Mark Levitin and the Customer on the Other Side of the Telescope

A pair of binoculars can conceal a surprisingly awkward business problem. The person selling them may understand the glass, the price and the shipment perfectly, while knowing very little about the person who will eventually raise them to a pair of eyes. Mark Levitin had built a business around optical products before he decided that this distance from the customer was a problem worth starting another company to solve.

The result was OpticsPlanet, co-founded with Pavel Shvartsman and launched in 2000. Levitin is now co-founder and CEO of Ecentria, the Northbrook, Illinois group behind that retailer and a collection of specialist gear businesses. His path there runs through engineering, immigration, importing, bank credit and a persistent interest in what people intend to do with the things they buy.

That last question gives his story its shape. A retailer can arrange a shelf by manufacturer or price. A customer arrives with a weekend, a job, a difficult choice or a very particular bird in mind. Getting those two systems to understand each other became a substantial part of Levitin’s working life.

A container before a shopping cart

Levitin came to the United States from the Soviet Union in 1989. He had completed his engineering education there. In America, he worked on his English, looked for employment and learned how things operated in a new country. Boston came before Chicago. Engineering provided a foothold; an importing business supplied the next chapter.

The first container of Russian-made microscopes arrived in 1991. Getting the instruments across an ocean was only part of the assignment. He also had to learn how to market and distribute them. The factory was in St. Petersburg, and the relationship developed over time. By 1995, Levitin and partners had arranged exclusive North American distribution of LOMO products through LOMO America.

These are useful beginnings for a retail founder because they are so physical. Before a customer could click anything, someone had to understand an instrument, arrange a shipment and find a market. The internet would change the route to the buyer. It would still leave a box that needed to arrive.

The wholesale operation grew to $10 million in revenue, Levitin later recalled. It combined product development and distribution, working through a network of other businesses. It also exposed a limit: other people occupied the space between his company and the final user. He wanted a better view of that user’s needs.

The birdwatcher problem

In late 1999, Levitin and Shvartsman decided to create a separate consumer business. They financed it personally. LOMO America was not an investor. The distinction mattered: the new venture was meant to establish its own direct connection to the people buying the products.

There was room for improvisation. Levitin’s description of the beginning was refreshingly unceremonious: “We did not have a master plan.” The initial task was to build the website. The clearer ambition was to control the relationship, including the presentation of products and the information accompanying them.

Consider the birdwatcher and the hunter. Both may be shopping for optical equipment. Levitin saw them as distinct audiences whose interests required different approaches. Putting them in the same broad outdoor category was convenient for a merchant; it did not eliminate the differences between them.

A catalog has a gift for making people look alike. It notices that two customers bought binoculars and files them together. Human interest is less tidy. The same instrument can be part of very different plans. Levitin’s account of the business repeatedly returned to the activity surrounding the purchase.

That idea also complicates the usual picture of specialist retail. Specialization can mean knowing a narrow range of objects. It can also mean understanding the range of people who use them. A customer may need a product explained in terms of a task rather than a string of specifications. The merchant has to know enough to translate.

“We did not have a master plan.”

Mark Levitin, 2012

A store with something to say

By 2008, OpticsPlanet had reached No. 744 on the Inc. 5000. The business around that ranking included product forums, blogs, buying guides and specialists answering detailed questions. The shopping experience extended beyond the product listing into the work of helping someone make a choice.

For technical goods, a large selection creates its own difficulty. More options mean more comparisons. A shopper can arrive knowing precisely what to buy, or arrive with a problem and very little vocabulary for it. The second customer gives a specialist retailer something useful to do.

Levitin used the word destination for the business he wanted. In his 2012 account, forums could attract readers well beyond the people posting questions. Customers researched products and talked with peers. Dvor, the members-only sales business launched in November 2010, added another way for customers to engage with gear.

It also supplied a small, revealing joke at the founder’s expense. Some Dvor members chose four offer emails a day. Levitin preferred fewer interruptions. The site allowed members to choose their interests and frequency. His own appetite for marketing was allowed to remain a personal matter.

There is a practical courtesy in that arrangement. A founder can have strong convictions about a business without assuming that every customer wants to live on the founder’s schedule. Even enthusiasm has settings. Someone watching closely for a deal may welcome a message that would send another person straight to the unsubscribe link.

Video became part of the same effort. In 2012, OpticsPlanet described hundreds of product videos, thousands of informational articles and more than 25,000 customer reviews. Those were different kinds of explanation, contributed by different participants. Together they gave a purchase a surrounding conversation.

Levitin’s own emphasis was blunt: “Without content we are worthless.” The company had taken a four-person multimedia crew to SHOT Show to film interviews across four days. Producing useful material demanded people and time, alongside the software and inventory that a shopper might more readily associate with an online store.

A banker enters the picture

The financial account Levitin gave in February 2012 was similarly concrete. The founders had used their own money, and the business used bank financing. They had been willing to guarantee obligations with personal assets. He recalled a credit line moving from $100,000 to $200,000 and then $500,000.

He also reported reaching $100 million in revenue, with 300 employees and annual growth of 30%. Those numbers belong to that historical interview. They show the scale the business had reached when he was explaining the decisions behind it.

Levitin described software development as part of the company, while insisting that the commercial model needed to make sense. His chosen test was customers and revenue producing profit. A banker’s questions can have a useful way of removing the decorative language from a business presentation.

The early financing story has a later documentary marker. In October 2014, Levitin signed a Form D for Ecentria Group as chief executive. A founder’s account is always located in time. The decisions that funded a beginning and the arrangements supporting a larger organization belong to successive chapters.

Knowing when to let a brand go

Ecentria’s subsequent history includes the acquisition of CampSaver, expansion of its distribution operations and the development of additional brands and channels. The work underneath the storefront grew alongside the assortment. Levitin’s current responsibilities include strategy and corporate development; Shvartsman remains co-founder and president.

Armasight offers a recent example of what corporate development involves. Ecentria acquired the brand and intellectual property in June 2020. A relaunch was announced ahead of SHOT Show 2022, bringing its product development and manufacturing capabilities together with Ecentria’s consumer, commercial and government channels.

In April 2026, American Holoptics announced that it had acquired Armasight from Ecentria. Levitin described the preceding five years as a period of rebuilding the brand. He said the new owner would provide resources and expertise to support its future. A career that began with optical instruments now included deciding where an optics brand should go next.

Ownership adds another layer to the customer relationship that first interested him. A specialist brand depends on people who design its products, people who explain them and people who get them to a buyer. Those responsibilities can sit inside one group or across several companies. Changing the owner changes that arrangement. For Levitin, the Armasight chapter connects the practical questions of his importing years with the broader decisions of a chief executive: which capabilities belong together, and which partner should be responsible for the next stage?

The transaction gives the story a useful present tense. Leading a group means making decisions about ownership as well as selling products. An acquisition and a divestiture ask different questions about the same brand: what can this organization help it become, and when might another organization carry it further?

Away from Ecentria, Levitin takes walks on the beach at sunrise and sunset. It is an appealing amount of empty space to put beside a career spent organizing complicated assortments. No product grid, no purchasing decision, no offer arriving four times a day.

His business story keeps returning to the person beyond the transaction. First there was a shipment. Then a distribution network. Then a website where the buyer could ask a question directly. For a founder whose first trade was in things that help people see, paying attention to who was looking turned out to be a consequential habit.