Kevin, You need to fix the "t" key on your keyboard!
Glad to hear Cameraland is carrying Zen Rays. Funny, because not long ago someone was dissing ZR because it didn't have dealers, but was merely "an office with a couple guys importing bins from China" (I'm paraphrasing, but not too far off).
Hopefully, Cameraland will lend an air of legitimacy for those who still doubt the high quality of ZR optics.
I think those who say things like that must no idea of how a small business works. You don't just make a new line of binoculars, put up a Website, and your bins suddenly appear at all the big name camera stores like companies that have been around for half a century or more such as Nikon, Leica, Zeiss, Swarovski, Bushnell, etc.
You start with Baby Steps. Just ask Bill Murray.
Oberwerk also started selling their bins exclusively through their Website, and now other stores carry their bins. Vortex started out selling their optics through only one store, Eagle Optics, and now their products can be found at other dealers.
I'm quite impressed at how fast Vortex's product lines grew. That must have taken a large infusion of capital. Fortunately, most of this development happened before the credit markets froze.
I'd like to see Zen Ray eventually branch out into larger format and higher magnification ED bins and ED spotting scopes, and also make rifle scopes and rangefinders. I don't hunt, but I think it would help the company win over more hunters, and having more than one market would improve the company's bottom line and benefit birders in the long run with more $$$ for designing, developing, and manufacturing new birding bins and scopes.
But for now ZR is concentrating mainly on improving the products they already have, and getting more of them sold, and that's a wise move in this economy.
In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if the recession has helped ZR. It reminds me of the gas crisis in the 1970s when the sale of Japanese cars suddenly soared. I bought a Datzun 240 Z in the early 80s. While the quality of the steel could have been better (rusted easily), the car's
performance matched that of sports cars costing 3-5x as much. Sound familiar?
Congratulations! Charles and company with finding your first US dealer. Keep up the good work.