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Gentlemen,
Thank you very much for the many messages of support that have been received, by e-mail, message and a few stated here – it is much appreciated. While it would have been nice to let everyone know what was happening at an earlier stage, for obvious reasons this was not possible.
Over two decades is a long time for any niche business to operate in – it has not always been easy, but certainly has always been a challenge.
Set up as a partnership in 1996, we operated as agents for the Law Enforcement Supply Organisation (trading as “The Night Vision Centre”) who at the time were the distributors for a new (at the time) US company called “ATN Corp”. LESO went bust after a few years of very unethical behaviour, and so we broadened our product line to include items from Newcon Optik (and a few others) and dropped ATN.
We traded successfully in this way for five or so years, and then a divisive decision was made to take up ATN again. This caused some internal friction, and so the partnership evolved into a limited company and we became ATNs European service agents.
It was during this time that we started to make “suggestions” as to how certain lines could be improved and new products formulated. As a direct result from this, what were to become Armasight products (clip-ons, goggles, monoculars, rifle scopes and of course, digital units) began development.
There was some in-fighting in ATN which resulted in Armasight being formed, and we were all confident that the old ATN approaches had been left behind. Development of the new product line, including the Drone Pro, went ahead. The Drone itself took a few years to get to the point where we were happy that it could hold its own against anything else that was around at the time (the N550 was the competition to be bettered at this point) and thankfully, even with other units coming out, our original approach was proven correct. This was achieved at quite a cost however, and even at this point, it was obvious that the Drone would never make any money – the retail price was set at the minimum it could be set to (in relation to the competition, not what it cost to manufacture). This was always going to be an issue – there is a generally, a fair possible margin on products manufactured in China, not so when the components for a unit are drawn from all over the world into the West and then have to go through various logistical channels.
We suffered a number of blows along the way, one of the most damaging being the Sterling devaluation of October 2016, which overnight meant that any Drones sold at that point were costing us more than £70.00 to supply per unit. And yet people still complained.
The other big blow was Armasight being bought by FLIR, which meant that all other projects that we had intended to produce (and there were many) were shelved indefinitely. Many criticised me personally for this, but as with many things, it was not something that we could control – and no matter what you do, there will always be someone ready to jump up on a soapbox in any event.
The next big blow was when FLIR decided that in order to make some money, the Drone needed to be changed. The AMOLED screen was to go, and be replaced with a much, much cheaper FLCOS screen. The reproduction of the image of the FLCOS screen in the Drone is no better than the other market leaders units, as well as leading to lower magnification (so the Drone 10X would give an image that is, in effect, only about 7.6 X).
We came to an arrangement to continue the Drone Pro with AMOLED for a while longer, but again, logistics and extra cost made this eventually become unworkable. Meanwhile, the Drone Pro 10X in the US was being marketed with the FLCOS screens at a lower price, but was still not well received there, and it is these units that FLIR are now trying to unload onto the UK market. We made it clear a long time ago that we would rather not sell the Drone if inferior components were going to be used, and we have stuck to that as being the right choice, despite the consequences that we were threatened with.
So, regarding some of the issues raised here;
1) From this point on, FLIR will be supplying whatever Drones left in stock in the US with FLCOS screens (or units that were returned by us for any amount of other reasons) that we would not sell in the UK.
2) FLIR are solely responsible (legally and ethically) for the warranty/non-warranty service on their products, including the Drone Pro.
3) How they are going to achieve this I am not sure – Otto and Sergey in Germany run a Mum and Pop concern, and are prevented by German law from dealing with weapon sights (which are a restricted item in a lot of EU countries).
4) FLIR have made it clear to us that they are now in charge of the situation, including legacy products, spare parts and servicing.
To be honest, the EOL list went up on the Armasight website last year, and drew no comment from anybody until recently which was very surprising. I know that people are going to be disappointed, but this is not our doing. We have endeavoured to give the best service possible to every customer that required it over the past twenty odd years, and it is very difficult to let this go, but it is out of our hands.
As much of this dirty washing was kept where it should be – out of visitors perception (God knows there has been enough dirty washing of other sponsors displayed here and other forums in the past) – for a long time, but what I have revealed here is already in the public domain, and so will not result in any legal action.
Once again, I would like to thank the many people that have gifted us their custom over the years – it has been a pleasure meeting a lot of you at the various trade shows that we have exhibited at in the past (IWA in Nuremberg, NSS in Yorkshire, BSS in Coventry and MGF in Shropshire) and your encouragement and kind words were very important in every respect.
Regards and farewell,
Carl.
