Who makes what?

[ratherbefishin]

With all the outsourcing ,its hard to know who made what anymore.You could buy a brand name scope thinking you were buying a product superior to another-when in reality the only diference was the brand name -or the price,they all came off the same assembly line.

Is there any reliable source of information that would enable the consumer to compare actual product vs advertising claims?

years ago in LA,I was at the Firestone plant where my wifes grandfather was a foreman,watching 4 diferent brand names coming off the SAME assembly line-the ONLY diference was the name-and the price.After that I became rather cynical reading ads ,or thinking paying more automatically got you a better product

 

[ratherbefishin]

so-when you read these advertising claims that some company is building the SAME scope under a diferent brand name-is there any truth to it?

 

[Dogleg]

so-when you read these advertising claims that some company is building the SAME scope under a diferent brand name-is there any truth to it?

There is no simple answer.

When it comes right down to it, it's very difficult to establish who makes what, especially when it comes to Asian scopes. Most companies with their names on the tube never made it. The assemblers change constantly, so the scope made by plant could be made in another country next week.

Here's an very loose example; Browning marked scopes were said to be a bushnell 3200 without the rain-guard. That's more or less true, but the tuth is that bushnell doesn't make their own scopes either. The high-end bushnells have often been made by Light Optical Works, at least initially. A meat and potatos scope like a 3200 is unlikely to have ever seen the inside of that plant, maybe Asian Optical on a good day, maybe Hakko if the bids worked out better.
Does it follow that Hakko made the Browning marked scope? Well maybe, but Hakko is a group of assemblers and that work could have been to farmed out to somebody's basement. Believe it or not, it can go downhill from there.
This is leaving out that parts are out-sourced. That's not a huge deal on lens which are ordered by type, glass quality, amount of lens coating and surface finish. They will get what they paid for, and quality is easily checked against fixed standards.Quality control is very hard to control on out-sourced parts, but somewhat easier during assembly. Companies that assemble their own scopes have the ability to get all the quality control that they are willing to pay for.
There are no deals on optics. You can decide how good is good enough, but you can't get something better than you paid for.

 

[ratherbefishin]

I am extremely skeptical about brand names and advertising,and what you just said confirms it.I am not a ''name brand'' buyer-all that counts is to get the best bang for my buck-and if I knew brand X had exactly the same components as brand Y but at a lower price, I'd buy it.I often suspect that if the consumer ever learns the truth it is by mistake,not design.As said,I learned that lesson years ago in the Firestone factory-Paying twice as much doesn't neccesarily mean you are buying ANYTHING diferent than a hot stamped name on it,and just because one product line has a good reputation-doesn't neccarily mean ALL their product lines share equal quality-although the company would have you to believe it

 

[Dogleg]

Oddly enough, my point is when that dealing with Asian scopes price is a very good indicator of what you are going to get. Getting the same scope for half the money is not in the cards.