I can say I did learn a valuable lesson with ZenRay though. We were a ZenRay dealer for over a decade, however, ZenRay was owned by a guy named Charles. Charles was a great guy and he knew where to source product in the Pacific Rim. ZenRay sold competitive quality optics below the costs of other brands which sourced from the same places (Let's face it most of the optics today are coming from the same factories). Unfortunately, as I said the entire time we were ZenRay dealers, "If anything happens to Charles I have no idea what will happen to ZenRay". As some of you know ZenRay basically fell off the planet one day in October of 2017. No phones or e-mails were answered after then and nobody knows what happened to ZenRay. Either something happened to Charles or he retired but a brand that was there in September was gone in October.
Many of these new start up, direct to consumer brands, are brought by guys who have been in the industry for years and either lost their jobs or left their jobs. They know where to source optics and have spent their lives in the industry and know optics so they have started their own brands. I wish them the best of luck.
With my lesson learned with ZenRay I have 2 questions.
1) What happens to these brands when something happens to the owner?
2) What happens if business is slow and a major brand offers the owner a national sales position with a good salary and benefits?
I think Doug makes a great point, regarding the longterm viability of some companies. I suppose any company can go under, but when the success hinges on one or two people, there seems to be more risk.
I remember when Zen Ray hit the scene. They seemed to change the perception of low cost binos, from certain PacRim countries.
I once met Charles, at Zen Ray, when I had a problem with one of his binos. He took the time to meet at his office, after business hours. Great guy to talk to. He explained what was wrong with my bino, why he started Zen Ray, the overseas connections he had, etc. Just seemed like a very nice and genuine guy.
I was, and still am, impressed with those binos for the time period and cost. Just when it seemed like Zen Ray was on a roll, Charles disappeared like Doug mentioned.
Jason