High-end scope assembly company relocates to Kalispell

A scope assembly company has moved into a warehouse at the south end of town near Fred’s appliances just off U.S. 93 South. The company assembles scopes and sells them throughout North America and Europe and even as far away as New Zealand and South Africa.

U.S. Optics has been operating out of its previous headquarters in southern California until earlier this year, when new owner Pat Harrigan bought the company and moved it to Kalispell.

Chief Operating Officer Kevin Peterson, who spent 30 years working in munitions storage and maintenance with the Air Force before retiring to Kalispell with his wife, said “the strong gun industry here in Kalispell and then just the beauty” were major factors in the decision. The company considered other options in North Carolina, South Carolina and Texas.

For the past few months they have been moving staff members up to Montana and setting up the facility while working to ramp up to full production, Peterson said. They moved eight employees from California and have hired 15 locals to help staff the facility. He also said they are still looking to hire a few more people.

Maggie Tortoledo is the director of marketing for the company, and one of the employees that moved up from California. She said she was initially reluctant to make the move, but when she visited the Kalispell area in late summer she was sold, and has enjoyed living here so far.

Peterson said most of their sales go to long-range precision shooting aficionados and hobbyists, but they also sell to occasional military squads or groups and some people use them for hunting, though the current model isn’t as well suited as some future ones he hopes to sell will be.

“It’s a very high-end scope that’s designed for long-range precision,” Peterson said.

Unlike many firearm and accessories producers, this facility will feature a retail space in the front. Peterson said they would sell an assortment of the scopes they produce as well as other products from local munitions manufactures in Montana.

“It will be all high-end, quality products in here,” Peterson said.

He said he brought as many people as he could from the California facility when they made the transition, but has had good experience with local hires as well.

“I brought eight employees from California with us. Basically the employees down there, every one of them I would have hired to come up,” Peterson said. “It was really the key players that I needed in place that I didn’t have to go out and find.”

He said the most difficult position to fill so far has been that of glass cleaner. The person who does it has to sit in front of a microscope for eight hours each day and rid small lenses of miniscule amounts of detriment.

He said its hard to find folks with that kind of experience on their resume, so you have to look at character traits and other jobs that require fine motor skills to take the position. He said they usually give new employees about six months to get acquainted to the work.

Every scope the facility assembles comes into contact with each employee at some point in the process, Peterson said. To ensure quality, as a product moves down the assembly line any employee can flag a quality control issue at any point and production will cease until the problem is resolved.

“We hit very hard on quality,” Peterson said.

Peterson declined to say how long it took to manufacture any given scope, because he didn’t want his competition to glean any information about their production process.

When an issue has come up throughout the transition to Montana, Peterson they assemble what they have dubbed a “kill team” to take care of the issue as quickly as possible.

“We’ve been blessed with solutions to everything very quickly,” Peterson said.

Reporter Peregrine Frissell can be reached at (406) 758-4438 or pfrissell@dailyinterlake.com.