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SCOPES AND BINOCULARS

BANKING ON BINOCULARS

SCOPES AND BINOCULARS CAN EXPAND YOUR CUSTOMER BASE

Scopes and binoculars are an essential part of every serious photographer’s kit. Whether you directly consider them to be

photography equipment or not, there’s often the

occasion for photographers to such optical equipment

and so every occasion for you to sell them.

There’s also another customer group which frequently purchases such items, and that’s bird watchers (and of course other nature

enthusiasts). Whilst they might not be counted within your usual footfall, the demise of a couple of major high street chains which sold camping and outdoors equipment has left a large gap in the retail sector, and the closure of local branches of ouch shops means these customers now have

nowhere to buy their products. Another advantage here is that because of the demographic of this type of customer, they’re far less likely to buy or even look online, so the retailer demonstrating products with them is not constantly met with the ‘cheaper on the internet’ argument. As with all high quality optic

use products, demonstration is the key to converting interest

into sales, and with the binos/ scopes market, the customer is likely to walk in with a very clear idea of what they want. if the product they are shown then does the desired job and is at the right price, they will buy it - it can be a far simpler conversion than some more traditional products. Like most equipment sales, binoculars and field/ spotting scopes have their own associated accessories, dependent of course on which ranges and what products you decide to stock, as well as who you intend to market them to. On a basic level, any delicate optics need protective carrying gear so that they can be taken out into the field

in safety, and recently, advances have been made that make the use of such equipment with tripods easier. PIXEL 08

Gitzo has just exhibited a world’s first at Focus, the GH1720QR and GH2720QR heads are designed specifically for bird watching. Commenting, Vic Solomon, Product Manager for Gitzo and Manfrotto at Manfrotto distribution said, “Bird watching is a specialist experience, with completely different requirements from video and photo applications. Most of the tripod heads used by bird watchers with scopes are actually developed for photo and video products and as a result of this bird watchers are using heavier and

larger supports than they may

need. “The new Gitzo heads have been developed 100% for the birding market and feature key innovations such as the new Bird Watching Fluid Cartridges. These new cartridges offer the opposite behaviour to traditional video heads and with this new innovation birders get a guaranteed ultra smooth and controlled movement at very low speed which is exactly

what they are looking for. All the user has to do is

simply focus on the subject and accurately track it and at high speed the movements become almost completely free and this is really useful when fast equipment repositioning is required.” “Single lock is the another specific innovation for bird watching. Pan and tilt movements are locked by a simple control making the head control easy, fast and more effective than ever before. “The casting on these new Gitzo heads is strong for long scopes and therefore there is no movement when the scope is locked in.” Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12