I recently had the opportunity to visit the Vortex facility in Barneveld, Wisconsin and meet with some of their employees. Vortex has long been one of my favorite optics companies for two main reasons.
First, they have achieved that perfect balance between quality and price, which is rare in the optics industry. Many companies offer either suspiciously cheap products or extremely expensive ones. Vortex provides affordable optics without compromising quality.
Second, Vortex offers something that rivals just about any other optics company, and that’s their VIP warranty. Most warranties include a lot of small print listing all the exceptions to the warranty. Reading these often makes me feel like I’m reading the side effects of a prescription drug. It goes on and on and on… Well, you get the point.
During my tour, I had the opportunity to visit with their employees and see what makes them tick. I’ve always been surprised with their VIP warranty, but after meeting their employees it all made sense.
Here’s a quick rundown of my tour with Vortex and a look at why they have become a powerhouse in the optics world.
Big company with a small business attitude
Of course, Vortex is a big company, but I still wasn’t prepared for their impressive headquarters. They are in Barneveld, Wisconsin, which is a small town of about 1,300 people. This is surprising since Vortex alone employs more than 400 people.
Walking into the building gave me Bass Pro Shop vibes. There were lots of windows, tall, wooded doors, high ceilings, and display cases everywhere.
While the building is large and structurally appealing, the company is run like a small business store. Everything is well organized and equipped with the latest modern technology, but you would have thought every employee came from the local town. During the entire tour we were constantly greeted with smiles and polite conversation from the employees. The atmosphere was a unique combination of laid-back, easy-going people, hard at work.
I even got to meet some of the employee’s pets as the company allows them to bring their pet to work with them. All the pets were well-behaved and just as friendly as the employees. I’m not sure I’ve seen a company that size let employees bring pets to work with them.
I also noticed that every local business I went to, from the small hotel to the restaurants and shops, felt supported by Vortex and loved having them there.
Customer Service is the heart of the company
One of my biggest pet peeves with large companies is their tendency to outsource their customer service to third-party providers. Because Vortex has built its business model around customer service, that’s the first thing you come to in the building. The customer service teams are right in the middle of the main entrance of the building.
I expected them to be a room off to their own, but instead, the customer service workers were just outside the CEO and Vice President’s offices. They were organized by dealers, military/law enforcement, and direct customer care, but they were all in one large room. They also didn’t have screen prompts to read or “troubleshooting” lists to make you follow even if you said you already tried that.
Their customer service workers talk to you like regular people and try to find a solution to whatever problem you’re having. This is what makes the VIP (Very Important Promise) warranty so great. Vortex dedicates an entire team of workers just to answering phones and making sure the customer is taken care of.
While many warranties have a lengthy clause at the end, describing all the things their warranty doesn’t cover, Vortex makes it simple. Unless the product was stolen or you deliberately broke it, they will make it right. It doesn’t matter how old it is, where you got it from, or what happened to it. If it’s a Vortex product, the customer service rep will speak with you and find a solution to make sure you have a product that works.
Happy employees = happy customers?
Have you ever heard the saying, “happy wife, happy life”? Will in the business world it goes “happy employees = happy customers.” When a company makes an employee feel vested and part of the company, they make more of an effort at their job.
While Vortex is one of the largest producers of optics in the world, they are not a publicly traded company. Founded in 1988 by Dan and Margie Hamilton, Vortex is now an employee-owned company. The family still helps run the company, but the employees are part owners.
After visiting the customer service area, we walked past the employee gym, break room (that looked more like a Starbucks), and the offices where the company provides on-site chiropractors regularly.
I also noticed these small bookstations around the building that were full of customer service, business, and leadership books. Turns out the books are offered for all employees to read. Each department in the company also has assigned or recommended reading that relates to their job at Vortex.
When I was younger, I worked at a furniture factory and then for a large warehouse distributor. I never met the facility manager at either location. In fact, I never met anyone higher up than my department manager. That’s just how it was. The “higher ups” didn’t associate with the grunts.
During my visit, the manager walking me through the facility seemed to know everyone’s name. He made small talk with each one of them like they worked right next to him daily. From what I could tell, every level of manager, up to the CEO interacted with all of the employees on a regular basis.
Vortex Product and Quality Control
For a company to offer an unconditional lifetime warranty, the product must be high quality, or they would go out of business replacing optics.
As the tour moved on past the front of the building, we visited the manufacturing floor where all the various parts of optics are made. Each part is monitored and inspected during the product development stage. Some of the parts were measured down to the micron, which is 0.001 mm. That’s some pretty tight tolerances!
Quality control wasn’t a specific area, but more of a process at every station from manufacturing to shipping. There were quality control employees in the shipping warehouse who opened and inspected the product before shipment.
Another aspect of Vortex’s quality control, however, isn’t just their process of checking products during and after the manufacturing process. It’s their system of testing and gaining feedback on current products. They don’t just make a product and move on to something new. Vortex goes to great lengths to gather feedback from every area possible after a product has been released.
This includes customer feedback, dealer feedback, and those reviewing their products. They also have a team of people who test their product at the facility and out on the range.
A testing room is located not far from the manufacturing floor where Vortex performs drop tests, water submersion tests, and more. Once a product meets those standards, they have a team of people who physically use the product and provide feedback to the engineers.
Training and Education
After visiting the main building and the newly opened 150,000-square-foot warehouse, we went to the Vortex Edge building. This building contains classrooms, a large indoor shooting range, a break room, and more. Vortex provides classes that are available to the public, from beginner to specialty classes.
I was able to attend part of a ballistics class that had some great information in it. All of their instructors were experts in their field and loved to teach. Most classes include classroom and hands-on range time.
It would have been a shame to visit a building with such a nice shooting range and not shoot any guns. But Vortex did not disappoint. They let me shoot a variety of firearms with their optics mounted on them.
While on the range, the Edge employees talked about the members of the military and law enforcement they work with. These guys obviously had a passion for helping anyone in those fields.
what do dedicated employees and quality products get you?
When you have employees who love their jobs and are experts at what they do, you get quality products. When those two are combined, you get happy customers.
One of the most notable and coveted things an optics company can achieve is a military contract. When a military uses your equipment, it says something about that product. Vortex has not one, but three separate military contracts and I suspect there will be more in the future.
The UK Ministry of Defense chose Vortex a couple of years ago to make an optic for their 10,000 new AR-15 rifles. These rifles were issued to the Royal Marines and Vortex is continuing to service that contract. Vortex also won a contract with the Army Rangers.
But their biggest prize of all is the new 10-year deal with the US Army. This contract is to produce the fire control system for the Next Generation Squad Weapons. This “smart” optic, designated as the XM157 will have a built-in range finder.
I wasn’t able to see one since they are still in the development stage, which the company keeps under wraps. But I’m sure it’s going to be pretty cool and hopefully someday, available to the public.
Where will Vortex go from here?
In my experience, smaller companies have the best customer service but struggle with competitive pricing. Volume orders and shipping capabilities contribute to this. When a company grows, customer service is often left behind and eventually placed in the basement or pawned off to a third-party provider. I mean, why care about an angry customer when the money is rolling in right?
Growing into a large company while maintaining stellar customer service is extremely hard and rare. I have no idea what Vortex is planning for the future, but as long as they keep their focus on their employees and the customers, they will do great.
Vortex has produced a Golf Range finder and an impressive line of ballistic sunglasses and other apparel that hints at an expansion outside their current product lines. It will be exciting to see what they come up with next and as long as it comes with that VIP warranty, I’ll be a customer.
