BAD example. These Steiners quickly got a reputation as being anything but tough. So the German army ditched them rather quickly and switched back to Hensoldt (=Zeiss), the Fero-D series (8x30, 7x50, 10x50).
Hermann
Hi, Neil and Hermann:
Even though they were incredibly popular with the northwest fishing fleet-Americans were prone to being happy looking through a rusty pipe if it had a GERMAN name on the sides or back-it took 15 years for me to bring them on at Captain's and only then with the understanding I would bring them on only owing to certain merits. There would not be any "shuck and jive." And that auto-focus fraud would be properly dealt with the moment it should pop up!
Years earlier, the Steiner rep told me Steiner sold to "22 of the world's armies and navies." He showed me a photo of Karl Steiner with a tire of his Mercedes parked atop a Steiner binocular. "Is that impressive, or what?" he asked. That was the start of my mantra: "Good advertising need not be accurate or even meaningful. It needs only to be believed." I walked to my collection of good BAD EXAMPLES, grabbed an old TASCO and headed to the parking lot of Fishermen's Terminal with the rep in-tow.
I wrapped the TASCO in one thickness of a towel, laid it on the asphalt, and pulled my maxed-out Chevy pickup on top of it. The Steiner rep wasn't impressed, especially when I showed him not only did the body not fracture but that the collimation was barely altered! I didn't place an order.
Months later, when Sven Harms was in Steiner marketing for Pioneer Research, he told me "Steiner doesn't sell to 22 armies and navies ... just one ... the biggest." I didn't tell him that the previous brag came from the lips of one of his representatives.
From the time Sven learned I wasn't going to swoon at all the over the top showmanship in the Steiner ads, he toned it down and became someone I could trust. He knew I wasn't going to be impressed with all flowery "technical" talk that sucked in the inexperienced and easily impressed by the droves.
In 2008, Steiner became part of Beretta Holding and today most of these great "German" binoculars come from Asia. With me gone and Captain's having sold in 2015, the waves have closed over my head and some of the finest names in binoculars went the way of the world. Today, their main thrust in binoculars is the Asian Steiners-although they do show the Fujinon MTR-SX, one telescope of which I cut in two as a display.
And, I am sure Jim (the new owner) is unaware that 50 years of that "Established 1897," was given him on a silver platter. Longtime own Leonard Shrock only gave its history as dating from 1947, when he bought the company. However, when I was director of advertising and marketing as an adjunct responsibility, I reasoned that since the product lines had essentially remained the same, the services were still the same, and the business philosophies had remained the same, there was no reason to truncate its history from the original date of operation-1897.
I know it is just vanity, but I feel like a man who has watched as his child has been strangled. If maturity ever overtakes me (doubtful) I will know ... it wasn't really MY child to start with. :cat:
Bill
