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Henry's Outlet Store will be missed

RichA

New member
Unfortunately, it's just another Henry's, with sparse stock. The old
Outlet store was well-suited to its task, to attract real photo
enthusiasts. It was small, dimly lit, cluttered, and most
importantly, located in Toronto downtown, the hotbed for photo
enthusiasts, students, etc. In short, a perfect enthusiast's store.
It got in a fair bit of good open box and used equipment, the newest
digital stuff would show up as customers switched brands or choices in
the main store around the corner. It was always busy.
So, for whatever reason (rumours were cost of the real estate and that
it was siphoning off customers from the main store around the corner
from it) they decided to move it to Mississauga, a kind of far-flung
"suburb" of Toronto (40km from Toronto's core) populated by mostly younger professionals and poorer immigrants, not exactly the core of photo-enthusiastdom.
Now, the new store is again in fairly close (4km or so) proximity to
a pre-existing standard Henry's store (and a Vistek) and it is not
what it was. The new store is 2.5x larger (therefore the cluttered
look is gone), to the extent the place looks sparse. The store is
heavily lit with large glass shrouded lamps and for all intents and
purposes is just another Henry's. The staff is secured behind a
phalanx of new store-spanning counter-barriers so there isn't much
chance of the interaction that happened in the old store. The stock
on the backshelves is further back requiring you ask to see things up
close, with no chance for actually getting a good idea about a product
from just looking. There is counter storage for lenses and that
should work out ok, once the stuff is properly merchandised.
The new store is supposed to get new stock in addition to old stock,
further diluting what it once was, while most high quality used/open box stock
most likely will end up on Henry's Ebay site.
IMO, Downtown Camera (if they were so inclined) could fill the niche,
jettisoning their film section (which I never see anyone frequent) for
a more robust "used" section. Why should Henry's be the only one to
make the 40-1000% margins (I kid you not) that used product brings?
 
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