Originally Posted by
VortexOptics
Great points - thanks for bringing this up.
Too many people forget that with due diligence taken in determining a reliable partner factory, the proper materials, proper machines and tooling, engineering and development, specifications, tolerances, testing and communication, human beings are capable of making quality products for a given price point in any country. There's absolutely no reason someone in the USA without those previously mentioned things couldn't make an absolute P.O.S. and slap "Made in USA" all over the outside. Does that make it a superior product to a properly developed, manufactured and executed product from China? We'd hope the answer would be a resounding no. It's often assumed manufacturers simply go to the quickest factory they can get in contact with in China, head to their back room, pick out the first black blob they find, say "We'll take that one with our logo on it" and immediately throw it on the market. Sure, that happens, but not here, and not with many of the other companies we work with and even compete with today. There would be absolutely no need for nearly 300 full-time Southwestern Wisconsin employees in a brand new 250,000+ square foot building here if that were the case.
Are there a lot of warranty claims? Depends on what one's idea of "A lot" is. We track this kind of information and can tell you that far less than 1% of the products we make come back for warranty issue. There are millions of Vortex optics out there, though, so that less-than-1% might seem more than others - just like a small slice of a giant pie might seem like a relatively large slice of pie compared to someone else's. Are most of the warranty claims that come in on our more entry-level products (Probably out of China)? Certainly. Again, there's millions more of those out on the marketplace and, not to badmouth anyone who's day job isn't to mount and zero rifles every waking moment, the majority of the issues that come in are user error primarily in the mounting and zeroing process. We'll happily repair or replace the product at no charge if it's been permanently damaged by the user and attempt to help them avoid the issue in the future, but some will still be frustrated and head to the forums. China is an easy scape goat for those kinds of issues.
Fact is - if folks don't want to buy an entry level product made in China for whatever reason, that's great and we won't argue one bit. We might recommend they check out something else in our line like the Viper series, the Razor series or arguably the most Made in USA optic on the market - the AMG, but if they don't even want to give Vortex a look at all then that's cool, too. We say all this just to give people an accurate, no-bullshit idea of what goes on behind the scenes. Say what you will about Chinese manufacturing - do we wish everything could be made in the USA? Hell yes. Everything would also cost well over $1000 (Even for a Crossfire II) and would be basically constantly out of stock and - oh - we'd be out of business, but it would be awesome. "But Vortex - you're buying product from a country we could be at war with - we can't believe you could possibly be giving them any money!" - Joke's on them? By working with their factories to produce a handfull of our products at great prices with great quality and excellent value, we're keeping the lights on here, employing hundreds of Americans and buying machines and equipment to develop new technologies for our nation's military that will.... Well... We can't tell you what they'll do yet, but you'll surely find out in due time... Anyway, we digress.... But there you have it.
If you have any questions, we're happy to answer them to the best of our abilities. Obviously there may be some things we keep close to the vest, but as you can see, we prefer to be as open as possible for our customers and won't hide anything that wouldn't put us in a legal or competitive disadvantage.
Reply With Quote
Bookmarks