Meade Announcement

Meade is closing it's plant in Irvine:
ocbiz.freedomblogging.com/2007/11/01/mea...e-plant-lay-off-120/
Production moving to Mexico and China.

What a shame. I wonder if Celestron would make a bid for the company-the monopolies commission would probably now allow it.
It would be good to have anothet player in the field though

Interesting. If the biggest loss was incurred after the closure of the Discovery chain stores that implies that profits made on the ETX and DS lines, all of which are made in China, were supporting loss-making operations in Irvine. I expect that the Chinese made LXD75 line is doing the same.

"Maximising shareholder value" can mean selling off divisions, which I hope will include Coronado and Bresser. Coronado was originally a successful business with a tight line of products. It wasn't until Meade moved in that they started to lose their economies of scale by offering too many different products, a philosophy that's led to the current pass. Bresser is a European brand that already sources its products from China, if it were sold off and bought by a European business or consortium it could compete effectively against Meade and Celestron, offering us more choice in the European marketplace, instead of being hobbled by Meade as it is now.

It appears that the worst possible result would be for the current leadership to remain in place because they clearly have no idea of how to run a company.

There definitely seems to be a case of 'headless chicken mode" going on here.

They buy coronado, all they do is destroy it.

They pump money into the maxmount, anyone could have told them that this was never going to work.

The RCX, their flag ship scope, cost them millions to design and get working, and now is indefinitely suspended.

Seems like all the recent very expensive decisions have ended in disaster, It'll be interesting to see if they'll end up regretting moving to china aswell.

If I was a shareholder I would be worried. Best thing would be a private buyer. It would be a good business if it was run properly.

If you want to blame anybody blame the CEO: Steven L. Muellner

His track record is bizzare,
starts off at Lays (you know the american version of Walkers Crisps)
then go's on to selling UPVC windows (and we all know about the double glazing salesmen!)

Then go's onto toys (I wonder where they were manufactured!?)
and then Outdoor sports stuff like inline skates (shudder) and
skateboards!

(I skated for years and let me tell you I wouldn't get on a Variflex deck
if you paid me bars of gold!)

With this guy at the wheel it's no wonder they went on a spin to Mexico,
I wouldn't be surprised if it was the idea all along.

This guy is going to make Meade into the 'Fischer Price' of telescope manufacturers.