Uncle Rod's Astro Blog

Meade in trouble? What the h-e-double-L is your Silly Ol’ Uncle talking about now? If’n you don’t follow such things closely, let me fill you in. If you’re a Big Blue fan, mebbe you’d better sit down first, though.

There’d been concern developing about Meade’s financial health over at least the last year. That seemed to come to a head last summer when it became obvious—to folks in the biz, anyway—that Meade was operating its California plant on a skeleton crew. It also became apparent that Meade had stopped shipping its RCX400 scopes. Not only had the flashy ads for these innovative scopes disappeared, the scopes themselves, save for some being shipped from inventory, were gone. The fork-mount 16 RCX? Don’t even ask. Mostly this was just rumor passed around amongst the amateur astronomy chattering classes--writers, vendors, manufacturers—you know, the usual suspects.

Mostly that was rumor, yeah, until word got around the larger amateur community recently about a Meade conference call posted on the Net and about a written statement also found online. The gist of this information?

—Meade RCX production was halted to correct engineering deficiencies.—The company is still posting losses.—Layoffs have taken place and will continue.—All Production will be moved offshore as soon as possible.—The company is considering/beginning the process of looking for a buyer.
Shocked? You prob’ly are. Fearful that this wonderful source of gear will go away? Or that support for your Meade scope is going to dry up? I wouldn’t worry too much about that. Meade’s name, despite the travails of the last couple of years, is still worth a lot. Even if worse comes to worst and the company is sold, you can bet “Meade” will continue on in some form. All their product lines might not survive, of course, but I would bet support for existing owners will continue—and might even improve.

Worst case scenario? Somebody buys the company just for its Bresser (Europe), Simmons (binoculars and rifle scopes), and Wal-Mart (department store junk-o-scopes) components and is not interested in keeping the “Advanced Products” (amateur scopes and other gear) going. Even in that case, it’s likely Meade amateur scopes would survive, since the breaker-upper would probably want to sell that end of the biz to a third party ASAP.

Make no mistake about it, I’m rooting for Meade. I’ve used and loved their products for several decades. And I still don’t have the RCX of my dreams. They have GOT to survive so Unk’s gigantic aplantic SCT dreams can be fulfilled

UPDATE:

On Monday, October 22, Herb York of Anacortes posted an "ad" on Astromart containing a Meade letter to their dealers. This letter has since been removed at Meade's request ("Other dealers complained," said Meade), though, strangely, it was openly available on one of the company's (Meade's) web pages for all to see for a couple of days. Apparently they finally got wind of this and decided MAYBE there's something to that "password" bidness.

The gist of it? The RCX 400 is not going to be reintroduced in a few weeks as implied in the conference call; instead it is going to be unavailable for an "indefinite" period. Larger scopes like the 14-inch R will be back in "the second half of 2008" (except the 14-inch OTA sans mount, which will apparently not be available at all—"suspended indefinitely"). Many of Coronado's scopes including the calcium K scopes are outright discontinued. The Max Mount and the 16 and 20-inch RCX OTAs are apparently gone too.

Meade implies that the "temporarily suspended" products like the large R scopes (not the "indefinitely suspended" scopes like the RCXes) will be back after they finish "moving" their manufacturing facilities. One has to wonder, however, why they couldn't keep manufacturing while the move was made, ensuring continuing product availability for Christmas. Finally, their stock is now going for about $1.43 a share, not a good sign, in my opinion.

STILL...I'm still hoping, and have both my fingers and toes crossed for good, old Blue.