October 10th, 2009, saturday. I had set up four alarms before going to sleep in ten minute intervals, with the first arlarm at 0520 and the time I woke up was 0610. Lucky for me that the last alarm kept ringing for (at least) ten minutes. The reason I had to woke up such early(?) on a saturday was because another limited sales of Olympus E-P1 is scheduled to start at 1000.
Ever since the former minister of treasury's devaluation of Korean won, price of imports have soared. This has greatly increased the burden for the middle class people in enjoying their hobbies (since Korea depends heavily on imports for prosumer level products.) The E-P1 (a Micro Fourthirds digital camera) was announced at such a period and Olympus Korea has made a big decision to keep the price level of this product to the level before the Korean won's big drop.
This had to be a brave and welcoming decision by Olympus Korea for the consumers, or is it? Has Olympus Korea picked to walk the path of "share and honor" instead of "corporate prosperity"? The low(er) price of E-P1 (compared to other countries) just has to mean cuts in cost. I'm not an Olympus insider so I can only guess how they do it and my guess is "keeping stock price to minimal."
The E-P1 itself is a very attractive product and the price is not bad at all. Many people want it. This means a great demand and many stores would love to have plenty ready to sell. Olympus Korea just needs to keep shipping all their stocks to the stores and they would be (nearly) warehouse-fee free. Additionally, when Olympus makes supply agreement with the retailers, I'm pretty sure that there is a mandatory supply of other, less selling, Olympus products also which would lower even more of the Olympus Korea's stock expenses.
Its obvious that this will increase the burden of stock for the retailers and also there exists the risk of over supply, which are not Olympus Korea's favor. Also, Olympus has to keep the flame of "Pen" alive until the economy revives. One good(?) strategy for this is the well known "you can't have it" strategy. To accomplish all of these is my interpretation on why Olympus Korea sells the E-P1 in very limited numbers only.
I personally like the Panasonic series of Micro Fourthirds than the Olympus' and is already am a DMC-GH1 owner. That is why I passed on the early chances of buying an E-P1 when they were given to me, but it is always that when you really need it, the chances aren't always on your side.
Anyway, I got the need to buy an E-P1 now (despite the fact of knowing a new model of Pen to be announced by the end of October, which will be improved in every aspect) so I've been contacting stores here and there in search of a stock. All of the stores that had E-P1 said it was sold out, at most in two days. No store took pre-orders and sold only offline, first come first serve. A few online shops do exist and also have stocks, but they sell at ridiculously high prices.
Last week, a bird chirped to me that a new Pen special store will be opening near the Namdaemun import market some time this week. Early this week, I've confirmed this information with more details that it would be today at ten o'clock, that the opening will be held with thirty Pens availiable for sale.
I arrived at the store at seven and found that I was the first to come. The store was well shut and there was no clean place for me to sit on, so I thought I would patrol around and check the store every few minutes, that I could react with haste in case a line forms.
I live near Gangnam, one of the downtowns of Seoul and it is really dirty in the weekend mornings, before the cleaners show up. Now a saturday morning of Namdaemun, or rather Bukchang-dong (a more of middle-age men's downtown) makes Gangnam (mostly, crowded with early twenties to thirties of both sexes) feel like a clean place. Food trash, remnants of puke and marks of street pissing is extremely gross in both visual and olfactory sense.
After about twenty minutes my nose got knocked-out which made me bear the waiting a lot better. I also got tired, so bought a newspaper and sat over it on a near by stairs. About an hour later, I started to notice people looking like camera/photo hobbyists around, which must mean that their objective is same as mine (or why the heck would they be in a such dirty place at a such horrible time?) Still, no line was formed. (Is everyone enjoyong their morning walk?) Around nine o'clock, the employees of the store showed up and started to get ready for the opening and I just busted in.
The kind and generous manager allowed me to buy the E-P1 early and other buyers started to appear as I pulled out my credit card. I am very very pleased and happy that my objective has been well achieved, but this sales strategy, which took me two months to finally get my hands on a E-P1, is making many tired for the price of saving a couple of hundred thousand Korean wons. Also, I am more than positive that the fate of E-P1 will become the fate of what E-400 was, but I will always be happy with E-P1, as long as it works to record many of our happy memories.
