Orion Acquires Meade Assets -

[helicon]

A part of a settlement in a lawsuit, Orion has acquired the assets of Meade and has won the approval from the Bankruptcy court of Central California. This story originally hit in June of 2021, but I am posting the Sky & Telescope article that came out at that time. (I haven't noticed much discussion of this topic here on TSS). So I thought it might be interesting to the membership of TSS. What are your thoughts on the deal?

https://skyandtelescope.org/astronomy-n ... ses-meade/

[Star Dad]

While I'm happy for Orion, I am still saddened by this utter reliance on China for most everything made in the world. When are companies going to stop paying execs the big bucks and start making product here in the USA (or other countries around the world). When CEOs get paid 400 times their minimum wage workers there is something wrong. 20x is probably closer to what they should be paid. Greed seems to be the be all. Sorry, I'm ranting. I need a drink

[Bigzmey]

What I noticed is that some of the popular Synta-made products are disappearing from Orion's site. I wonder if Orion by acquiring Meade set itself up for competition with Synta/Celestron/Skywatcher and now can't any longer distribute Synta stuff?

[Ylem]

My question is; if I recall the high end Meade SCTs are still made in Mexico, so can we assume Orion owns that factory now?

[helicon]

My question is; if I recall the high end Meade SCTs are still made in Mexico, so can we assume Orion owns that factory now?

I think I read somewhere that the Mexico factories were closing and that production of these instruments would be moved to Asia. In the old days the Meade factory was in Irvine before they shifted production to Mexico. I still remember Meade's ads in astronomy magazine featuring an astronomer in a white coat standing next to their "research grade" newtonians and dreaming that one day I would own one.

[OzEclipse]

Some of the comments so far seem to me to be sentimental or nationalistic by some of our USA members and that is understandable. I have felt similar twinges when iconic Australian products have been bought out or killed off by foreign companies.....some of them even from the USA.

It sounds to me that Meade Execs were the ones who stuffed up and sent their own company into bankruptcy through inept and illegal management practices.

I am not an SCT guy but if I were, I'd probably lean towards the higher end Chinese made Celestron gear than Meade. My reasons are entirely anecdotal/perceptual but acquired over a long period of time.

I see more high end planetary photography taken with C9.25, C11, C14's than with corresponding Meade's suggesting that the Celestron optics are superior to the Meade optics.
The Celestron Satrizona Hyperstar makes Celestron large SCT's highly flexible platforms with ƒ1.9, ƒ7 and ƒ10 in the one scope supporting a wide range of amateur and semi professional hobby and research pursuits. Many asteroidal occultation observers use Celestron 14's with ƒ1.9 Hyperstar's. Custom adapters can be machined to enable use with a Meade 14" SCT but not off the shelf.

On the Australian second hand market and over the past 10 years, I have seen MUCH more Meade gear for sale than Celestron.
Many factors could contribute to this:-
. Relative quantities of each brand owned in Australia
. Owner Satisfaction
. Product reliability and quality.

When I see Meade stuff advertised, owners often state that this board or that board in the mount has been replaced. I don't know the relative amounts of scopes in the market, maybe Meade represents 80% of the market and that's why they are resold more often. I don't see those board replaced comments with Celestron 2nd hand sales. Given a small enough sample, it could be down to honest vs dishonest vendors. But I have seen this pattern repeated over so many years that my gut says it's not coincidence.

Just my gut feeling as a neutral observer.

Joe

[Mike Q]

Last i heard Orion was re-shoring a lot of Meade products to North America. Translation Meade will have at least some scopes made in Mexico. Somewhere or another I read that the mirror blanks were being made in the USA. Given current conditions in China I wonder if we will see Orion branded reflectors being made in Mexico at some point.