Re: (SNES) Fwd: (ATMoB:Discuss) Lumicon is belly-up

[Albireo54@aol.com]

In a message dated 9/29/2002 6:19:29 AM Eastern Daylight Time, les11@cox.net 
writes:


> The wealth effect convinced lots of people that they had stronger sales 
> potential than they did in reality.

Hi Les,

A good indicator of many astronomy company's marketing strategies - so often 
flawed -- has been the size of their advertisements in scientific magazines. 
Lumicon was a great case in point - their ad space was huge for so small a 
company. And others have followed the same path to bankruptcy. You mentioned 
Pocono Mountain Optics. Tasco (low end) is another and Cave Optical (high 
end, and the dream scope of many aspiring observers in the early 70s) is one 
more. Questar, being the Rolls Royce of small scopes, will probably never 
lose its narrow, but well heeled market. 

An interesting (and successful) contrast is Orion. It spends loads of money 
on its own catalog, but advertises very little in other ways. Note also that 
they have developed many of their own in-house product lines, rather than 
riding the coattails of the better known names like Celestron and Meade - 
another company that buys vast amounts of ad space.

Regards,
Doug Stewart
=====
Post to the entire list by writing to snegazers@brainiac.com.
Unsubscribe by mailing to majordomo@brainiac.com with the message body
"unsubscribe snegazers"