With the US instant rebate of US$700 on the D600+lens kit extended through December 29th, the conspiracy theorists are all out in force. Herewith, the top 5 conspiracies:
- #5 -- NikonUSA was assigned to play secret Santa this year for well-heeled DSLR purchasers. Ho, ho, ho, free lens, Happy Holidays!
- #4 -- Someone mistook a "2" for a "7" in the handwritten notes and managed to print hundreds of thousands of fliers with the error before it was noticed. Hiring a copy editor and reprinting the fliers would be more costly than the extra discounts, so...
- #3 -- Nikon is certain that the US will go over the Fiscal Cliff on January 1st, and wants to unload all its inventory before the US economy comes to a complete halt. Corollary: Nikon will go on vacation for the first three months of 2013.
- #2 -- The glass plant had lots of extra material sitting around from all the DX lenses they decided not to release, so they just put it into 24-85mm VR lenses. Of course, demand for such lenses wasn't terribly high, so the new no price is a bleed-off of inventory.
- #1 -- Nikon believes that the world will end when the Mayan calendar does later this week, and is hoping that by pushing out a lot of extra cameras with lenses, the last great Instagrammed photo documenting the moment just before the end of the world will come from a D600 (or a V1). Plus Nikon should have a workflow solution for getting images to Instagram easily sometime in 2013...oops.
(Don't believe that there are these conspiracies being talked about? I've already received variations of the last four from site readers.)
So what's the real reason? Hard to say for sure, though it's probably a combination of trying to make quarterly numbers and balancing inventory load, along with what I mention in the next article: attracting non-Nikon users. The D600+lens kit and the V1 kits are essentially off-the-charts deals at the moment. You don't make such offers unless you're 100% committed to moving product at the expense of product margins.
Why? Because in both cases Nikon is seriously hurting product margins for new product. Take the V1, for example. The inventory sell-off there forced Nikon to introduce the V2 with an instant rebate. Even with that rebate, the V2 isn't exactly setting the world on fire with its sale rate (#3193 in Amazon Top Camera & Photo sellers list at the moment). Essentially, dumping V1's at US$300 means that no one wants a V2 at 2x+ the price. So the short term sale of the V1 (#293 in the Amazon list) has reduced the long-term value of the V2 in the lineup. Everyone will just wait for the V2 fire sale now.
In the case of the D600, note that US$700 discount is only with the 24-85mm lens. Remember, that lens has been on the market for months prior to the D600's release. Thus, one has to again assume that Nikon overbuilt 24-85mm lenses and is trying to re-balance the inventory. The problem here is that they've essentially created a month where you can buy a D600 body or D600 body plus lens for the same price. Which one do you buy? Obviously, the kit (and looking at in stock status late on Sunday seems to indicate that's exactly what happened).
But in pushing the kit, Nikon has devalued the body. There are a ton of 24-85mm lenses on eBay already. The lowest Buy it Now I found in a quick perusal was US$300, so let's be conservative and say that you can unload the lens for US$250 (by the way, it would be a bargain at that price--it's a pretty good lens and very well matched against the D600's capabilities, and certainly would make a good DX lens for those that don't need very wide angle in their mid-range zoom). Thus, you could buy the kit, unload the lens, and end up with a D600 body for essentially US$1750. So why would you buy a D600 body for US$2000 (the current price)? You wouldn't.
So what happens next is that D600 body-only boxes pile up in inventories everywhere this month while body+lens kits sell. Come January when the rebates expire, we next have a D600 body only inventory problem to deal with (and only a couple of months into its availability). Put another way: what would you pay for a D600 body in January? US$2000? Then why didn't you buy it in December and get a free lens?
For the customer, these deals are good for the short term. Get 'em while they're hot.