Trijicon sues Holosun (patent infringement)

[WickedWillis]

Regardless of the giant pile of horse crap in this thread, there is another bottom line issue for many. The Holosun/Sig optics are much clearer when you have an astigmatism. Both aimpoint and eotech have significant halo issues for people (like me) with vision challenges. Eotech reticle bloom makes it almost unuseable. Aimpoints are triple their MOA dot size--if not more. The Holosun optics have clear, well defined reticles/dots that exhibit nearly zero bloom. I still have a couple of t2s that I use as backup sights, but for a primary I can't have my target obscured by an unclear reticle/dot.

For me this is absolutely true. Which is crazy to me, because the lenses and glass that these offshore companies are using have so much better clarity than trijicon's.

Hell, my T1 and RMR's are both blue with fuzzy reticles.

[Slater]

Modern manufacturing techniques seem to have brought Chinese optics closer in QC to the better known brands.

[Adrenaline_6]

Actually, the opposite is true. Smaller companies have larger overhead (per capita). And need to sell more or have higher markup to cover their costs. This is actually basic economics. There is a reason they say "economy of scale".

Let's take a simplified example:

Company has 10 employees. They have 1 HR/Payroll (non executive) person and 1 sales person (non executive). So their HR/Payroll overhead is 10% and their sales overhead is 10%. Samsung has 309K employees, approximately. Do you think they need 30.9K people in HR/Payroll? Probably not. I don't know their number and a quick Google search doesn't help me, but I would be surprised if they had more than 5K such people running HR and/or Payroll (which is under 2% for HR and/or payroll overhead). Eventually those duties split into separate departments but when a company is small they are often part of the same department.

Now, they keep adding new employees, one at a time. They add 1 more employee. Doe they need to add another HR/Payroll person? No. So their overhead in that field is now 9%. Same with sales. Say they add 5 more employees (16 total). Do they need to add another HR/Payroll person? No. Their payroll/HR overhead is now 6.25%. They probably wouldn't need another HR/Payroll person until around 30 employees (just a guess). So at 29 employees, their HR/Payroll overhead is 3.4% and when they add the 30th employee and now have 2 people in that department the percentage drops back down to 6.67%. But they may not need to add another one to 120 employees or so (around 2.5% -- say 2.5-3.0%). Eventually they get down to that less than 2% we saw in my guess on Samsung.

Sales and marketing is similar. And even R&D is similar in that the R&D behind a device that sells 100 units and one that sells 100K units (for a similar device) is a similar fixed cost.

Here is another simplistic way of looking at it:

Let's say you have a device that costs $1 to make and you can sell two of them a year. How much markup do you need? $30k per item? That gives you a profit of $60k. What is that, 30000%?

Now let's say you have a device that costs $1 and you can sell a million of them. If you have 30% markup and can sell them for $1.30, you make $300k in profit.

Smaller companies have to sell more per capita and(/or?) have a much higher markup compared to a larger company. This is why the large grocery stores beat out the mom and pop stores. They can sell milk for a loss (or barely a profit) to get you to come buy your beer, cookies, and hot dog buns, while the mom and pop can't.

You are skewing things using a 1 for 1 comparison. You are comparing them selling the same products. Also, small businesses tend to have people do multiple tasks since the tasks themselves are smaller, while big businesses have separate departments for them. You aren't using an apple to apples explanation. In fact, you can't because the two entities operate totally on a different scale. There are things and costs that the big company has to deal with that the small business never really has to. Upper and middle management costs are huge in big business whereas in smaller business they are both.

Now I am sure there is a growth period where growing bigger costs more and then goes down again depending on a lot of circumstances, but when times are bad, guess what companies do, they downsize, not upsize.

[PracticalRifleman]

For me this is absolutely true. Which is crazy to me, because the lenses and glass that these offshore companies are using have so much better clarity than trijicon's.

Hell, my T1 and RMR's are both blue with fuzzy reticles.

The blue is by design. It allows the LED to be relatively brighter and to use less battery. If you’re using the optic properly, you don’t see the blue tint. As far as reticles being fuzzy, everybody has different eyes.


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[chadbag]

You are skewing things using a 1 for 1 comparison. You are comparing them selling the same products. Also, small businesses tend to have people do multiple tasks since the tasks themselves are smaller, while big businesses have separate departments for them. You aren't using an apple to apples explanation. In fact, you can't because the two entities operate totally on a different scale. There are things and costs that the big company has to deal with that the small business never really has to. Upper and middle management costs are huge in big business whereas in smaller business they are both.

Now I am sure there is a growth period where growing bigger costs more and then goes down again depending on a lot of circumstances, but when times are bad, guess what companies do, they downsize, not upsize.

My examples were for explanation. The fact is, your claim that smaller companies do not need to sell at higher markups is wrong. The smaller the company, the more important each sale is (ignoring the two man company that can sell "millions" of some digital product with no costs of manufacturing etc -- we are talking actual manufacturing companies).

Yes, when times are bad, companies often downsize. Because their sales do not support the larger company. This does not change the fact that a company that sells an order or two of magnitude more of a product can do so with much less individual markup than the company selling a lot fewer products.

Aimpoint needs to have a much larger markup than Samsung as they sell an order or two of magnitude fewer products than does Samsung. Their per capita cost of doing business is most likely higher, and each sale is more important (needs to bring in more money and more profit) because they sell a lot less. This is basic economics 101.

So comparing the cost of an Aimpoint optic that costs $700 to a Samsung phone that costs $700 based purley on the BOM (Bill of Materials -- the list of parts in the product) is extremely naive.

[chadbag]

You are skewing things using a 1 for 1 comparison. You are comparing them selling the same products.

No I am not. Not once in my comparison did I rely on them selling the same product. My $1 comparison used products with the same basic manufacturing cost but they don't have to be the same product. It was an extreme example to show the point.

Also, small businesses tend to have people do multiple tasks since the tasks themselves are smaller, while big businesses have separate departments for them.

That matters not. What matters is the percentage of your employees doing a certain "genre" of overhead (non revenue producing) work. Whether HR and Payroll are the same person or separate departments, the total number of people doing those functions can easily be compared.

[Esq.]

The blue is by design. It allows the LED to be relatively brighter and to use less battery. If you’re using the optic properly, you don’t see the blue tint. As far as reticles being fuzzy, everybody has different eyes.


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Over the years my Aimpoint reticles seem to have grown tails.... It's ok, I use the large "ball part" at the top ignoring the tail and they work fine. It is a little bothersome but, it is what it is.

[PracticalRifleman]

Over the years my Aimpoint reticles seem to have grown tails.... It's ok, I use the large "ball part" at the top ignoring the tail and they work fine. It is a little bothersome but, it is what it is.

Astigmatism, I’ve got it too. I see a cluster of grapes with the top right one having a comet tail. Happens on every dot I’ve used with the exception of a Leupold DPP on an open gun. I think it was a 5 or 6 MOA dot. Take a dot with you to the optometrist and he can get you corrective lenses. With my specs dots are 100% clear on everything.


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[Adrenaline_6]

No I am not. Not once in my comparison did I rely on them selling the same product. My $1 comparison used products with the same basic manufacturing cost but they don't have to be the same product. It was an extreme example to show the point.



That matters not. What matters is the percentage of your employees doing a certain "genre" of overhead (non revenue producing) work. Whether HR and Payroll are the same person or separate departments, the total number of people doing those functions can easily be compared.

Not disagreeing with you there, but you are avoiding the fact that you are comparing one for one. There are positions in a big company that don't even exist in a small company. Middle management is also upper management in some cases depending on what size you are talking about. Like I said you are looking at 1 apple and comparing it to another apple and leaving it that for your example while ignoring the fact that the bigger company also has bananas, oranges, and grapes.

[chadbag]

Not disagreeing with you there, but you are avoiding the fact that you are comparing one for one. There are positions in a big company that don't even exist in a small company. Middle management is also upper management in some cases depending on what size you are talking about. Like I said you are looking at 1 apple and comparing it to another apple and leaving it that for your example while ignoring the fact that the bigger company also has bananas, oranges, and grapes.

That is all irrelevant. The point is that the larger company has a smaller amount of overhead per capita in most cases. Whether that is sales, HR, payroll, security, marketing, R&D. For a manufacturing company, the larger the company, the lower amount of over head per capita they have, in general. I am sure there are exceptions.

Basic economic fact is that smaller companies manufacturing products with smaller gross sales amounts generally need a higher profit margin than larger companies that sell an order of magnitude or two orders of magnitude more product in order to make a decent profit, cover expenses, etc. One part of that is generally the overhead in the small company selling smaller amounts of products (which tend to be "niche" products) is per capita greater. fixed manufacturing costs are also usually greater (it costs some amount to set up the lines and you amortize that across the products manufactured and you sell more products, the fixed cost of setting up the line per product is lower).

So comparing a Samsung phone for $700 to an Aimpoint at $700, with the Aimpoint probably having a lower cost of materials, is not a fair comparison.