Saturday, January 3, 2015

Entrepreneurial Genius: The Selfie Stick


Bloomberg reports:
Around the U.S. this holiday season, camera shops, department stores and pharmacies have been having a hard time keeping up with demand for the selfie stick, a retractable pole that people clamp onto their smartphones to take better pictures of themselves.

Nordstrom Inc., which carried the Selfie On A Stick model in 118 stores starting in late November, said it had to reorder the item twice before Christmas and is currently sold out. ProMaster, which supplies camera accessories to 500 U.S. stores, said it had to keep re-ordering selfie sticks after running out of stock...

The popularity of the devices throws some camera stores -- which are experiencing declining sales of point-and-click digital cameras as people increasingly use smartphones to snap pictures -- a lifeline of sorts. With selfie sticks, camera shops can offset lost sales by selling accessories to the growing ranks of smartphone photographers.

“The smartphone has helped introduce photography to a whole lot of people who may not have been exposed to it,” said Richard Bright, director of sales at ProMaster in Fairfield, Connecticut, which offers the ProMaster Selfie Stick. “Camera shops are certainly embracing the rise of the smartphone. They’d be foolish not to.”...

Selfie sticks are more than for just vanity shots of oneself. Photographers can use the pole to extend their reach, getting more friends and family members in a shot or including more sights in the background. Beyond selfies, the stick can help people get interesting camera angles or be used as a microphone boom arm.

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