OpticsPlanet, Inc. is a

privately held A privately held company (or simply a private company) is a company whose shares and related rights or obligations are not offered for public subscription or publicly negotiated in the respective listed markets, but rather the company's stock is ...

online retailer of

shooting Shooting is the act or process of discharging a projectile from a ranged weapon (such as a gun, bow, crossbow, slingshot, or blowpipe). Even the acts of launching flame, artillery, darts, harpoons, grenades, rockets, and guided missiles can ...

hunting Hunting is the human activity, human practice of seeking, pursuing, capturing, or killing wildlife or feral animals. The most common reasons for humans to hunt are to harvest food (i.e. meat) and useful animal products (fur/hide (skin), hide, ...

military A military, also known collectively as armed forces, is a heavily armed, highly organized force primarily intended for warfare. It is typically authorized and maintained by a sovereign state, with its members identifiable by their distinct ...

law enforcement Law enforcement is the activity of some members of government who act in an organized manner to enforce the law by discovering, deterring, rehabilitating, or punishing people who violate the rules and norms governing that society. The term en ...

eyewear Eyewear consists of items and accessories worn on or over the eyes, for fashion or adornment, protection against the environment, and to improve or enhance visual acuity. Common forms of eyewear include glasses (also called ''eyeglasses'' or ''s ...

, and

laboratory equipment A laboratory (; ; colloquially lab) is a facility that provides controlled conditions in which scientific or technological research, experiments, and measurement may be performed. Laboratory services are provided in a variety of settings: physicia ...

. The company is headquartered in

Northbrook, Illinois Northbrook is a suburb of Chicago, located at the northern edge of Cook County, Illinois, United States, on the border of Lake County, Illinois, Lake County. Per the 2020 United States Census, 2020 census, the population was 35,222. When incorpo ...

, and operates a number of specialized online destinations, as well as its flagship store OpticsPlanet.com.

History

After entering the

optics Optics is the branch of physics that studies the behaviour and properties of light, including its interactions with matter and the construction of instruments that use or detect it. Optics usually describes the behaviour of visible, ultraviole ...

industry as the exclusive

North American North America is a continent in the Northern Hemisphere and almost entirely within the Western Hemisphere. It is bordered to the north by the Arctic Ocean, to the east by the Atlantic Ocean, to the southeast by South America and the Ca ...

wholesale distributor of LOMO products, Mark Levitin and Pavel Shvartsman launched OpticsPlanet in 1999 to build a direct-to-consumer

e-commerce E-commerce (electronic commerce) is the activity of electronically buying or selling of products on online services or over the Internet. E-commerce draws on technologies such as mobile commerce, electronic funds transfer, supply chain manageme ...

destination for optics, bootstrapping the company with their own private funding. They launched the flagship e-commerce site OpticsPlanet.com in 2000, and grew to achieve an annual revenue of over $163 million, and a staff of 300 employees. These figures led OpticsPlanet to be recognized as one of the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...

Top 500 ecommerce sites by Internet Retailer Magazine. In 2011, 2018 and 2019 the company was listed as one of the “Top Workplaces” by

Chicago Tribune The ''Chicago Tribune'' is a daily newspaper based in Chicago, Illinois, United States, owned by Tribune Publishing. Founded in 1847, and formerly self-styled as the "World's Greatest Newspaper" (a slogan for which WGN radio and television ar ...

Viral kits

The company has obtained notoriety through the sales of various specialty kits, such as the Z.E.R.O. Zombie Kit, the Santa Stakeout Kit, and the Invisible Man Kit. These kits combine many of the items OpticsPlanet sells into a single package, and carry a price tag upwards of $24,000. Outlets such as

Business Insider ''Insider'', previously named ''Business Insider'' (''BI''), is an American financial and business news website founded in 2007. Since 2015, a majority stake in ''Business Insider''s parent company Insider Inc. has been owned by the German publ ...

Gizmodo ''Gizmodo'' ( ) is a design, technology, science and science fiction website. It was originally launched as part of the Gawker Media network run by Nick Denton, and runs on the Kinja platform. ''Gizmodo'' also includes the subsite ''io9'', whic ...

and

Fox News The Fox News Channel, abbreviated FNC, commonly known as Fox News, and stylized in all caps, is an American multinational conservative cable news television channel based in New York City. It is owned by Fox News Media, which itself is owne ...

have all written about these kits.

Wetley GGRX

In 2014, OpticsPlanet launched Wetley GGRX, the first company to offer prescription lens inserts for Google’s Google Glass devices.

References

{{reflist, refs= http://www.inc.com/profile/opticsplanet {{Dead link, date=February 2022 Sporting goods retailers of the United States Online retailers of the United States American companies established in 2000 Retail companies established in 2000 Internet properties established in 2000 Companies based in Cook County, Illinois Privately held companies based in Illinois

History

Viral kits

Wetley GGRX

See also

References