Well now, what to make of this? Ricoh CEO announced that the company is "renewing the camera business" by moving away from mass production and distribution to a direct-to-consumer model for Pentax DSLRs and Ricoh GR, along with more of a "workshop-like" manufacture, whatever that means.
Petapixel has an article, and you can auto-translate the Japanese announcement on Ricoh's
website.
I've read about those online and the authors are just as puzzled as us.
I won't be surprised if their workshop-like manufacturing is
cellular/cell/cell-type manufacturing, which is prominent in many
Made in Japan (MIJ) products now. The quality is easier to validate and it's just much more sustainable business-wise. Feedback from customers is much quicker than the usual type of distribution models, as the factory/engineers can get reports either from middlemen or from the customers themselves. Workers are not as stressed. I got interested because the
MIJ products we buy like digital pianos, audio equipment, rice cookers, videocams etc. all come from Japanese factories using
cellular manufacturing.
The COVID fiasco proves that the current manufacturing conditions aren't sustainable and are very, very fragile. Camera companies struggled last year, except for
Sony because they make the sensors even for cellphones. The move to a more sustainable style of manufacturing makes sense, for me. It's just business as usual. Camera shipments are at the lowest since 2010-2011 financial year and there's no sign of the slowing of the decline. We can talk about not just an elephant but
elephants in the room - cellphones, which started the decline in shipment of cameras, are also in decline for the first time, camera shipments are uncomfortable low and system cameras from 17 years ago still take good photos, chip shortages affecting overall manufacturing and idle workers are too costly to maintain, etc.
Camera companies are offered by the Japanese government, USD 2 billion, to move their manufacturing from their neighbour to Japan. Just moving their mass production factories into Japan will be much more costly than setting up
cellular manufacturing for the cameras. It's the trend now. Kawai pianos are mostly made in Indonesia and they even do
cellular manufacturing there. The offer may be of intertest to Panasonic, Nikon and Canon but not with Sony, whose manufacturing are already setup in Malaysia and Thailand, and OM system with their hardcore facility in Vietnam.
Anyway, whatever these camera companies do won't hurt us, at all.
Looks like it's a tempest in a teacup after all. Mass production isn't really going anywhere according to Ricoh follow-up.
Probably the fault of whatever translation software they're using.
The follow-up is good news then since older Pentax cameras up to the
K-50 can still be backordered in the Philippines and Australia. The products will come from the Philippine factory, of course.