Uncle Rod's Astro Blog

 

Near-about a year down the line, this is something I haven’t had much to say about, muchachos. Quite a few of y’all have asked my opinion on it, though. Why haven’t I dished on this earth-shattering (in a small amateur astronomy sort of way) subject? It just didn’t seem possible, I reckon, not till I did some ruminatin’ on it, anyhow. “Unk, what in the hail are you goin’ on about now?”

I’d be amazed if you haven’t heard, but to recap, last July, July of 2024, that is, a rather disturbing rumor began circulating in the small world of online amateur astronomy:  Meade Instruments, once the largest telescope maker in the world, had ceased operations at its California offices and its Mexican factory. The workers had been sent home, and Big Blue was dead in the water. At first that sounded plumb impossible. Not Meade! How could such a giant—well, formerly, anyway—fail? Many were in denial. The Cloudy Nights BBS soon locked the thread on the subject.

Unk? I got word from my editor at S&T, Sean, that pretty much confirmed Meade was closed. Then the other rumor bubbled up, that not only had Meade closed its Watsonville, CA office, but that its parent company, Optronics Technology, the owner of Orion Telescope and Binocular Center, had shuttered its Orion brick and mortar stores.  I wasn’t too surprised about Meade, but at first I was really gob-smacked about Orion, who, like Meade, had been a fixture in astronomy since the 1970s.

How could both Meade and Orion suddenly be kaput? Some in our community simply refused to believe it. After all, their websites were still up, and they seemed to be taking orders. But then, as the days and weeks passed, the Orion website dropped off the air, followed, finally, by Meade. The threads on the subject at Cloudy Nights had been unlocked well before that, and few doubted any longer that both were gone (and also Coronado solar scopes, which Meade had purchased years before) and gone for good. How? A little cogitating about both companies answered that question…

Meade was lucky to still be around in 2024 in any form if’n you ask me. They’d been through at least four different owners and had been making most of their amateur telescopes in Mexico since 2009. The enormous and iconic Meade plant/offices in Irvine, California full of giant SCTs and serious, white-coated workers (according to the pictures in their catalogs, at least) was long gone.  

The Meade of 2009 claimed that move was intended to expand production. Few believed that. Most of us suspected Meade was going maquiladora (and buying a lot more from China than they had been) to save money and remain competitive. After all, their number one rival, Celestron, was now owned by Chinese optical giant Synta and didn’t have to pay California wages. Whatever the reason, it didn’t seem to help much, and a mainland Chinese firm, “Ningbo-Sunny,” picked up the obviously ailing Meade Instruments in 2013. Some hoped for the best. Unk wasn’t so sure…

Meade soldiered on under Ningbo, but took a one-two punch in the gut with the disastrous introductions of the LX-80 alt-AZ/EQ goto mount and the LX-800 GEM. Neither mount worked well, or sometimes at all. Now, it’s true that both had been developed pre-Ningbo, but the fact that post-Ningbo whoever was calling the shots decided to go ahead with two Nowheresville products showed the company’s basic problems hadn’t gone away. Despite that, for a few years their bread and butter (amateur astronomy) products like the LX200 seemed OK. But then, around 2016, your old Uncle began to hear about QA issues with just about anything with a Meade sticker on it.

Three years later in 2019, was the beginning of the end for the Ningbo bunch. Optronics (Orion) filed suit in federal court against Meade’s owner claiming price fixing and suppression of competition. It’s all a little confusing, but best I can tell, given the convoluted nature of Chinese corporations, Ningbo = Synta (Celestron). Be that as it may, the judge awarded Optronics 16.8 million. How much of that was paid, I don’t know, but in the end Optronics wound up owning what was left of Meade in 2021.

My opinion was “rut-roh.” Given what I knew, I didn’t believe there was anybody at Orion/Optronics capable of running Meade. I also didn’t believe anybody left over from the Ningbo years had much of a clue, either. The result? Orion was able to continue Meade for three years but at a reduced level of activity.

“Orion Meade” offered at least one newer product, an update of the LXD-75 GEM (a competitor for Celestron’s VX mounts), the Chinese-made LX85, which debuted toward the very end of the Ningbo period. I wrote the Sky & Telescope Test Report and was able to use the LX85 extensively. I was frankly impressed. It seemed like a lot of mount for a little money. But then, a year or two after the Orion buyout, I began to hear not everybody who used one was quite as sanguine about the LX85 as Unk.

It was apparent the QA problems had not gone away with the coming of Orion. Worse, the difficulties didn’t seem to just be the usual Meade Achilles heel, electronics, but variations in mechanical quality involving the gear system. I wondered whether the mount I used would have continued to be a good performer if I’d been able to use it longer. I suspected the answer was “nope.” A really bad sign? Few people I talked to, few amateur astronomers, were excited about Meade products anymore.

The end? Which straw, exactly, broke the Meade camel’s back? There’s been a little that’s leaked, indicating disarray at Meade in the months before the end, but who knows? Maybe somebody will write a book. I don’t think you need a book, though. I suspect the culprit was just the accelerating decline that began after John Diebel, who started Meade on his kitchen table in 1972, retired for the second time in 2003. Nothing seemed quite right after that, and I don’t know of anybody who thinks Mexico-made Meade SCTs were as good as those produced in Irvine, California. Above all, their fate was linked to that of their final owner, and Orion hadn’t been doing well for a while, either…

Orion’s story is much the same as that of Meade. It was a little California company founded on a kitchen table (in 1975) by someone interested in astronomy, in this case, Tim Gieseler of Santa Cruz. The company was originally known as Gieseler Electronics due to his first popular products being the “AccuTrack” drive correctors for the AC telescope clock drives of the day. Before long, Tim’s company became “Optronics Technologies,” and finally “Orion Telescope and Binocular Center.”

The business model? Orion products were always a little more expensive than the same or similar things elsewhere, but they made up for that with customer service that was top-notch. They were especially known for helping beginners get their start in amateur astronomy. Oh, and their wonderful old catalogs—which customers got in the mail at least once a month. In those days, in addition to Orion-branded equipment, they sold products from various sources including Vixen and Celestron.

So, what happened? Same-old, same-old as Meade. Orion’s founder sold out and retired and the company went through a couple of new owners, neither of which had Gieseler’s vision. Orion diminished with every ownership change. The business model also changed. The second and third owners, Imaginova (Lou Dobbs’ space.com company), and the “new” (employee-owned) Optronics Technologies went almost exclusively to Chinese imports.

Imported products were certainly nothing new for Orion. Gieseler noticed this little Chinese telescope (from Synta), an 80mm f/5 refractor, and thought his customers would like it. Man, did they ever! Even after the coming of the Short Tube 80, though, Gieseler didn’t go Synta 24/7. But, to keep up with the competition, I reckon, there were ever more "Orion" Synta scopes, mounts, and accessories. 

At first, the shift in focus to Chinese products was a winner for them. Orion had a pretty good lock on Synta’s SkyWatcher gear for quite some time. But that changed. Suddenly there was SkyWatcher USA, and folks noticed you could get an EQ-6 mount branded “SkyWatcher” or an 80mm f/5 refractor branded “Celestron” for less than an Orion Atlas EQ-6 or a Short Tube 80 cost. Synta was not at all shy about selling to Celestron. Toward the end, Orion did go back to selling products from a wider array of makers, but I'm not sure that helped in any way. 

The almost exclusive emphasis on imported stuff wasn’t the only thing that changed, though. Soon enough, those good, old catalogs became less frequent and then disappeared. You might say there’s no need for print catalogs today, but lots of folks still liked them, and they set Orion apart. Then, their customer service began to circle the drain.

One thing that POed a lot of people (“put out,” this is a family-friendly blog) was an ongoing policy of not providing service or parts unless you were the original purchaser of the product. That made sense for Orion, perhaps, but drove a lot of potential customers away. By the end, their customer service wasn’t A level anymore. To hear some tell it, it wasn’t even F level.

As for what exactly brought Orion down and Meade with it? Supposedly, it was supply chain issues that began during the pandemic. We do have some numbers, though, and from what I’ve seen, the amount of stuff they shipped had been on the decline for years before the pandemic. Ironically, covid was a boon for some astro-merchants (including Meade), what with people wanting something to do safely at home. Likely, it was just that Orion didn’t have anybody in charge who knew the astronomy business, even if they were equipped with a nice MBA. Taking on a Meade that was already, like them, in poor economic health, probably hurt more than it helped.

Yep, same story for both. Two legendary (in a small amateur astronomy way) companies change hands and lose more and more of what made them stand out with each change. So, goodnight, Meade, goodnight, Orion. I still have fond memories of you both, and I reckon we will just leave it at that. Might somebody buy the rights to either name and crank either up again? Why bother? As both wound down, those names acquired plenty of baggage. It would probably be best just to start afresh.

What happened to all those Meade telescopes, you ask? Apparently, there was a pretty good amount of gear left over, and dealer High Point Scientific bought all those pallets of scopes and accessories at the auction of Meade’s remains and is selling them at a discount.  I believe they also acquired whatever inventory Orion had on hand. I see the various domain names are also up for sale, and wouldn’t be surprised to see telescope.com and telescopes.com, at least, come back to life.

Despite it all… Meade gone? Orion gone? I still have a hard time wrapping my head around that one. But that’s just the way she goes, I guess. It has always happened. Giants in the business—Unitron, Criterion, Cave, Edmund, Jaegers—are gone and leave not a rack behind. Hell, even Questar appears to have fallen on hard times. Nobody is immune to that old devil CHANGE.

Next time? A happier subject for sure: The Return of Unk’s Losmandy.