Pack Up All Our Cares And Woe...

Here we go...cursing low...

No, that's not the way it was. Take the cardboard divider out and reverse it and put the woe on the right hand side. No, that was where the cares went. Take the stuff out and start again. What is this little plastic bag for?

Unpacking a new camera or lens is always an exciting part of working here. We are as big equipment geeks as any of our customers and we want to see the new stuff as badly as anyone else. But we pay a terrible price for this pleasure - we have to repack the box.

Packaging for safe transport is a real industrial and commercial science. The equipment we sell is delicate ( with the possible exception of some of the Olympus Tough cameras which  are second cousins to artillery shells...) and it needs to get to the client's hands undamaged. After that they can do as they wish - the invoice has gone through.

Packaging also has an economic aspect - if you get two more cameras into a carton for overseas shipping you can save that much more in the transportations charges.

It also has an aesthetic and, dare I say it, cultural aspect. Quite apart from the Gollum-like behaviour of some camera buyers, and the need to preserve every layer of packaging inviolate for their private deflowering...there is a pleasure to be had in seeing a well-packaged product. In this we are no different from the consumers of women's cosmetics or luxury watches - the wrapping is important.

That cultural aspect...well, consider that the Japanese people are masters of packaging and have traditions of careful paper and card folding. They now have CAD programs to further complicate their designs and some of the boxes that we get have such an interlocking maze of stiff card as to practically defy unwrapping. To be honest, the Olympus products certainly defy repacking, at least in any decent sense. Throwing the camera and cardboard and plastic back into the box and stamping on it is not decent...

Let me complement the Epson company for their packaging and presentation. Their big 'ol printers are in big  'ol boxes, and you might need help lifting it into the back of the Fiat 500, but once you are home, the things come out of he package and set up like champions. Really good instructions.

Well, you must excuse me. I have a box that contained 180 grammes of lens that needs to be repacked. Once the layers of card, wood, plastic, rubber. and titanium cast brackets have been successfully reassembled we can put it back in the storage shelf. We close at 5:30 and I hope to make it...