Hmm.. lets observe the typical fry's shopper...
"Big Screen TV: $3995"
"Celestron C-14: $3995"
"I'll take the TV."
My money is that its more of a "leisure product" issue.
Which in the large seem to be driven by fads.
Lots of other companies/market-segments have gone this route.
E.g. hobby electronics. Remember heathkit?
--- Lynne Jolitz <lynne@No-Spam> wrote:
> Its all about the buying experience. Consider what you see at Frys and
> Orion:
>
> Frys - pile of boxes with vibrant art, no place to see /try them. Biggest
> issue is price point, and the discount drags you in.
>
> Orion - sells the experience like a car dealer, hope is to hook you and work
> up the sale beyond your ability to pay, by buying ahead. Works off the buddy
> principle of drag-in, or the "got to get a telescope to see mars cause its
> coming by".
>
> Volume verses Margin. So Frys moves crap with expectation of selling better
> crap next time. Orion steers you into a hobby selling you own brands to mine
> out your pocketbook best.
>
> How can Celestron / Meade not be bought and made overseas, and still sell at
> Fry's?
> How can Orion not be acquired by a group selling experience, not bare
> scopes?
>
> Neither one of these gives a hoot about selling diversity in product and
> market.
> Nor do really the customers, most of whom can't tell the difference between
> one blurry spot and another from a different source.
>
> The root cause here is lack of outreach into the general community of how to
> make any telescope work for them the best it can possibly can, and making
> that *more* important than cheap envy, price envy, aperture envy, eyepeice
> envy, ...
> ... in other words, amateurs are creating their own hell, item by item, and
> then bemoaning what happens later on.
>
> And if an idiot product manager forgets to add disclaimers about cover/blurb
> pictures, he's just not doing his job - how stupid can you get!
> ----
> We use SpamQuiz.
> If your ISP didn't make the grade try http://lynne.telemuse.net
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: sf-bay-tac-bounces@No-Spam [mailto:sf-bay-tac-bounces@No-Spam]On
> Behalf Of Richard Crisp (SBC)
> Sent: Wednesday, April 06, 2005 9:08 AM
> To: The Astronomy Connection
> Subject: [TAC] old WSJ article about telescopes and deceptive
> advertisinglawsuits
>
>
> in the wake of the potentially imminent demise of one or both of our
> domestic SCT makers, here's an article that may be of interest
>
> ---
> By REED ALBERGOTTI
> Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
> December 22, 2004
>
> Here is a reality check for anyone craving a telescope for
> Christmas: It isn't easy as you might think to see the stars.
>
> Pictures of celestial wonders often adorn telescope boxes. But
> behind those images lies a battle over whether manufacturers
> overpromise. Far from resembling something out of science fiction,
> often what you see through a telescope is a small, nearly colorless
> image.
>
> In 2002 and 2003, a series of lawsuits were filed against five
> telescope makers, including industry leaders Meade Instruments Corp.
> of Irvine, Calif., and Celestron , of Torrance, Calif., claiming
> that they were using deceptive marketing.
>
> In the wake of the suits, which were settled out of court, some of
> the manufacturers altered their packaging to ensure that the
> photographs on their boxes or in their catalogs reflected the
> capabilities of the actual telescope being advertised and to include
> disclaimers noting the images were merely "decorative."
>
> Even now, that doesn't mean the images necessarily reproduce what
> you will see when you point the telescope at the stars. The pictures
> on telescope boxes often are taken with digital cameras attached to
> the telescopes that produce images better than anything the human
> eye can observe through the telescope.
>
> "I expected to see the same kind of objects you could see on the
> box," says retired California National Guard Col. George Robinson,
> who decided to get into astronomy a few years ago. The box of his
> telescope showed pictures of colorful nebulae, comets, meteors and
> star clusters. When he looked through the eyepiece, he realized the
> view was less impressive. "It stayed in the garage," he says.
> Friends later got him a different telescope, and he has since become
> a dedicated amateur astronomer.
>
> Sales of telescopes have been flat recently after spiking in 2003,
> when Mars was at its closest point in more than 50,000 years.
> Telescope makers say they get pressure from retailers to add flash
> to their boxes, because stores know the marketing sells telescopes.
> Some astronomers also say images taken by the Hubble space
> telescope -- released by the National Aeronautics and Space
> Administration as brilliant color images -- raised people's
> expectations for space viewing.
>
> The lawsuits were filed in Ventura Superior Court in California by
> William Weilbacher, an attorney and amateur astronomer, on behalf of
> several fellow astronomers. In one filed in September 2003 against
> Orion Telescopes & Binoculars in Watsonville, Calif., for example,
> he took aim at a catalog from the company, saying the company's
> telescopes "are totally incapable of providing actual views even
> remotely comparable to the pictures of the celestial objects as
> depicted on the catalog pages." Mr. Weilbacher sued under a
> California consumer-protection law that has since been repealed.
>
> STAR-GAZING OPTIONS
>
>
>
> A sampling of telescopes for beginners, based on discussions with
> astronomers.
>
> Telescope Price Comment
> Edmund Scientific Astroscan $199.00 A small telescope for
> beginners that comes with a shoulder strap. Sits on a stand and
> doesn't need an expensive tripod. But astronomers like the optics,
> and with a 4.25'' mirror, you can see a lot.
> Orion Skyquest XT4.5 $199.00 Dobsonian telescopes like this
> beginner's model rest directly on the ground, making them sturdy
> without a steep price tag. With its 4.5'' mirror, you can view the
> moon's craters, Saturn's rings, constellations and some fainter
> objects. A downside: Dobsonians aren't very portable.
> Meade 114EQ-A $239.00 This scope has a 4.5'' mirror -- good enough
> for a beginner -- and a decent aluminum equatorial mount for
> tracking stars. It costs a little more than the Orion Dobsonian but
> won't take up as much space.
> Meade Telestar DS 2114 $299.00 This 4.5'' reflector telescope has
> a motorized mount that will automatically point at an object when
> you enter the coordinates.
> Celestron C150-HD $399.95 Has a 6'' mirror and comes with an
> equatorial mount, making it more effective in tracking stars, but
> also more technical. It could work for beginners and experienced
> astronomers.
>
>
>
> Orion says the lawsuit was without merit and that the company didn't
> significantly change any of its practices because of the
> settlement. "In years past, [marketing] was borderline deceptive in
> some cases by some companies," says Tim Gieseler, co-founder of
> Orion. He acknowledges the company uses photos taken with digital
> cameras, which don't always represent what you see through a
> telescope, but says that's just "the same kind of puffery [as]
> selling a camera with a photo of a sporting event taken by a skilled
> photographer."
>
> Mr. Weilbacher also sued Cstar Optics Inc., based in Baldwin Park,
> Calif., over photography on the box of its products. He also alleged
> that it was advertising magnifications that were too high for the
> telescopes. Rodney Wayne Harris, Cstar's vice president, says he
> doesn't think people were being deceived by the photography, but he
> decided to change the magnification claims and add a disclaimer
> letting people know they can't see everything shown on the box. "The
> lawyer had a valid point" about the magnification claims, says Mr.
> Harris, adding that the changes they made will make the company
> stronger in the long run. The company says it paid about $18,000 to
> the plaintiff and agreed to donate about 50 telescopes to local high
> schools.
>
> Meade and Celestron declined to discuss the terms of their
> settlements, though they said the suits lacked merit. The small
> pictures of planets and stars on the new Meade box are less colorful
> than they were on the old and represent more clearly what you can
> actually see through the telescope.
>
> Robert Davis, senior vice president, notes that the company doesn't
> believe it was misleading consumers before. He adds that digital
> photography has become more affordable, and to ignore that in
> marketing is to ignore a new frontier in the industry.
>
> Bushnell Performance Optics of Overland Park, Kan., which owns
> Tasco, declined to comment.
>
> Despite the controversy over the packaging, telescopes have, in
> fact, improved a lot over the years. While the basic technology
> hasn't changed, star-tracking computers have become increasingly
> common. Many telescopes, for example, now contain built-in
> computerized star charts that allow the user to plug in the
> coordinates of objects such as Saturn and have the telescope
> automatically find them. Even relatively inexpensive models now have
> built-in narrators that explain through speakers what the telescope
> is pointing at.
>
> When looking for a telescope, beginners should ignore claims about
> the power, or magnification, of the eyepieces. High-magnification
> eyepieces can make it more difficult to see, because the more an
> object is magnified, the more distorted it gets. A more important
> measure is the size of the "objective" lens or mirror, which
> initially gathers the light. The bigger the lens or mirror, the
> better the image. The general rule is that you can use a maximum
> magnification of about 50x per inch of the lens. So, if a telescope
> has a 2.5-inch lens, having an eyepiece that magnifies more than 250
> to 300 times is almost always unnecessary.
>
> Many astronomers say the best way to start is by looking at the moon
> and stars with a good pair of binoculars and a star chart. Local
> astronomy groups can help you take the next step by offering buying
>
=== message truncated ===
Received on Wed Apr 6 13:05:32 2005