What are you trying to accomplish by making this distinction?
I ask because I think there’s a false distinction that you’re making in the first place. If you look at almost any outdoor product, except for tiny, tiny boutique brands that do their own sewing in-house, stuff like that, virtually every outdoor product you own is made in factories that are owned by a third-party. Just as an example, only a very small % of the waterproof-breatheable jackets in the world are manufactured by the company that markets them—not OR, not arcteryx, not the north face, not first lite, not kuiu, not patagonia, same for fabric, virtually none actually make or even develop the fabrics used. Ditto for backpacks—most of the top outdoor brands make their packs in the same factory in vietnam. Ditto for footwear. Ditto for fishing waders. Ditto for long underwear, insulating layers, ski poles, flashlights and headlamps, etc, etc, etc, etc. same goes for dozens of different product types in outdoor gear. A company like light optics works provides manufacturing for a whole pile of different companies based on the design and specifications and materials dictated by that company. In some cases a company could buy an open product designed by the manufacturer that isn’t protected by copyrights or anything like that, and there may be some design and development service that a manufacturer can provide, but in most cases the manufacturer is given a spec sheet that includes every detail about the product, hundreds of measurements, material specifications, tolerances, etc, and builds that—they provide a service just like an advertising agency helps them gain new customers, just like an accountant helps them with finances and taxes, and just like a gardener helps them water the plants in their office, just like the plow guy helps keep the parking lot clear in winter—in a lot of cases it makes sense to have a specialist contractor perform a service for you due to the critical mass of resource they can bring to one facet of a business. If you define “who makes a scope” as “who owns and maintains a complete production facility from design and development through raw material acquisition, parts manufacture thru assembly thru packaging thru marketing and sales” my guess is theres not a single company in the world who does it all from start to finish when you think about making scope tubes, lenses, lens coatings and their application, sourcing metals and plastics and making plastic molded parts, metal machined parts, screws, glues, rubber overmolded parts, packaging, testing, etc. So where do you draw the line on when a company actually “makes” scopes? Can they do their own development but outsource design? Or vice versa? Can they design and develop it but have a third party manufacture it? Can they spec it, test a third party design and have the design tweaked based on testing, then have it produced? Etc….and worse, you’ll get different combinations all within the same company and product line.
Really, without sitting down with a product manager at a specific company to get the entire lowdown on where everything comes from every step of the way, you’ll never know the whole story. And yes, companies that do everything in-house are extremely limited in what they can do and how fast they can do it—its why its almost unheard of, and when you find it those companies usually are super low volume boutique brands, or have some frustrating quirks that people dont understand.
Edit: “assembled in xxxxx by zzzzz” tells you a significant but very small part of who “made” the acope
