Surprised that Doug continue to push such companies that come and go like Zen-Ray. Well, maybe not...
What companies do I "continue to push such companies that come and go like Zen-Ray"?
When we sold Zen-Ray we made it
abundantly clear that Zen-Ray was owned and run by a guy names Charles and if/when something happens to Charles the future of Zen-Ray is questionable. Well, 2 Octobers ago Charles stopped returning calls and e-mails. It's as if he fell off the face of the planet.
Charles (Zen-Ray) knew where to source product. He didn't do or offer anything revolutionary. He sold the same products many other bands offered at a lower price. He did this for 12-13 years and then disappeared. There are similar companies that popped up in the last few years, started by guys who have been in this industry for a long time who also know where to source product. Tract, Maven, and others. These are direct to consumer companies and offer, from what I understand, good products at sharp pricing. Will one of these guys who used to work at a major brand be offered a great job with good pay and benefits by a major company and decide that's better for him and his family and disappear like Zen-Ray did. Maybe, who knows.
We represent what we have found to be quality products from reputable companies we feel will be here to assist with any issues.
Many of you are aware we have been in talks with March scopes for a while now. We want to offer their scopes, however, we will not do so until they have some quality infrastructure here in the US. We choose not to sell their scopes at the moment as we do not feel that having to send any issues back to Japan is efficient.
When Minox was under the Leica umbrella we handled Minox. About a year after Blaser took it over (IMO to get the intellectual property to offer under the Blaser brand) we stopped handling Minox. In that year Minox did nothing new, had basically nobody at SHOT at their booth and Blaser showed little interest in non-Blaser dealers when it came to Minox.
We are still a Minox authorized dealer, however, we no longer stock their optics and only handle it as special order