I think this could be a useful thread if we can put together a list of brands against the companies that actually manufacture binoculars so that if a certain brand is unavailable in one country we can identify alternatives that are made by the same people (so should be as good....or bad).
so here is a starting list of brands (some of these will manufacture their own bins)
Leica
Nikon
Canon
Olympus
Pentax
Swarovski
Bresser
Bushnell
Fujifilm
Helios
Kowa
Minox
Opticron
Pyser-sgi
Steiner
Swift
Ziess
Alpen
Brunton
Burris
Carson
Century Systems
Docter
Galileo
Leupold
Ncstar
Oberwerk
Simmons (Meade)
Vortex
Yukon
Barska
Konus
Hawke
Vanguard
Praktica
Vixen
Viking
RSPB
Optolyth
Optical Hardware
Minolta
Meopta
Celeston
Camlink
Audubon
Acuter
Tasco
Luger
Meade
William Optics
Bynolyt
why we have to have so many brands is beyond me!!!!
Andrew
from globalsources.com
in mainland China we have
Jaxy Optical Instrument Co. Ltd
Chongqing Dontop Optics Co. Ltd.
Kinsun International Trade Co.,Ltd
Henan Costar Group Co. ,Ltd
Chinamericanada Industrial Co. Ltd
Oriental Industries Company Limited
Fuzhou Denovo International Co.,Ltd
CATIC Fujian Co. Ltd
This topic gets beat to death every so often. Point of fact is that many nearly identical binoculars with different labels are made for different companies by some of the same factories. Point is, even if you can figure out that LOW (Light Optical Works) from Japan makes several different binoculars for different companies, then the assumption cannot follow that they are the same.