Thoughts by John Handy
Brock:
It does seem the rumor mill on the next uber optic, has now entered the twilight zone
of one, "your" opinion of what hunters will purchase. There is one thing I do know, Swaro. has the largest slice of the optics market with hunters, and along with birders, many know
what they desire in a quality optic.
This thread is like many with the anticipation of the next, newest, best optic to enter
the market.
I do hope Zeiss will please us with a nice new binocular, the competition is very good.
If it is just a FL with new armor, without a better full field optics design, and an Edge to edge view, then I think the Zeiss will have missed the mark, and what I would expect in
a top rated binocular.
So, we will all see, when the new models enter the marketplace.
Jerry
I originally tacked these comments on to my reply as a "P.S." but the PS became longer than the original post, so I'm posting them here in a separate post. Also deleted a paragraph that might potentially cause inflammatory bowel.
P.S. An important issue in hunter's buying habits that needs to be taken into consideration in your comments above is that most hunters hold on to their bins longer than birders.
Take mooreorless as an example. He had his SLC for 20 years. Traded it in for an SLCneu and got half off! Despite the discussions of the latest alphas on hunting optics forums, many hunters say they will be holding on to their SLCs or old ELs (or Leupolds or whatever they have) rather than coughing up $2K for HDs and SV ELs or another alpha. As a reader and poster of hunting optics forums, that shouldn't surprise you.
The reason Swaro brought out the CL line was to address this issue of the growing gap btwn the "haves" and "have nots" and that's even how they marketed them.
Who's doing their sport in the winter months when they need bright optics? Who needs to travel "light" because they are humping a whole load of other equipment?
The CL was designed to replace the 8x30 SLC, which was popular with hunters. However, it didn't seem to catch on with birders from the comments on these forums, I think primarily due to modest FOV. Then again, the 8x30 SLC was never the darling of birders either, with its long close focus and objective side focuser.
Having said that, Nikon needs to sell about 10 Monarchs to equal the value of the sale of one 8.5x SV EL. But what matters more than sales volume is the profit each companies makes from the bins they sell.
Even if Nikon sells more units, if the profit margin is thin, it takes a lot more units to turn a good profit. OTOH, if the mark up on Swaros is steeper, Swaro needs to sell less to make the same profit.
But since we don't know (do we?) what the company's actual cost is vs. our cost, we can't determine if mass market beats specialty sales. With cheap Chinese labor, one would think so.
Though not a hunter myself, reading hunting optics forums and from many "conversations" with mooreorless about hunting optics, I've learned "a thing or two" about the buying habits of hunters. I'm not sure about Rod Serling.
Brock