Marcum bought by Nature Vision

[fishinJohn]

Any opinions on the news? I am disappointed there won't be as much competition driving improvements in underwater cameras and it sure won't help pricing. Maybe a better product overall in the end though. Still both MN companies too so that is nice. Hopefully customer service will still be as good as Marcum customers are used to.

[tisosy11]

Nature Vision customer service is top notch as well. I am sure the marcum customer service reps will likely stay on board too though.

[eurolarva]

I am going to mis the 20 or 30 marcum versus vex threads each year.

[mike morris]

Nature Vision vs. Vexilar. Guess we're going to have to get used to that instead. Haha!

[73mrpike]

hi i called marcum tues to ask if my warrenty was still good they said yes and i asked if they were keeping the marcum fish finders she said yes and that some of the cameras will change i was thanked for calling and assured that i would be takin care of sounds like great service but i still feel for any body let go for workers if this happened but i dont know.

[Deitz Dittrich]

Guys,

The only thing this will change is product availability. Production will be kicking into high gear, which will mean that products such as the 820 and 825C, plus all sonar items, will become much more readily available, as we approach the next ice season.

As you guys know, MarCum offers a great product, and it is Nature Vision's intent to continue along these lines. The LX5, LX3, LX1, LXi, as well as underwater camera models 820, 825C and 380 will encompass MarCum's product offering going forward. MarCum's product line stands on it's own and will continue to do so for the forseeable future. I think we can all be pretty excited about the future, too, as Nature Vision has retained the services of MarCum's key engineers, as well as Paul Thorne himself.

And if any of you has questions about products you currently own, please don't hesitate to contact Nature Vision's customer service department ([email protected]). They'll be more than happy to help you.

[Sandmannd]

Deitz, nice info. Does anyone know if they are still going to keep the Marcum name on their items?

[toughguy]

The only thing I would be concerned with is the lack of competition in the camera market after this. There are some other lower quality under water camera manufacturers out there but the 2 top dogs were nat. vis. and marcum. At least there is still Vex on the flasher side. I'm hoping vex gets into cameras or I'm guessing the prices will be going up.

[JP Z]

The Marcum Name will remain for the Marcum products.

[Deitz Dittrich]

as Jpz said, the MarCum name will remain.

Toughguy-I am less worried about this. NatureVision will want to keep a strong hold on the undwater camera market. At this point to get more customers, they will need to continue to build on what they have to encourage people to upgrade from the units they already have. Now, they have all the research they have done, coupled with what MarCum had done. I would expect some great things from them in the future.

[riverrat56]

I really hate to be a pesimest, but why would Nature Vision keep all the Marcum products avalible? They have no need to improve on anything now that they have no one competing against them in a market that they were behind in to begin with. Maybe they will keep the 820 camera, being it is such a great unit, probably stick their name on it at some point, and eventually phase out Marcum camera's all together. I think it would be bad business not to.

[Deitz Dittrich]

Nature Vision is a huge company and own quite a few different smaller companies. For instance, they own Castiac Soft plastics, Deer calls, turkey calls, predator calls, genz rods, and much much more. I still stand by what I said, I think this will be a good thing...

[riverrat56]

I know you are more knowledgeable on this than I am Deitz, and I am not trying to start an argument, but I can't see a monopoly on the underwater camera market as being a good thing

NatureVision will want to keep a strong hold on the undwater camera market. At this point to get more customers, they will need to continue to build on what they have to encourage people to upgrade from the units they already have.

They will not need to do any of this, with Marcum products being under their control, when either one of the camera's sell, they make money. They do not need to compete to win costumers anymore. Not only do they have a strong hold on the market, they've got a Strangle hold.

[harvey lee]

Many companies come and go and also aquire others in their same type field. It is in Nature Visions best interest to continue to do the job they do and offer these quality products. One never knows all that is going on in the business world and for all we know, a new camera company could pop up at any time.

For Nature Vision to simply jack up the price on there products since they purchased Marcum would be a grave mistake and I personally do not believe that this is something that they are not even considering.

[riverrat56]

Harvey, I do not think they will raise prices, with the falling economy they would lose sales. But I also do not see a need for them to make any improvements, which will be a shame. Competition leads to improvements, no competition means there is no need to improve on anything.

I do feel that the Marcum cameras will benefit in sales because of the Nature Vision name and distrubution, every where a guy goes there was Aqua-Vu's but very few places had Marcum camera's, although now it doesn't make much differnce...

[smg04]

[ Competition leads to improvements, no competition means there is no need to improve on anything.[/quote

in any market today theres always a need for improvements, competition or not, people always need "bigger and better", every year companys come out with new stuff and people upgrade, for instance a person might start off with a vex fl8 or marcum vx1, but its only a matter of time till they'll want to upgrade to a fl20 or lx5, new products come out every year and people wanna try them

[Chode2235]

They can better differntiate their products by brand as well as model number. Much like Target has their market pantry and archer farms in house brands. Thats the way that I see the underwater cameras.

Their probably wanted to get their R&D folks too.

[CJH]

It will be interesting to see how this all shakes out. It could be an opportunity for some economies of scale and mindshare, increasing efficiencey and quality, funding research and improvement. Or now that they basically have a monopoly, they could jack up prices and let quality slip, just like Microsoft did.

We'll see........

[Chode2235]

Who is the Steve Jobs of Underwater cameras and Flashers?