NEWS
Looks clearly towards the future
It’s been an industry leader in high-performance sports optics for more than 65 years. This year it’s undergone a complete rebrand. T&G had to find out more...
B
ushnell has always had a good name – decent, reliable, good value for money. All good stuff, but, in the UK at least, while the products were popular for their value at that price point, they probably wouldn’t have been a hunters’ top pick. Until now, that is. The entire product line has been re-evaluated and refreshed, and the company now says it can compete with the best. “We didn’t really mean to go quite as far as we did,” says Jake Edson, communications manager at Bushnell. “We’d started by giving the Engage line a refresh a few years ago. We’d developed this amazing new lens coating – the EXO Barrier, which bonds on a molecular level to the lens of the optic, so we decided to apply that to the Engage line of optics.” It wasn’t long before the team at Bushnell realised quite what a breakthrough the EXO barrier was, and decided that they wanted to evaluate the entire line of hunting optics. “It needed a revamp, for sure. The optics were all good, solid and reliable, but with this new breakthrough for our lenses, it was time to look at all the aspects of our lines of hunting optics.” To do this, Bushnell didn’t just get
its staff to redesign the optics they had already. It went far further. “We looked at our staff, too – I mean this is a huge project to take on – to launch three new lines over a couple of years, all with new technology.” Bushnell has always had a good dose of hunters among its staff, but, says Jake, “We
38 | Tackle & Guns | November 2019
increased this even more. We have more engineers who are hunters, more designers, too. It meant that as we looked at what we wanted these new lines of optics to do, we had the right people there to do that – we could have practical discussions, not just theoretical.” Bushnell’s optics lines are designed and engineered in-house, but, says Jake, “The assembly mostly takes place outside – so we outsource that part of production. It gives us much more freedom to increase or
people use, and hunters are much more aware of the technology behind products. There’s been another big development in hunting in the US – and that’s the increase in demand for products that will work for long-range hunting, so we wanted to reflect that in our range, too.” The new range has three lines to it – good, very good, best – named, in order “Prime”, “Nitro” and “Forge”. When asked to explain the differences, Jake replied: “Well – it’s not quite as
We knew we wanted to have a Good,
Better, Best formula. All the ranges would have, where applicable, the new EXO barrier lens coating, but then we looked into new technology, new glass, new everything.
decrease our output, lower overheads and more opportunity for fine tuning or changing our designs.” So, what are these new lines, and
where does the inspiration come from for them? “We knew we wanted to have a Good, Better, Best formula. All the ranges would have, where applicable, the new EXO barrier lens coating, but then we looked into new technology, new glass, new everything. We wanted the new ranges to update our optics in line with how hunting has evolved over the past few years. The approach is more technical, more professional in terms of the products
straightforward as saying one line has one feature while the others don’t. And remember this is still a work in progress – we are still working on a few products to complete these lines!” It’s easier, as Jake explains, to compare each product across the range. “Take the binoculars, for example – so they all have the new EXO Barrier, but, when you move from the ‘Prime’ binoculars up to the Nitro, the glass improves in quality and, there are phase coated prisms and the low-light performance improves considerably. Step up to the Forge, the quality of the glass and prisms is increased even
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