do except saying what I think on this forum.
I agree with Rox. It’s ridiculous that Canon didn’t expect this kind of demand given it’s been over three years since their last affordable full frame dSLR. I can understand why they can’t ramp up production and just build a new 5D2 factory on the fly, but if they had planned this better they wouldn’t have had to worry about not meeting initial demand.
One of the most basic (or at least smartest) rules of doing business is to under promise and over-deliver. Canon is doing just the opposite with price increases, suspected delayed release dates and from what it sounds like there’s going to be a massive shortage of stock. I don’t mind waiting a week or two if it’s late but months?
What I’m most frustrated about is the price raise on pre-order cameras. I can understand price increases due to exchange rate but for Canon and their distributors not to honor the pre-ordered prices seems ridiculous. I feel like Canon thinks demand for this Camera is so high they can do whatever they want. It’s sad but I know I’m still going to do whatever I can to get my hands on one as soon as possible but I’ve definitely lost a lot of respect for Canon and I’ll definitely be weighing my options in the future for when Nikon releases a high megapixel, full frame, dSLR + video. Better yet whose excited for the “game changing” RED announcement?
I believe that Canon had a design for the 5D MK II a year ago, probably a 15mp, and only after Nikon suprised them with their excellent $3,000 FF, and Sony announced a 24 MP FF was in the works did they start looking at what they could do to best the competition and do it in a short time frame. It must have been a real panic to upgrade the camera deign and to ramp up production of the 21MP sensors and other new parts. I’m sure this is why the long delay after the announcement, the camera wasn’t in production yet, just a few handmade prototypes off a prototype assemply line.
I agree that they grossly under estimated the demand for the 5D MK II, but I can’t find fault with that, after all, they now have 2 competitors so any new product would have to share sales, and they were likely very concerned about Sony being a sleeping giant and waking up to sell a huge number of FF cameras at a low price point.
It turns out that in spite of the complainers about auto focus and unwanted features like video and too many pixels, a huge nomber of people put down their hard earned money for a camera that doesn’t have a final production version out.
The huge Canon pre-sales is certainly not lost on Nikon or Sony, and we can expect a Nikon competitor soon, and hopefully, Sony will see that there is a large market out there, and come up with a low cost FF next year. I believe they could do it if they wanted.
I also agree that raising prices on pre-order cameras is bad. I had a 50D with 18-200mm lens pre-ordered from Amazon.com from almost day one. After two weeks, they raised the price by $400 and cancelled my order. I have since avoided doing business with them, they have lost several thousand in sales.
I do not wish to elaborate too much on micro-economic theory, since we only see the end result here. I will say this, though. It is too easy to mistake creating value (by under-promising and over-delivering) for capturing that value. Canon just makes sure the value they created will end up in their company and the pockets of its shareholders instead of in the pockets of retailers. That being said, it is true that Canon needs to balance these advantages against the possible losses in sales and brand name.
I also appreciate the fact that production is flexible only to a certain point and that predicting demand is difficult at best. 100% service levels are infinitely expensive.
These points help me see that waiting customers are inherent to the process of bringing out a popular new product. I do not like it, but I just have to.
Ed’s theory sounds spot on to me.
Another thing, when Canon announced their new 5D on Sept 17th, I guess the prototype was ready for prod, right ? Or maybe not ? If so, that give them more than 2 months to build up some inventory. They might have serious production issue if with 2 month they can’t stock enough to meet pre-orders. These are not Wii at $250, but $3000 camera that require $1000 lenses on it… this is not the “gaming” challenge. Something is wrong here.
Ed, well done on the reply. great read.
Prices are going down on slow sellers.
http://www.usa.canon.com/app/emails/eosnov08/?WT.mc_id=EM0811EO01002
Canon, as is usual, is approaching selling the 5DMk2 very conservatively. Without a doubt, their factory is running at full capacity. There is no micro-management or trying to limit supply. Because of consumer response, they have a guaranteed high-profit stream of income that they can bank on (and factor against if necessary) well into 2009. They’ve spent their R&D money and can count on their return.
To build new factories, to have built up extra inventory, etc., would have cost money that in this economic environment they can ill afford. No reason to think any of that would pass through their corporate mind.
So, all Canon is doing is trying to be as fair (in their eyes) as they can to the pros who will buy their next pro camera. Canon apparently thinks, “Why not get this pro camera into pro hands first?” They are the bread a butter of this niche market; they buy the lens; they buy second bodies; they buy all the accessories.
Okay, not my idea of fair, but ce la vie! If I have the annoying bad luck of getting my 5DMk2 in March instead of November, they will just have to wait until then before I buy my 16-35mm zoom, too. I’m not switching to Nikon this late in the game with all the glass I own… and, well, Canon knows that, too.
Just went to a political gathering today (we’re back in election in Quebec). There was 5 pros taking pictures… 4 had Nikon and 1 had Canon. The funniest part though, all 4 Nikon guys had two bodies around their neck and the Canon guy had only one… Just found that interesting that in my 3 unofficial survey (and non-scientific) Nikon won the game number. It’s good for us Canon folks, because there is real competition, but it’s a bit sad to see such a leader being reach that easily (ok, Nikon worked hard, but they are really close). Hopefully, we will all get our new 5D in a timely manner and we will be able to laugh at Nikon folks by Christmas… I’m tired of seeing friends with their new Nikon bodies… I want mine to. Period.
By the time it’s available, there may be a lot of people looking at the US economic down turn and re-evaluating buying a camera that costs almost $3K. There may be a lot of people backing out of buying it. I’m really on the fence at this point. The original 5D is starting to sound like an option… especially if I have to wait 6 months. I already sold my backup camera in anticipation. I can’t keep showing up to paid gigs with just one camera…
I just got a called from Michael’s in Melbourne, Australia
They confirmed the price with Canon Australia:
5D2 body = $3999 inc. GST
5D2 + 24-105L kit = $5399 inc. GST
They got 3 shipments, apparently 10 each
one is for End of Nov delivery, then End of Dec, then January 2009
& they claimed that “most” of the 5D2 shipment to Australia, is coming to Michael’s Melbourne (i find it hard to believe though)
so yey .. i am getting my 5D + kit end of november/early december
PS: A$3999 is pretty cheap considering our falling AUD vs USD (they are selling USD2699 @ B&H = AUD4050 + gst + duty if u buy it direct)
Henry’s sales people I have experienced in Ottawa, are self-serving, rumour mongers. Their favorite target is Galaxy Camera in Ottawa. Since April they have had a campaign of telling customers that;
“Galaxy is bankrupt..”
“Galaxy is closed …”
“Galaxy sells grey market”
“Henry’s has bought Galaxy”
This has even extended to an e-mail (not from Henry’s directly) sent to members of the RA Photo Club” echoing that same line.
Henry’s Bank Steet, is pretty much a Nikon shop, staffed with arrogant sales people like PW, who if you aren’t going to buy $10K plus of Nikon gear will walk away from you. In fact I quit buying at Henry’s Ottawa because I despise being talked down to (again PW) My favourite crack of his was reference that he was a pro,stating his words; “I am a professional photographer!” well.. actually he is a middle-aged man working in a camera store!
I doubt any of the sales floor level Henry’s staff are privy to any actual Canon allocation plans, as they are not involved in purchasing.
Sounds like they are trying to keep people out of the local shops.
“1) The 5D2 can only be sold by pro dealers. Henrys, Aden, Vistek, Downtown Camera… etc etc. This would eliminate selling in mom & pop stores as well as Best Buy & Future Shop.”
FutureShop IMHO never sold pro-level cameras, they would always go popular.
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