149 replies to this topic

[yweln]

Orion updated their website yesterday and posted a press release regarding their lawsuit with Sunny/Meade. They're seeking $180 million in damages. Is there even that much equity in the entire telescope market?

 

Link: https://www.telescop...-_3-31-2019.pdf

[PFitzhorn]

Can't find the link you sent.  Here's Orion's web site with info on the lawsuit against Ningbo Sunny.

https://www.telescop...ng-us-consumers

 

Tried the first two links on Orion's website and cannot follow them either.

[PFitzhorn]

Oops - sorry for the confusion.  Those links are to PDF files.  Very interesting reading.

[rogeriomagellan]

Hi, yweln. First of all, thanks for posting the link to the Orion Press Release. 

 

I hadn't heard of Orion's lawsuit until I ran across your post this afternoon. I don't think that I'm qualified to answer your question because I'm not fully aware of the entire telescope scenario or I should say that I'm not aware of the changes that have taken place in the industry in the last 25 years.

 

However, I was wondering here if that lawsuit could somehow lead Orion to manufacture their telescopes, eyepieces and accessories back home again. I mean, making them once more in California or at least somewhere in the United States. 

[daddymouse]

"The claims are brought by Orion® Telescopes & Binoculars, the last American telescope brand and distributor"

 

 

Questar gets no respect..........

[rayden68]

Well Orion felt it had enough information to not only go to court but to win, the court ruled they had enough evidence to show that ningbo had obtained a monopoly through unlawful conspiracy and that the evidence was sufficient to go to trial. Will ningbo try to settle with a big cash agreement and get this dropped, will orion stick to their guns and bust up the monopoly? Do they have enough evidence to get the court victory? Could be very interesting for the telescope market in the near future. OK i think everyone seems to forget china is a Communist country, it is not a free market at all so by its very nature it is a giant monopoly. not a single person at ningbo can do a google search without it being monitored nor can they do a thing without massive oversight. Time and again they move into a market, and put out products below cost to drive all "free market for profit" businesses to bankruptcy all the while being subsidized by their government, then after they have busted all competition up goes the price and if you dont like it to bad because they are the only show in town. If anyone tries to enter the market later lo and behold their prices drop below what can be tolerated by a true independent business. Every chinese company is really just a shell corporation so they are all monopolies. Characteristics of a Monopoly-High or no barriers to entry: Other competitors are not able to enter the market-Price maker: The company that operates the monopoly decides the price of the product that it will sell.-Price discrimination: The firm can change the price or quantity of the product at any time. yep i would say guilty as charged

[OleCuss]

Interesting that Orion doesn't seem to know about Stellarvue, Tele Vue, Astro-Physics, etc.  They are not the only USA brand around.

 

Note that some of the other USA brands actually do make at least some of the instruments they sell.  So far as I know, Orion doesn't make anything.

 

Some of the statements they make on their webpage are a bit simplistic if not just wrong.

 

One that sort of sticks out is that they say Meade was a USA brand until they were purchased by Ningbo.  The difficulty is that I think Meade USA was owned/held here in the USA but I believe that the Meade brand/distribution rights for most of the rest of the world were not held here in the USA but in China.  I think most of the gear Meade was selling was made in China as well.

 

Do note that while I may be sounding rather skeptical, until I've more information I'm actually rooting for Orion on this one.  But it seems a bit early in the process to be sure about some of this.

[DennisK]

For some reason, I thought that Orion, Meade, Celestron, and Sky-Watcher were all owned by the same "parent" company, or had some kind of common tie among/between them.

[yweln]

Note that some of the other USA brands actually do make at least some of the instruments they sell.  So far as I know, Orion doesn't make anything.

 

I don't think Orion has had a product development team for almost a decade. They just buy whatever Synta designs. So that whole "the last American telescope brand and distributor" is a stretch. They're a distributor for Chinese made products, period.

 

For some reason, I thought that Orion, Meade, Celestron, and Sky-Watcher were all owned by the same "parent" company

 

I did a little research. Celestron and Sky-Watcher are both owned by Synta. Meade is owned by Sunny. Orion is owned by neither, but gets 95% of their products from either Synta or Sunny. ALL of their go to products are produced by Synta.

[Jim Davenport]

For some reason, I thought that Orion, Meade, Celestron, and Sky-Watcher were all owned by the same "parent" company, or had some kind of common tie among/between them.

I thought "Synta" owned Celestron, Sky Watcher, and Orion.

I know that a lot of parts are interchangeable between them.

I think Meade is owned by a different Chinese company.

[sg6]

To an extent never followed this "price fixing" thing. Every company has a RRP - Recommended Retail Price, then retailers advertise whatever at less to imply you are making a saving.

 

Also thought that Orion were also at war with Synta over supply of equipment. Synta were withdrawing the sale of their equipment as they are/were pushing Skywatcher in the US so Orion were a direct competitor. As Orion do not manufacture whoever they buy from then Orion becomes a competitor. Orion are in a bit of a strange position as it seems if they source from Synta they become a competitor to Synta/Skywatcher and if they source from Meade/Sunny they become a competitor to Meade.

[gnowellsct]

Well Orion felt it had enough information to not only go to court but to win, the court ruled they had enough evidence to show that ningbo had obtained a monopoly through unlawful conspiracy and that the evidence was sufficient to go to trial. Will ningbo try to settle with a big cash agreement and get this dropped, will orion stick to their guns and bust up the monopoly? Do they have enough evidence to get the court victory? Could be very interesting for the telescope market in the near future. OK i think everyone seems to forget china is a Communist country, it is not a free market at all so by its very nature it is a giant monopoly. not a single person at ningbo can do a google search without it being monitored nor can they do a thing without massive oversight. Time and again they move into a market, and put out products below cost to drive all "free market for profit" businesses to bankruptcy all the while being subsidized by their government, then after they have busted all competition up goes the price and if you dont like it to bad because they are the only show in town. If anyone tries to enter the market later lo and behold their prices drop below what can be tolerated by a true independent business. Every chinese company is really just a shell corporation so they are all monopolies. Characteristics of a Monopoly-High or no barriers to entry: Other competitors are not able to enter the market-Price maker: The company that operates the monopoly decides the price of the product that it will sell.-Price discrimination: The firm can change the price or quantity of the product at any time. yep i would say guilty as charged

Well Japan gutted the American consumer electronics industry without being Communist.  Remember "RCA: the most colorful name in electronics."  Fisher, and what have you?

 

Government subsidies do occur, but the main name of the game is a protected market.  

 

Domestic sales:  More profitable from artificially higher prices

Foreign sales:  higher domestic prices can subsidize exports  (aka "dumping")

 

The kicker:  This is the part that usually gets left out, to wit:

 

Domestic Sales + Foreign Sales = Greater economies of scale.  The profits realized per unit under the terms of the expanded production (foreign + domestic) is HIGHER than the per unit profits for the domestic market or the foreign market taken by themselves.  Due to economies of scale dumping can be continued indefinitely, it doesn't just reflect temporary market or inventory conditions.  The usual newspaper explanation, "selling abroad at prices below cost of production" doesn't really capture the dynamic, because the cost of production is lower with the expanded sales.

 

Anyhow you don't need to be a communist state to do this.    

 

These sorts of games were very typical of pre-WWII international commerce and part of what "liberal internationalism" (or Wilsonian internationalism, meaning free trade, anti-monopoly, democratic governments etc.) was all about.  That's why the #2 foreign policy of the United States in the aftermath of WWII, after Communist containment, was decolonization (the end of British, French, Dutch empires etc.).  

 

China is very much pushing the limits of the post-WWII liberal internationalist model to its limits, in ways that the "Asian exporting economies" (Taiwan, S. Korea, Japan, etc.) have not.  Technically speaking we are in the presence of state-organized capitalism.   

 

Greg N

[gnowellsct]

I'm just unclear where Orion intends to get its telescopes since they sell the stuff from China that everyone else sells.  I suppose they could argue that other distributors have better access to the ultra cheap gear.  Orion doesn't make telescopes.   This is kind of like your local independent convenience store chain with gasoline stations suing OPEC.  Not sure where they intend to go with this.  At the end of the day they need to get gasoline from where gasoline is produced.  

 

It is not to be excluded that these companies just make Orion an offer it can't refuse to settle the case, buy the company, and continue business as usual.  That would potentially put an end to those employees' jobs.

 

My personal view of cases like this is that the small ones tend to go pretty much nowhere (this is a small one) and the large ones also go nowhere.  The Justice Department started anti-trust proceedings against the major oil companies in 1952 after the famous Federal Trade Commission and Congressional inquiry into what they were up to.  It kept a bunch of lawyers employed in a long lingering law suit that was finally abandoned in 1969 with the Nixon administration.

 

Greg N

[OleCuss]

I thought "Synta" owned Celestron, Sky Watcher, and Orion.

I know that a lot of parts are interchangeable between them.

I think Meade is owned by a different Chinese company.

Synta owns the Celestron and Sky-Watcher brands.  Orion sells a lot of Synta products under its own brand name and there are often at least some details which are different - but Synta does not own Orion.

 

Meade for the USA is owned by Ningbo/Sunny.  I'm not at all sure who currently owns the Meade distributorship (or brand name) for the rest of the world but it used to be owned by one of the subsidiaries of Jinghua Optics & Electronics (sometimes referred to as JOC).  I believe JOC was also making a whole lot of the products Meade USA was selling before Meade USA was sold to Sunny/Ningbo- but not all of the products.

 

JOC owns Bresser and Explore Scientific.  IIRC, JOC nearly completed a deal to buy the Meade USA entity but some folk/investors with a stake in Meade managed to kill the deal and the sale was to Ningbo/Sunny instead.

 

I consider the probability that JOC is effectively owned by the Chinese military to be very high.

Edited by OleCuss, 01 April 2019 - 04:07 PM.

[havasman]

I agree that Orion's claim to be the last American astro gear manufacturer is flatly ridiculous. 

 

It seems very likely that the biggest winners here will be the law firms and there seems to be a real danger present for the astro gear supply chain for us amateurs. Stripping long money out of the businesses either by the litigation process or due to a ruling just seems likely to weaken the existing mass market we see today.

 

I always hate to see major players in a market I'm interested in get involved in litigation requiring proof of collusion, conspiracy and/or intent. Bad news. But thanks for posting; it's better to know.

[Vondragonnoggin]

In this case, I think it’s likely consumers will bear the cost of the lawsuit by paying higher prices. Orion branded gear is not the least expensive by any means. Meade prices will probably increase.

Edited by Vondragonnoggin, 01 April 2019 - 04:37 PM.

[gnowellsct]

I WAS TOTALLY AWESOMELY RIGHT BACK IN FEBRUARY.  There is indeed a tale of lust, greed, and power in the sale of telescopes.com to Orion.  It's in the complaint.  Around p. 18-23.  Search for "hayneedle."

 

Greg N

Edited by gnowellsct, 01 April 2019 - 04:47 PM.

[waso29]

previous post:

https://www.cloudyni... orion lawsuit

 

synta has made 120mm achro fract for celestron and orion.

mysteriously, synta started making the same fract for sunny's meade, and stopped making for orion.

anyone check the deal on the synta cg-5 mount repainted white for sunny's meade?

 

celestron = synta = meade? lol....

 

we'll see how US law applies to ever growing tentacles of a lawless giant

 

 

btw, i do like the colorful orion catalogs and the cool push-to intelliscope equipment.

Edited by waso29, 01 April 2019 - 05:01 PM.

[Simon B]

As far as I know:

 

 

Synta own Skywatcher and Celestron

 

 

Orion are an independent brand, that source many scopes from Synta, but also source from Long Perng and others.

 

 

JOC own Explore Scientific (and Bresser in Europe)

 

 

Ningbo/Sunny own Meade. But Meade seem to also source a few scopes from Synta

[gnowellsct]

In this case, I think it’s likely consumers will bear the cost of the lawsuit by paying higher prices. Orion branded gear is not the least expensive by any means. Meade prices will probably increase.

That's difficult to predict. As Orion points out, the yuan has fallen in value which ought to make the imported goods cheaper, but they have not gotten cheaper.    A fall in quality is an alternative to raising prices.  There are so many different ways that quality can be reduced that no definite prediction can be made as to how and when it will occur.

 

The other thing that holds prices back a bit is that the alleged monopolists would have to be aware that if they price too high there will be other entrants.  For one thing if Orion gets $10 million in damages it might produce some stuff on its own.  Or the owner might retire.

 

This is a real bonanza of information on the industry.  I haven't been so happy since reading the Senate patent hearings of 1943.  

 

Generally speaking the situation of the importers is weak.  But their survivability can be quite variable.  The main breakthrough of the international oil majors into the French market occurred during and immediately after World War I, when the "ring of French refiners" which depended on Standard Oil and Shell were for the most part bought up by them as direct distribution was established.

 

Still Desmarais Freres hung in there till the early 1960s.  But Pompidou had pretty strong ties to the Royal Dutch Shell faction of the industry and Desmarais was forced out, albeit on generous terms.

 

Greg N

[Simon B]

Personally, I am a big fan of Long Perng scopes and I hope Orion strengthen their bond with them, and release more Long Perng products

[gnowellsct]

Items of interest in the documents:

 

1.  Celestron paid $3 million to Sunny to help keep Meade afloat.  If you think that a settlement in this case will raise prices consider that if Celestron is making advances to help Sunny keep Meade afloat--people who buy Celestron gear are paying for that.  

2.  The industry roughly categorizes itself as low and medium end and high performance.   

3.  The agreement between Synta and Sunny basically saw Synta forfeit the low end manufacturing (thus cutting off an alternative for low end telescopes to Orion) in order to concentrate in the middle and high end.  This suggests that there is some basis to perceptions on these lists that Synta/Celestron/Skywatcher having been "doing very well lately" in quality production.

4.  Explore Scientific is characterized as a small player, low end working with JOC.

5.  Celestron/Synta/Skywatcher settled with Orion.  Part of this appears to be that Celestron was unhappy with the financial advance to Meade and thought a continuation of such practices would raise issues with its auditors and its banks.

6.  The annual U.S. sales of "recreational telescopes" are characterized as north of $100 million annually.  In other words, the entire astronomy market is a rounding error for a company like Exxon (by way of example).   I remember during the Meade acquisition I back-of-the enveloped U.S. sales as around $100 million so this appears to be broadly correct.  I think all I did was add gross earnings of Meade and Celestron together and double them for "everyone else."

 

7.  The overwhelming importance of credit in the industry.  Most people don't know this but manufacturers advance inventory on credit with the expectation they will get paid back on the sales of what they have made.  This came up for example during the Sears and Toys R Us bankruptcy proceedings when very critical to the (dis)continuation of the companies was the growing reluctance of manufacturers to advance inventory on credit.   In any case it is a very old practice: Adam Smith discusses the importance of credit in making it possible for businesses to reduce the cost of inventory in Wealth of Nations.

 

Let us say you have $1,000,000 of inventory which is advanced to you on 90 days credit at 10%.   10% annually on $1 million would be $100,000, for three months it would be $25,000.  So for $25,000 you get control of $1,000,000 in inventory which makes capital 2.5% of your total cost.

 

You never actually pay the $1,000,000.  You get another $1,000,000 in inventory and continue to pay your $25,000 every three months on a rolling basis.  This is why a change in interest rates can have a big impact on profitability, if you are in a thin margin industry and operating on borrowed inventory a rise in interest from say 10% to 20% becomes 5% of your expenses and eats into your thin margin.  If a manufacturer raises your inventory borrowing cost but does not raise the cost to your competitors, then it is forcing you into a losing situation.  If a manufacturer refuses you credit, you are in for very hard times and may be forced to cry "uncle."   (As with Sears and Toys R Us, but it doesn't have to be a bankruptcy proceeding, maybe they just don't like what you're up to.)

 

It is also why VOLUME is so critical because you need to keep product moving to make expenses and pay the interest charges for your next delivery of inventory.

 

I once talked to a stamp dealer (postal stamp collectors, etc.) who had a $50,000 line of credit which he used to buy stamps he knew he could sell and had a rolling monthly interest cost on the $50,000 of borrowed money.  When his bank decided to cut back his line of credit in order to reduce its exposure to unsecured loans, he was forced to cut back inventory, and without a variety of products to put into his newsletter he lost customers and got into a downward spiral.  (This was in the days when you sent a snail mail letter to your customers.)

 

Anyhow one of the things in the suit is, specifically, the withholding of credit by Sunny and Synta.  You wouldn't think that you can force someone into lending you money but it is in fact actionable if, as in this case, they are using it to force you to price according to their wishes.  

 

Also mentioned in the documentation is a refusal of the companies to consider making products designed by Orion for Orion; and their proclivity for taking products designed by Orion and selling them under their own brand.  Which of course is intellectual property theft and very much in the news.

 

The deeper picture here is the extent to which distributors can fall under the sway of foreign manufacturers bent on vertical integration and securing control over a market.  There are far bigger stakes here than the telescope market.  There has been a lot of discussion about how Google has tailored its product to get into the China market but the next step (this is, afaik, a prediction) will be how Google is being told to alter its product in the United States, as a "price" for having access to the China market (that of course is not manufacturing).   Any company with a strong dependence on China manufacturing is potentially vulnerable, Apple for example, and who knows who else.

 

regards

Greg N

Edited by gnowellsct, 01 April 2019 - 06:34 PM.

[gnowellsct]

Personally, I am a big fan of Long Perng scopes and I hope Orion strengthen their bond with them, and release more Long Perng products

The ability of smaller China firms to go against the wishes of much bigger companies will likely be limited.  When Standard Oil of California and Texaco started to break into Saudi Oil production in the late 1930s and early 40s they violated a major agreement that Standard Oil New Jersey had with British Petroleum and Royal Dutch Shell, aka the "red line agreement" excluding independent production on the Arabian peninsula.  

 

Standard Oil wasn't so much bent on preserving the agreement with Shell and British Petroleum as it was making sure that it wasn't left out.  

 

So in the end the American companies got "in" while the British companies (Shell was considered British too) were kept out, and the Red Line agreement dissolved.    Anyhow the point is that there is a tendency for the companies of the same nation to get herded into the same general practices, for legal and political reasons.  When Mossadeq was overthrown, American companies were gathered up as a batch to go in and work the newly acquired U.S. share of Iranian production (acquired at the expense of the British).  It's very difficult to strike out solo.  

 

Some of the old classics on cartels are very good for understanding what's happening today, such as Hexner's International Cartels (1945).    Basically the telescope market is playing these things out on mini-scale.  But I can imagine some important strategic consequences given the importance of optics in general for modern weapons systems (drones, etc.).   I do think there's an industrial optics market that is more important than "recreational telescopes," as our hobby is called, things like using optical fibres in circuit board design, etc., which is independent of figuring an accurate mirror or a color free refractor.

 

Greg N

[carolinaskies]

This lawsuit is due to the current political air or air-headedness over foreign vs domestic production and false claims that US production ceased due to overseas competition.

Orion has not been a substantial manufacturer within the timeframe of the lawsuit actions.  Both Meade and Celestron many years ago made poor choices in future planning to the point that the bean counters decided it was better to divest most manufacturing out of country for higher profits.   The reality is that compared to 20 years ago there are far more options in the market for the consumer at a wide range of price levels and that Orion as well as it's competitors have taken opportunity to do business with whomever they've seen fit to provide this vast array of merchandise.   

The butthurt Orion is experiencing is falling profits in the face of over-expansion of the product lines and desire for astronomical profits. 
How to resolve this?  Blame the competition.  And in the current political airs of Washington they have weighed their options and felt the timing was good. 
This fits heel to toe with the 'conservative' idealogs who falsely accuse other countries of causing the demise of the manufacturing sector in the US.  The desire of the management and ownership of US manufacturers was and is to utilize ways to have ever increasing quarterly profits.  If Q4>Q3>Q2>Q1 then the company is somehow failing.   This mantra has been on a steady incline since the 1950s boom and the subsequent corporatizing and consolidation corporatizing.   With companies becoming 3rd and 4th subsidiaries of what amount to holding companies expenses of paying multi-layered corporate entities their chunk of the cost-profit leftovers has increased while they stagnated wages and cosolidated manufacturing jobs before outsourcing production.  

Telescope making is a time consuming process with precision engineering and assembly required, like other manufacturing processes.  The majority of high-profit low-cost units were sloughed off overseas a long time ago.  Japan and Hong Kong were already manufacturing centers for such equipment decades ago while the higher end instruments were still built in the states because the cost vs profit was still relatively high.  However that changed for both Meade and Celestron and due to poor product development and/or management both companies fell prey to the capitalist golden parachutes allowing US owners to divest themeselves and walk away with sums of money and reduced headaches while letting overseas companies worry about the future.   By this time no Japanese firms were in the position or desire to acquire the US companies and therefore the Chinese were able to make their offers and take ownership.   

While Orion may like to tout it's 'American ownership' in reality they are nothing more than a clearing house for those same Chinese companies.  There are no major telescope manufacturers in the US today.  Perhaps there are some smaller companies who do final assembly or final calibration, but most of these still aquire their optics from overseas. 

Orion suing Meade and Sunny is just another testament to corporate greed at expense of the consumer.     

[Etrsi_645]

"The claims are brought by Orion® Telescopes & Binoculars, the last American telescope brand and distributor"

 

 

Questar gets no respect..........

Astrophysics too...