Bad news

[ThatPhilBrettGuy]

Ritz camera going pop.

http://www.dpreview.com/news/0902/09022403ritzcame...

Let's just hope it doesn't hit the camera companies too hard

[_dobbo_]

Scary stuff -

dpreview article said:

To put the $26.6 million owed to Nikon Inc. into perspective, it would represent somewhere in the region of 20% of Nikon Inc's expected annual operating income.

How did they get to the situation where they owed Nikon and Canon that much - do the camera companies really allow retailers to rack up that kind of debt?

I'd imagine there must be massive quantities of unsold stock to cover a significant portion of that debt...

edit - actually, I just don't get this. Let's allow that Ritz camera really do account for 20% of Nikon's global worldwide sales, which I highly doubt, I still don't get how Ritz ended up in a situation of owing that much money.

Or is this just Nikon USA?

Edited by _dobbo_ on Tuesday 24th February 18:47

[Kermit power]

Annual operating income = profit, not turnover.

Still a lot of cash though!

[J111]

_dobbo_ said:

Or is this just Nikon USA?

It is, Nikon's annual operating income is ~$500m from imaging alone.

[beano500]

Being mercenary about this, I wonder if there's any bargains to be had.....

But then given the £/$, I guess that's not gonna happen.

[Ravell]

It's chapter 11 though, meaning they want to restructure the debt, not write it all off and go out of business. It probably sounds worse than it really is TBH.

[Bee_Jay]

Ravell said:

It's chapter 11 though, meaning they want to restructure the debt, not write it all off and go out of business. It probably sounds worse than it really is TBH.

Yeah, Circuit City filed Chap 11 at the end of last year for restructuring and that all went really well...