Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunting Optics Leupold Responds with a Special 24HourCampfire Exclusive

Woops. Didn’t mean to lock anything down. Just made it a global announcement. Let me see if I can fix and merge.

Should be fixed now.

This information confirms the same I was told by two people who also worked and retired from Leupold. Continuing attempts to “gaslight” current and former Leupold owners about such problems won’t help the situation...

Maybe we’re all stupid, missing the point that selling scopes that don’t perform correctly is the best way to drive additional sales. I slept through that marketing class apparently...😎

BINGO!

If some here remember, some years back we had a friendly debate about Leupold hiring a non- sportsman business man to lead them.

Many here thought it would lead to their demise.

Steve,

I researched and reported that as I found it. From what I learned, the family holds a major chunk of Leopold stock, enough to be a force on the board..

Fred Leopold and his BIL, founded the precursor to Leupold Optics in 1907. I would think family are now in their 4th, maybe 5th generations. Privileged, West Coast Millennials are probably snowflakes, based on this research and assuming it's true.. Just guessing, but you wouldn't want to bet against it.

Asking an employee who is brave enough to step into the lion's den here on the Fire, such a question may not be a good move.

If the family has that much stroke, you think a PR employee, sent here to put out fires, is gonna give us a heart felt, unvarnished answer to that question. I doubt it. I wouldn't if in his shoes, doubt you would either.

IMO, we need to keep our questions focused on tracking and holding zero. If we can get something done, at lesat an acknowledgement of problems, we've had a successful encounter. If Fire members go native on this guy, it's gonna cancel Doug's efforts and tarnish his good will with them, which benefits no one. And, the more hostile the Fire becomes, the easier it's going to be for Leupold to deflect and not own up to these issues. Instead of them being at fault, we're gong to be the "heavies". Those left leaning millennials on the board will just have their stereotyped thinking about us confirmed with nothing accomplished.

IMO. Give this some thought and respond.

DF

When Leupold signs on Tuesday, I want some biographical information on their rep or reps. I want to know that they are sending someone who understands scopes rather than a PR rep.

I'm guess a PR type. We'll see what he knows, won't take long.

DF

Not directed at anyone specifically but there sure are a lot of assumptions being made.

This is so.

I'd rather not see it turn into "why isn't Leupold building all their scopes to be FFP with Mil reticles?"

I'd like to see tracking and POI retention be the focus, period---with a little reliability thrown in to cover the alleged weakness of the 3i series.

In the interest of time during the Q&A;
The reason you can no longer have your ridiculously low-priced $80 reticle swap (or whatever it was for eons) is because the juice no longer justified the squeeze.
How Leupold was able to process, swap the reticle and ship it back for that price for so long is a wonderment.

Probably the "bean counters" asked that same question.

Thus, a new policy.

DF

How many times have you wanted a 6x42 with a Wide Duplex?

Everything in America is built under “planned failure just outside warranty”, which has created our present throw-away-economy that every large present day Manufacture’s business plan is built on. Six-Sigma, On-Time inventory, and number of times you turn inventory, has become the objective over lasting quality, and removed the pride-in-craftsmanship America was built on.

Gone are the days where 30, 40, 50, et al. year old heirlooms (Rifles w/ scopes) will be passed down with stories to children and grandchildren in the future, because nothing these days lasts hardly ten years, much less one generation.

The costs of warranty are now factored into the cost of the product, whereas in generations past, you never heard the word “warranty”, because quality Made in the U.S.A. goods lasted...and lasted…and lasted. Present day manufactures walk a very thin line, because they know one small mistake of making their product “too” cheap will create a snowball that will steamroll the warranty numbers, sending them into the red, and how good their Balance Sheet is determines whether they are able to re-engineer the problem, fight the PR nightmare from a failed product and win their customers back, and ultimately whether they remain in business.

When your product is being purchased with the public’s discretionary income, you won’t remain in business if you steal from their wallets with a cheap quality product, because you will lose in the PR campaign.

Placing Made in the U.S.A. on your product in this day and time is just a marketing scheme to brainwash the public into believing it has the same craftsmanship and quality of generations past…but we all know it is just one big façade with the majority of high-production products…unfortunately.

The Outdoorsmen of America have put Leupold into check. It is now up to Leupold whether they can escape being put into Checkmate (out of business).

I would only ask Leupold one single question, “Thanks for coming. Please tell us why we should buy your product.” They know what their problems are, and they wouldn’t be coming here unless the bad PR was really getting to their numbers. I would just quietly sit back, and listen to how they plan on solving their issues. Your questions will not sway them one way or the other. They will either change their company philosophy, and start building a quality product again, or go the way of other products who attempted the un-American cheap-quality-business-plan-route to ultimately lose in the end.

The more you let them spend the time talking, without being flooded with questions, the more you’ll have to evaluate whether it was honest and truthful. Look at this like the 24hourcommunity are VC’s with the money (your discretionary income), and Leupold is coming here to ask you to invest. If they don’t make a sound case with supporting facts, they don’t get their needed investment money (your discretionary income).

Good points.

DF

Very well said .

Yah, he speaks fluent moron. For phucqk's sake write something based upon fact and not a bunch of bullchit.

I always enjoy the "blame the bean counters" talk. They take direction from the person running the company just as the engineering and manufacturing department heads do.

CEO may be a bean counter for all I know.

That was the beauty of Ruger back when ole Bill was CEO. He told the bean counters what to do. Went with his instincts, not what marketing types were saying. Otherwise doubt we’d have the #1 and such. If he liked a product he built it. We tended to like what he liked. The rest is history.

DF

I applaud Doug’s initiative, but I despise conference calls and online meetings and since I’m retired I don’t have to subject myself to folks talking over each other trying to out talk the others. I’ll skip the War and Peace version and wait for the Readers Digest version here on the Fire. I’d be happy if I could predict the mean time between failures of the Leupold scopes that I own! LOL!

I disagree. Strongly at that. They need to be presented with a controllable number of questions that speak to the heart of the issue. If the conversation were mine to launch, I'd launch it as such.

Me to Leupold: "In reading the recent Leupold thread here on the 'fire, the central issue seems to be that customers aren't happy with the results they get when they adjust the dials on their Leupold scopes." Is that what you take away from the discussion?"

Once you establish whether Leupold believes those customers, you can move forward.

If Leupold doesn't see that as the central issue or they don't believe those customer complaints, the conversation stops.

Once you establish that Leupold understands that unpredictable or unreliable adjustments to be the customer's central complaint and believes those customers are really having those issues, the conversation turns to what Leopold is going to do to correct the issue.

This schidt is remarkably simple. The last thing Leupold needs is a barrage of idiotic questions that don't focus like a laser on the real issue.