Auteur: bernardP
Date: 22-04-2006 23:11
The Demise of Mamiya. Details
by Richard Wong on Friday, April 21, 2006 - 23:51
Hi Thomas,
Maybe you remember me from last year. I can read Japanese so I looked at the link to the Mamiya site.
The actual text says Mamiya OP Group is to transfer their optical products business to the Cosmo Digital Imaging KK (KK for Kabushiki Kaisha. Same as GmbH for you)by 1 September 2006. . The essentials are: Their parent company "Olympic", which makes fishing tackle equipment (!) took over the Mamiya medium format camera company in 1992 and changed the name to Mamiya OP. They added electronic products to their business and the 3 divisions worked together. However, in 2000 they had to withdraw from the declining fishing tackle business with heavy losses. And in 2001, due to the penetration of compact digital cameras and the appearance of high quality single lens reflex camera on the market, sales of their medium format cameras dropped sharply. In order to counter this trend, Mamiya brought out top quality digital cameras in December 2005 but sales did not meet their expectations and they again suffered heavy losses.
With the understanding that it is impossible to reverse the trend, they have decided to withdraw from the optical equipment business and transfer it to the Cosmo Digital Imaging Company (Kosumo dejitaru imejingu KK) by 1 September 2006. They will stay in the electronics and sports equipment business and make it their speciality.
The word used in the text for "transfer" is joto. This is usually used in the sense of transfer of securities. In actual words I feel it more probably means simply "selling off".
Strangely I now remember that B. Perrine and I actually interviewed Zenro Osawa, the president at that time of Mamiya at the Paris Photo Fair for the January 1982 issue of "Le Photographe" which I told you about.
bernard
|
|
