My “well over $0.02”.
Im all for flooding a manufacturer with requests, but I still think theres a whole lot of pie in the sky going on here that is worth considering. More people should listen to kurts86’s couple posts up there. My background is in product management and development as well, and I will only add that these scope companies are businesses and they cant afford a pet product that doesnt have legit legs—if it wont sell enough to recoup their investment and contribute to their bottom line and growth, they are better off not touching it. No company I’ve ever worked for would touch a big project like that without a complete business plan that was sustainable over the long term, had specific target customers and selling points, but also estimated market volumes based on actual
data, and you could make a very strong case they would provide a positive ROI relatively quickly…AND showed why THIS project is better than any of the other projects that are also inevitably in the pipeline. Some of those things exist here, some definitely do not. It’s one thing to do a special manufacturing run of an existing product (ie gap lrhs), its a totally different ballgame to build a new product and put it into production. If you are talking about revised mechanicals, a new magnification (“we want a 3-12 and you only offer 3-15”), etc thats a ground-up build more or less that requires new designs, tooling, production set ups, etc.. I think people are fooling themselves about getting anything resembling a custom scope if it doesn’t already fit 99% into an existing footprint of a product that already exists, or at the very least into a new product project that is already well-along in the process.
Even then Im still extremely skeptical of the actual demand. The reticle sounds really cool and I get all of the concepts, but I still doubt its the reticle for me. Not without trying it anyway, and I aint spending $1500 or $2k to dip my toe in the water. It’s a fantastic concept that makes perfect sense, but just looking at it it’s a really tough sell— look around, virtually no one on this forum was anything except highly skeptical of it at first, including Form. I also think its likely that as “scope x” solidifies into more than a hazy dream, lots of people like me find x or y specific feature (weight, reticle, size, etc) isn't what they’re looking for and it becomes a deal-breaker. Based on this Im skeptical of any project like it that doesnt fit into a very low-volume business model. You start talking about products involving five or eight different parts suppliers, manufacturing suppliers, small parts assembly and genuine measurable precision and durability requirements, and that doesn’t sound like a low volume business model to me.
i’ve heard some folks talk about a company that “is listening” with regard to durability tests, but no word on who that is or where that is going. If there is indeed a company already putting considerable effort into building a durable hunting scope, then it seems one of the primary targets for getting the reticle you all want should be that project. My suggestion would be to push them in the direction of offering more than one reticle because I think this THLR reticle will be a really hard sell to a lot of people—adding a good more “traditional” hunting reticle such as a 4 or 5 mil half-mil mildot with a .08mil center crosshair would address a lot of the skeptics and prevent the entire package from having too many “dealbreaker” features that address a narrow subset of their potential customers.
Im all for flooding a manufacturer with requests, but I still think theres a whole lot of pie in the sky going on here that is worth considering. More people should listen to kurts86’s couple posts up there. My background is in product management and development as well, and I will only add that these scope companies are businesses and they cant afford a pet product that doesnt have legit legs—if it wont sell enough to recoup their investment and contribute to their bottom line and growth, they are better off not touching it. No company I’ve ever worked for would touch a big project like that without a complete business plan that was sustainable over the long term, had specific target customers and selling points, but also estimated market volumes based on actual
data, and you could make a very strong case they would provide a positive ROI relatively quickly…AND showed why THIS project is better than any of the other projects that are also inevitably in the pipeline. Some of those things exist here, some definitely do not. It’s one thing to do a special manufacturing run of an existing product (ie gap lrhs), its a totally different ballgame to build a new product and put it into production. If you are talking about revised mechanicals, a new magnification (“we want a 3-12 and you only offer 3-15”), etc thats a ground-up build more or less that requires new designs, tooling, production set ups, etc.. I think people are fooling themselves about getting anything resembling a custom scope if it doesn’t already fit 99% into an existing footprint of a product that already exists, or at the very least into a new product project that is already well-along in the process.
Even then Im still extremely skeptical of the actual demand. The reticle sounds really cool and I get all of the concepts, but I still doubt its the reticle for me. Not without trying it anyway, and I aint spending $1500 or $2k to dip my toe in the water. It’s a fantastic concept that makes perfect sense, but just looking at it it’s a really tough sell— look around, virtually no one on this forum was anything except highly skeptical of it at first, including Form. I also think its likely that as “scope x” solidifies into more than a hazy dream, lots of people like me find x or y specific feature (weight, reticle, size, etc) isn't what they’re looking for and it becomes a deal-breaker. Based on this Im skeptical of any project like it that doesnt fit into a very low-volume business model. You start talking about products involving five or eight different parts suppliers, manufacturing suppliers, small parts assembly and genuine measurable precision and durability requirements, and that doesn’t sound like a low volume business model to me.
i’ve heard some folks talk about a company that “is listening” with regard to durability tests, but no word on who that is or where that is going. If there is indeed a company already putting considerable effort into building a durable hunting scope, then it seems one of the primary targets for getting the reticle you all want should be that project. My suggestion would be to push them in the direction of offering more than one reticle because I think this THLR reticle will be a really hard sell to a lot of people—adding a good more “traditional” hunting reticle such as a 4 or 5 mil half-mil mildot with a .08mil center crosshair would address a lot of the skeptics and prevent the entire package from having too many “dealbreaker” features that address a narrow subset of their potential customers.
