Just prior to Pennsylvania deciding that the US Supreme Court couldn't possibly be right and that the state should ignore the established law and change affiliate nexus interpretations on their own (which caused me to be dropped as a B&H affiliate), I was invited by four different affiliate programs to post "pre-order" links.
While I eventually did post a couple (since removed), I balked. Why? Because I knew that we were about to proceed into the unknown, and the unknown has a reputation for biting you in the butt. Hard.
My hesitation has now proven prescient. While the problem I anticipated happened with a number of cameras (D4, D800, OM-D, etc.), it has been particularly problematic with the Nikon D800. Here's what my hesitation was about: did the companies taking these pre-orders have any notion of how many units they'd receive and when?
The answer to that question was "no." Basically these companies were counting on their largeness, believing that their high volume would compel the camera companies to move product through them. As it turns out, that sort of worked with Olympus, who doesn't have as strong a regular dealer network in the US (the dealer I use still hasn't seen an OM-D body, by the way, though he did get a grip for the camera). But it didn't work with Nikon.
When I asked representatives at two of the large pre-order takers why they were doing it if they didn't know when they could deliver, the response (both representatives did not want to be identified for obvious reasons) was the same: "because our competitors are doing it."
I'm going to use some back-of-the-envelope numbers here to suggest how big the problem turned out to be. Nikon says they can make 25,000 D800's a month. One of the large US vendors is reported to have received over 5,000 D800 pre-orders. The US is about one-third the overall sales of any given photography product, so those pre-orders represent about 60% of the US first month shipments. And remember, we've got at least three big affiliate programs that were taking pre-orders. If they all did equally well, that's 180% of first month shipments.
Here in the US early deliveries for products in shortage are compounded by two things: NPS Priority Purchase (PP) and US law. Nikon did not allocate all of the initial D800's to NPS PP, but this most decidedly took a chunk of cameras from initial US shipments. The two dealers I talked to at length reported a total of 5 NPS PP bodies and 10 for regular sale in their initial shipments. The other aspect—US law—says that you have to treat all dealers on the same contract level equally. If you send 4 units to dealer #1, you have to send 4 units to dealer #2 through n. (Yes, there are few things that modify this slightly, like a dealer being on credit hold, but overall, NikonUSA appears to follow the letter of this law.)
So how many US dealers are there?
I don't know for sure. The addition of outlets like Best Buy has muddied the overall waters a bit, but we're talking hundreds, if not into the thousands. I'm not privy to how NikonUSA would allocate between local dealers and the few big volume NYC and online outlets, but even if we put 60% into dealers and 30% into the big boys, our back of the envelope calculations now say those pre-orders represented over 500% of the first month production deliveries. With no assurance that they'd actually receive them in any particular time frame.
Before you go blaming the big stores and online sources, though, you might want to look within. Here's the other part of the problem: how many of you actually "pre-ordered" from more than one source? I know of quite a few people who put their names in at all their local stores, and at all the online sources taking pre-orders. These people figure that they'll cancel all the other sign-ups the minute the first one ships to them. (Worse still, these customers rarely cancel their order at local stores, as there's no deposit required and no likelihood their credit card will get charged. At some point that local dealer will end up with extra inventory because of that. That's one reason why the smaller market shops are your best bet for picking up a body quick.)
It doesn't help that Nikon is relatively conservative in its approach to building products. I can't think of any higher-end product they've not underestimated demand on since the D2h in 2003. It's not difficult to guess that Nikon isn't going to meet initial demand on any pro product, ever. Those that say that Nikon should be more like Apple and have plentiful supply on day one are missing a point: Nikon makes lowish volume niche products (the more pro it is, the more niche it is). Many of these products have life cycles of two to three years or more, and lots of them have very low overall volumes. A D4 might only achieve 150,000-200,000 units in its lifetime. There are only two realistic possibilities, therefore: make one huge batch up front and when it sells out, it sells out (and the factory then shutters until the next product comes along); or balance the factory size and production levels out over most of the life cycle of the product(s). Nikon has elected to do a form of the latter, and I believe that's the right choice. To choose the first option would be to have inventory buildup that kills some quarterly financial results.
To put things in perspective: Apple sells 35 million iPhones in a quarter. Nikon sells 20 million of everything in a year (that includes Coolpix, lenses, DSLRs, and more). Nikon isn't currently in a place where they could do what Apple does. Not many companies are.
So where does this leave pre-orders? In a waiting queue of indefinite length, as I suspected when I was asked to link to pre-orders. The queue will clear when it clears. Nikon certainly has done what they can to build more D800's, though that has only a modest upside to it given the size of the Sendai plant and staff. D800's appear to being expedited in delivery (air instead of boat deliveries, for example). But I don't know of a single dealer that has worked completely through their pre-order list and all the above still applies.
As I've noted elsewhere, I no longer will link to pre-orders (unless I get some assurance that the company in question has a firm commitment of both quantity and delivery date, and agrees that they won't take pre-orders beyond what they can guarantee delivery on). There's just too large a likelihood that the customer won't be satisfied with the result. While this certainly hurts me in affiliate revenue (I know of no other Web site that has taken the stance that I have—most seem to be doing pre-order links for everything these days), I think it's the right thing to do.
I've gotten a lot of emails claiming that Company A or Company B is at fault for the pre-order fiasco. Not really. The D800 is a high-demand product produced in relatively small volumes each month. It will take some time to clear the initial demand. Heck, it'll take a long time to clear demand, as the more people who get a D800 and find out what it can do the more demand there will be just on word-of-mouth alone, let alone reviews.
My advice is still the same as it ever was. If getting the latest and greatest is really so important to you, it's beneficial to be loyal to a dealer. In particular, a dealer that appreciates and reciprocates the loyalty. I have no doubt that my current dealer does his best to keep me happy, and I do the same for him. The big NYC and online stores aren't going to suddenly be prioritized over local dealers for deliveries by NikonUSA. The same scenario as has played out will continue to play out: NikonUSA will continue to fill orders to all dealers (who have orders in with NikonUSA) in basically the same proportions. It's the small market dealers that will clear their wait lists before the bigger market dealers, who will probably clear their wait lists before the biggest of the biggest.
I've written that several times before, the last time was when the D3 shipped. It took about six months to clear demand with that camera to the point where you could buy one off the shelf. It may take as long to clear the D800 backlog. The only way you're going to get a D800 sooner rather than later is to establish a good relationship with a Nikon dealer that will in turn prioritize you, or to be opportunistic and try to grab one of the unclaimed D800s wherever that turns up (again, typically smaller market dealers first).
One final thought. So why can you find a Canon 5DIII more easily than a D800? Several reasons. I believe Canon built up a bit more inventory before shipping, the demand is less, and the difference between the 5DIII and the previous model is not as extreme as it is with the D800 versus the D700. But I note the big NYC dealers seem to be out of it, too.
So let's take a different approach at the problem: we're living right now in a time when we've been presented with quite a few significant steps forward for serious cameras fairly close together. The Canon 1Dx and 5DIII, the Fujifilm X-Pro1, the Nikon D4 and D800, the Olympus OM-D, and the Sony NEX-7 and A77 are all arguably very interesting and high-performance cameras. Is it any surprise that they're all in short supply? Being angry at some vendor is, I suppose, a way of channeling your frustration at not getting what you want when you want it. But being angry at not getting something you want when you want it is also a form of narcissism.
In short, all parties are guilty, not just one. Being angry won't change that. I hereby apologize to those of you who used one of the few pre-order links I posted (before I took them down). I'll try not to be one of the guilty parties again in the future.