Troubador: Here we are again Pete, its Bird Fair and time for you to bring Birdforum members up to date with developments at Opticron and in the sports optics market generally.
Pete: Thanks Lee. This year we have only brought one new product to Bird Fair and that is an image stabilised binocular. Elsewhere at the fair you can see a few brands at the higher end of the market pushing field of view out to 8 degrees and beyond in both 8x32 and 8x42 formats. Elsewhere Swarovski are showing a digital model, and in discussions with our contract manufacturers, this is the direction they believe developments are moving. Not necessarily digital imaging, but digital facilitating of improvements to the viewing experience. And this means we are going to have to reconsider our concept of the life-cycles of our products. We all know from our experience of smart phones that these are constantly evolving, whereas optics simply do not do this. The fundamentals of optics are well known and there is not much more that can be done to improve the product, certainly in the middle of the market. Having said that, we are seeing ED glass moving down a price bracket and this is something we have to look at in our models below, say £200.
Troubador: Superficially this looks like a welcome trend but you really need to define what you mean by ‘ED’.
Pete: Exactly. It is easy to slap these two letters onto the name of a binocular without caring too much about what goes inside it or what it actually achieves. Over-marketing of the terms ED and HD certainly happens, for example we have seen models called ‘HD’ with no clear indication as to whether this meant HD in the same sense as ED, or whether it meant something else. So the trends I see at the moment are digital enhancement of viewing, notably image stabilisation, wider fields of view especially in the larger objective lens sizes, so 32 and 42mm, and the appearance at lower price-points of ED glass, although not always accompanied by noticeable improvements in optical quality.
Troubador: OK so you have the image-stabilised binocular on show now, but how are you going to approach the ED glass trend.
Pete: Well, it’s a couple of years since I showed you a prototype of a sub-£200 binocular with an ED lens in the objective and at the time this didn’t provide the right performance enhancement. So we need to revisit this, look at the different ED glasses available and talk to our contract manufacturers about how to come up with a genuinely improved optical performance at a price that works in the context of a retail price under £200. And we certainly need to look at the fields of view we offer at the top end of our range, it is such an important and obvious figure in any specification.
Troubador: And specifications are becoming more and more important as people buy over the internet without looking through the instruments. They are buying on specification which has to push you in certain directions.
Pete: Well it’s certainly true that bigger numbers sell better on the internet, so for example Amazon sell more 10x42 models than 8x42, and bigger fields of view do attract in the same way. However bigger fields of view need careful attention to control of distortions and edge sharpness if they are to do the job that people expect. Sometimes when I look through a binocular I feel that if it had half a degree less field of view, the resulting image would have been noticeably better.
Troubador: And what about field flatteners?
Pete: Yes, that is a possibility at the top end of our range.
Troubador: And the top price limit of around £600? Is that still fixed?
Pete: If I knew what is going to happen with Brexit I might have been able to answer this. For example I was talking to one of our customers about the image-stabilised binocular and I told him that at the moment it is in the frame at a price around £500, but Brexit might make that 30% more expensive or 30% cheaper. The whole situation makes forward planning very tricky and it was tricky enough without Brexit. For example we have discussed pushing upwards to around £700 but then we are starting to bump into the middle ranges of alpha brands, especially if they have promotional offers, and also brands such as GPO, and I am not convinced that is where Opticron sits in the market. I feel that Opticron is a brand for ‘everyman’ if I can put it like that, and not a brand with elite pretentions, so for the moment I feel that £600 or £600 plus a bit is the right place for us to be.
Troubador: We have seen the appearance especially in the States of brands selling direct to customers.
Pete: Indeed we have and one of the selling points used is the claim that their prices are lower because they have cut out the dealer. But knowing the prices that contract manufacturers charge I look at the prices from these brands and think that barely any savings are being passed on. On the other hand, the extra profit margin this brings allows Maven for example to offer customisation with different colours and so on. This is an interesting development and I will be keen to see how it works out in the long run.
Troubador: So Opticrons are binoculars for the ‘man in the street’ priced below £600-ish. What else characterises Opticron?
Pete: We are a brand for birders and nature observers and so self-exclude ourselves from a huge market in the States, and a significant market in Europe, and that is the market for rifle scopes and rangefinders, I mean the hunting market. This is quite different from, for example, Hawke, whose main market is hunters and other similar outdoor enthusiasts, and for whom the nature market is perhaps less significant as a share of its business. Digitalisation will certainly impact our market sector, and we will need to get on board and do this well. We will need to work with our contract manufacturing partners to develop products that suit the needs of our customers. This will bring quite different product cycles as I have mentioned already, but as well as more frequent product launches, there will be upgrades via software changes. So Swarovski have included a USB port on their prototype Digi-guide. This means that manufacturers are recruiting digital systems engineers as well as optical engineers.
Troubador: Its early-days yet but what has been the reaction to the image-stabilised binocular?
Pete: It’s been very encouraging and the price level hasn’t been a problem. If we had got stock of it here we could have sold about 6 yesterday for example. Just returning to digital for a moment, I don’t think that digital imaging is anywhere remotely close to replacing optical imaging for our customers. And frankly if a brand like Sony can’t manage it I don’t think anyone can. However what Swarovski have done by combining their quality optics with access to a great bird identification app shows how superior optics can combine with digital innovations and of course with software updates possible, the product can be kept up to date.
Troubador: Thank you as always Pete for a very interesting discussion on sports optics market trends and Opticron’s place in this.
Lee
Pete: Thanks Lee. This year we have only brought one new product to Bird Fair and that is an image stabilised binocular. Elsewhere at the fair you can see a few brands at the higher end of the market pushing field of view out to 8 degrees and beyond in both 8x32 and 8x42 formats. Elsewhere Swarovski are showing a digital model, and in discussions with our contract manufacturers, this is the direction they believe developments are moving. Not necessarily digital imaging, but digital facilitating of improvements to the viewing experience. And this means we are going to have to reconsider our concept of the life-cycles of our products. We all know from our experience of smart phones that these are constantly evolving, whereas optics simply do not do this. The fundamentals of optics are well known and there is not much more that can be done to improve the product, certainly in the middle of the market. Having said that, we are seeing ED glass moving down a price bracket and this is something we have to look at in our models below, say £200.
Troubador: Superficially this looks like a welcome trend but you really need to define what you mean by ‘ED’.
Pete: Exactly. It is easy to slap these two letters onto the name of a binocular without caring too much about what goes inside it or what it actually achieves. Over-marketing of the terms ED and HD certainly happens, for example we have seen models called ‘HD’ with no clear indication as to whether this meant HD in the same sense as ED, or whether it meant something else. So the trends I see at the moment are digital enhancement of viewing, notably image stabilisation, wider fields of view especially in the larger objective lens sizes, so 32 and 42mm, and the appearance at lower price-points of ED glass, although not always accompanied by noticeable improvements in optical quality.
Troubador: OK so you have the image-stabilised binocular on show now, but how are you going to approach the ED glass trend.
Pete: Well, it’s a couple of years since I showed you a prototype of a sub-£200 binocular with an ED lens in the objective and at the time this didn’t provide the right performance enhancement. So we need to revisit this, look at the different ED glasses available and talk to our contract manufacturers about how to come up with a genuinely improved optical performance at a price that works in the context of a retail price under £200. And we certainly need to look at the fields of view we offer at the top end of our range, it is such an important and obvious figure in any specification.
Troubador: And specifications are becoming more and more important as people buy over the internet without looking through the instruments. They are buying on specification which has to push you in certain directions.
Pete: Well it’s certainly true that bigger numbers sell better on the internet, so for example Amazon sell more 10x42 models than 8x42, and bigger fields of view do attract in the same way. However bigger fields of view need careful attention to control of distortions and edge sharpness if they are to do the job that people expect. Sometimes when I look through a binocular I feel that if it had half a degree less field of view, the resulting image would have been noticeably better.
Troubador: And what about field flatteners?
Pete: Yes, that is a possibility at the top end of our range.
Troubador: And the top price limit of around £600? Is that still fixed?
Pete: If I knew what is going to happen with Brexit I might have been able to answer this. For example I was talking to one of our customers about the image-stabilised binocular and I told him that at the moment it is in the frame at a price around £500, but Brexit might make that 30% more expensive or 30% cheaper. The whole situation makes forward planning very tricky and it was tricky enough without Brexit. For example we have discussed pushing upwards to around £700 but then we are starting to bump into the middle ranges of alpha brands, especially if they have promotional offers, and also brands such as GPO, and I am not convinced that is where Opticron sits in the market. I feel that Opticron is a brand for ‘everyman’ if I can put it like that, and not a brand with elite pretentions, so for the moment I feel that £600 or £600 plus a bit is the right place for us to be.
Troubador: We have seen the appearance especially in the States of brands selling direct to customers.
Pete: Indeed we have and one of the selling points used is the claim that their prices are lower because they have cut out the dealer. But knowing the prices that contract manufacturers charge I look at the prices from these brands and think that barely any savings are being passed on. On the other hand, the extra profit margin this brings allows Maven for example to offer customisation with different colours and so on. This is an interesting development and I will be keen to see how it works out in the long run.
Troubador: So Opticrons are binoculars for the ‘man in the street’ priced below £600-ish. What else characterises Opticron?
Pete: We are a brand for birders and nature observers and so self-exclude ourselves from a huge market in the States, and a significant market in Europe, and that is the market for rifle scopes and rangefinders, I mean the hunting market. This is quite different from, for example, Hawke, whose main market is hunters and other similar outdoor enthusiasts, and for whom the nature market is perhaps less significant as a share of its business. Digitalisation will certainly impact our market sector, and we will need to get on board and do this well. We will need to work with our contract manufacturing partners to develop products that suit the needs of our customers. This will bring quite different product cycles as I have mentioned already, but as well as more frequent product launches, there will be upgrades via software changes. So Swarovski have included a USB port on their prototype Digi-guide. This means that manufacturers are recruiting digital systems engineers as well as optical engineers.
Troubador: Its early-days yet but what has been the reaction to the image-stabilised binocular?
Pete: It’s been very encouraging and the price level hasn’t been a problem. If we had got stock of it here we could have sold about 6 yesterday for example. Just returning to digital for a moment, I don’t think that digital imaging is anywhere remotely close to replacing optical imaging for our customers. And frankly if a brand like Sony can’t manage it I don’t think anyone can. However what Swarovski have done by combining their quality optics with access to a great bird identification app shows how superior optics can combine with digital innovations and of course with software updates possible, the product can be kept up to date.
Troubador: Thank you as always Pete for a very interesting discussion on sports optics market trends and Opticron’s place in this.
Lee
