Ritz Camera - The Great Mystery of Life

Does anyone know how a company like Ritz Camera a/k/a Wolf Camera has been
able to prosper in the marketplace? Their prices are easily 25%-40% higher
than anything you could buy at B&H, Amazon.com or other places. Then they
push their inferior housebrand Quantaray lenses. Even the staff told me
they are embarrassed about pushing Quantaray. I realize brick and mortar
stores must charge more to pay their overhead...but 30-40% more? For
example Canon Speedlight 550EX B&H = $329, Ritz = $449 a 35+% difference. I
am puzzled. I have to figure that their core customers are 70+
unsophisticated older people who have never heard of the internet.

S.

 

Its quite simple - Like Wal-Mart, they have driven out local businesses and
now can do what they want. Remember only a small proportion of the public
will buy mail order, and a lot of them give it up after getting burnt once
by the scam shops.

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I think Ritz Camera sells mostly to uneducated white people from Georgia,
hence the expression "Ritz Crackers."

 

Good one!

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http://www.chapelhillnoir.com
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There was a time when people with money felt good about walking out with
their purchase in a bag that clearly showed where it came from. And the 70
year olds do have money. Just watch how they piss it away at the casinos.
Mark_

 

More likely they are pros who know that they can get what they need
without waiting, and others who require hand-holding, and are willing to
pay more for it.
Then there are those with so much money that the price difference just
doesn't matter at all.

 

Does anyone know how a company like Ritz Camera a/k/a Wolf Camera has been

I agree with most of what you say, but I bought a 70-210 macro zoom Quantaray
lens for my Canon F1 back in about 1979. I love that lens. And I do have other
lens' from Canon, Tokina and Tamron. One of my macro pictures taken with the
Quantaray lens was enlarged to 11"x14" and still hangs in my dining room.
Do you want to hear something funny about Ritz? Their salesman quoted me a
price of over $400 just for a 3 year extended warranty for the Rebel digital
and over $600 for the 5 year warranty. I did not buy from them.
Lynn

 

Teh pro I know that works at a Wolfe/Ritz will not buy anything there except
film - and only in emergencies.

--
http://www.chapelhillnoir.com
home of The Camera-ist's Manifesto
The Improved Links Pages are at
http://www.chapelhillnoir.com/links/mlinks00.html
A sample chapter from my novel "Haight-Ashbury" is at
http://www.chapelhillnoir.com/writ/hait/hatitl.html

 

I would normally agree, but last month I purchased a Fuji S7000 from
Ritz for the same price as that advertised by B&H (I had just wandered
in to browse). Ritz also waived sales tax and gave me a $50 "gift"
certificate so that, since no shipping charge was involved, the camera
cost me considerably less than it would have had I bought from B&H (or
Adorama). I have to say that I was completely amazed.

Art Rosenberg

 

What amazes me about my local Ritz store is how truly indifferent,
sometimes arrogant and photographialy illiterate the sales people are,
and this over a two or three year period. One thing I've been curious
about is why they don't sell Olympus products, and so few accessories
for all the digital cameras they push. I also find their digital
processing prices a bit out of line for what one can get locally. All in
all they remind me of a certain operating system/software company we all
know...too big, too fat, too far removed from customers. Oh, there was a
time, about 25 years ago, when Quantaray lenses were pretty good.They
often were first to market with various zooms and oddities, and were
sold primarily mail order out of a place in New York in Herald Square,
the name of which escapes me at the moment.

 

Two years ago Ritz did sell Olympus gear. I've heard various rumors of why
they no longer sell Olympus gear, but most of them boil down to some sort of
clash between Olympus and the CEO of Ritz.

Now that Walmart, Walgreens, and just about everybody else is putting in a Fuji
Frontier machines and selling 4x6's for $0.19 - $0.26, I would imagine there
will be downward pressure on pricing. In fact, I just checked Ritzpix.com, and
the prices have gone down to $0.40/4x6, when last year they were $0.60. I must
admit sometimes using Ritz due to convenience, when I worked near a mall that
had a Ritz outlet, I could drop off the pictures in the morning, and pick them
up on my way home, wheras I would have to drive for a bit to get to Walmart.