Is it feasible to start a Flashlight only store?

I've been noticing a boom of flashlight selections in department stores lately, most especially from the LED variety. Ever since I started reading this site and hopping to link after link, I've realized that there is a huge market for flashlights because guys like you, lumen freaks, ARE OUT THERE.

I've been working on a bike light project for over a week now and it always comes to a halt because I'm waiting for parts to arrive in the mail. How I loooong for a local flashlight parts store where I can see the products in person and play with them! This got me thinking...

Do you think it would be profitable to start a walk-in store that sells flashlights and parts only? Maybe a mall kiosk?

The store would have a huge selection of flashlights IN-STOCK and all types incan bulbs, leds, amps, bucks, holsters, adapters, batteries, switchs, heatsinking, reflectors, etc.... consider it a modders paradise! Just think of how many Fenix's I'd sell. :rock:

I suppose sales would be slow during the day. Maybe this would be a good idea in Alaska. What do you think?

If you were to start one it'd probably be wise to have an online site as well. And you'd have to make sure no one leaves your store with a stock MiniMag. I think a flashlight store would be pretty neat. Not sure how well it'd do business-wise as we all seem to live around the world. Selling knives and self-defense tools at the store might be good too - get someone coming in for a pair of brass knuckles and leaving with an SF M3 or something.

I can imagine a kiosk working out at this mall around here, it has dozens of those little things lying around, and most go out of business within a week. Except for the phone faceplate ones, the iPod accessory stand, the tee shirt one, and the body piercing booths.
It would have to play on the whims of the shoppers. People rarely go out looking for a particular flashlight, it's more spur of the moment or a just in case deal. If a pack of teenagers walks by on their way to the food court, and sees a little stand full of colored Mini Mags or something cheap, I gurantee you a few will come over and buy a few simply because they come in different colors. The older, more educated gadget junkies may wander over to look at the high-end models, and you might even get a few people who have never been exposed to quality lights and just think a metal flashlight would be nice to have.
I'd also highly recomend carrying Nite Ize holsters, I'm surprised the phone stands haven't started carrying them. Seems every time I show mine to some one at work, they marvel at all the junk it holds, and very often they pick up a smaller one for themselves next time they go through Lowes. Nite Ize/Pock-its is a company that thrives off those little cash registers isle shelves, pure impulse buying. The same concept should go with the kiosk.
EDIT: After seeing last post, agreed, those things should be sold with LED drop-ins stapled to each package, they're simply essential.

No,
There are almost 300 million americans. The ones hanging out here would appreciate a flashlight store, probably not many more. Certain people think we are crazy for being into and paying for high end lights. There are probably more of them than there are of us! Does anyone know of a successful flash light only store?

I tend to think it wouldn't work due to the low percentage of people who realize what a quality light is and are willing to pay for it.

On the other hand I have seen stores that
-only sell sunglasses
-only sell watches
-only sell TIES!
and somehow they stay in business so I guess I could be wrong.

I don't think it would work - too much of a niche market. I think the department stores are gradually moving in that direction, although the high end Surefires will probably do best through mail order and at gun shops.

Combined with a battery store it just might work!

*sigh*
*grabs a warm cup of cocoa*

The high end flashlights that we CPFer's buy are part of the 'long tail' of sales of lights.
Wiki Link
Basically the main bulk of the sales at a mall stand will be cheap LED lights and Minimags/Mags, keychain LED lights etc.

The high end volume sales are much much smaller (at least to the public anyway, CPFer's are a different matter) the biggest customers of companies like Surefire are most likely to be the Military/LE places and they usually buy direct from Surefire if they're placing big orders or from their established suppliers, they're not going to pop down to the local mall for those type of things with all their fancy purchasing orders and the like ^_^

It is very hard to make a good profit out of a long tail in the environment of a mall stand unless you have some serious cash clout to maintain such a large inventory of the 'niche' products like SF LA's and Minimag Sandwiches.
That is why all the good flashlight stores I know of are online (apart from that place in Soho London but they charge an arm and a leg) because being online gives you access to the whole country (eg. if you are a US SF dealer for example, 280 Million Americans at the last count) at the very minimum or
in the best case to the whole world (6 Billion methinks?)
Where as if you are stuck in a mall in the states or where ever in the big wide world you'd have access to maybe a few hundred thousand people in the best case, and what's the odds all of them are going to become converted flashaholics? (not looking for a answer from a CPFer here :naughty:

You'd probably find you're selling more cheap 'impulse buy' items like cute coloured solitaries, minimags and the keychain LED lights, and this would make the bulk of your income at a stand like this.

Keep in mind most people out there will be perfectally happy with a Minimag, solitaire or some generic LED keychain light.

If you sit long enough at the stores that sell flashlights you see that most people just go for the cheapest lights to middle of the range lights out there, people just haven't got brand recognition with names like 'surefire' or even 'streamlight',
(I EDC a V21 holster with the SF logo sewn on it, and in my time in London i have yet to find a person who knows what the Surefire brand is)

However that all said it would be feasible if you just ran a stand at a mall that sold a bulk of cheap every day lights (mags etc.) and shiny things (mobile phone add ons stands usually do the best i find) and also have a small stock of minimag mods, good idea selling Fenix's, that would pull in some serious cash for the people who 'want something more'.

BUT you'd probably find you'd do most of your flashlightequse trade from a online presence and people would pop down to your mall stand to do pickups and to have a play with your lights, and the online trade i'd be guessing would be your bread and butter in your clicks and motar business.

People are generally very visual people and they won't see the value of a super expensive mega light that is bright but just doesn't look cool <at least to them> (until the next power outage mind u) compared to something that looks like a super bling bling gadget (mobile phones come to mind here)

That all said, I'd say it would be feasible to open a mall stand with a small selection of the niche stuff like you mentioned in your post, and then a much larger selection of cheaper lights, gadgets, and bits and pieces, that would pay your rent for the mall stand and your bills as well...

*phew* Puts down empty cup of cocoa

Good luck if you want to go down this route, have plenty of cash and keep in mind to stock the things that will sell a lot and make a profit

I can't imagine that a flashlight specialty store could be profitable. There is too much competition from fairly well-stocked big-box stores such as Target, WalMart and Home Depot etc. They buy in huge quantity with price breaks that you'll never see as a single-store retailer.

CPF is a focal point for flashlight enthusiasts and not by any means a reflection of the general public. I think you would starve just selling flashlights because the public doesn't give any thought to them and prefers a throw-away $5.00 flashlight. CPFers love to make fun of Maglites - but Maglite has dominated the American flashlight market for quite some time by know what people want, the price-point they want it at and getting its product in tens of thousands of stores nationwide. The general public isn't wowed by LEDs, throw or $100 light sabres. A flashlight is something you keep in the kitchen drawer and use when you lose something under the couch. I don't know much about shopping mall kiosk carts - except that the mall get a hefty percentage of your sales.

You may want to try a web-based store first - knowing that you have quite a lot of competition.

Good luck!

I tend to think this is not an economically feasible idea... especially if your store is purely for flashlights.

To do the Brick & Mortar route instantly encumbers your business with the high lease rates (rent) of well-located retail real estate, i.e., shopping centers, strip malls, or downtown street-level commercial property. Even a small 500 sq. ft. shop in a secondary location will cost you $10,000 to $20,000 per year.

And then you got utilities, fed/state/local taxes, advertising, insurance, various business association/chamber of commerce dues, employee labor costs, etc. All this means ya gotta sell a ton of product -- at non-discounted Retail costs -- in competition with all the on-line discount sellers in the world. Gotta sell a $pitload of lights to cover that overhead "nut," not even counting your profit objective.

How many CPF'ers would jump to buy their next Surefire light at full-retail... when, with judicious homework, they could just buy it for a 20-25% discount from one of the fine online sellers here? And WE are a uniquely informed and motivated population.

And your primary market would be limited to the customers in that town -- mostly those located in a 5 to 10 mile ring around your location. And that "market" would encompass a limited population, 95% comprised of Flashlight-Illiterates who think a Mini-Mag is the paragon of personal lighting.

It could work if your store was a successful "niche" shop specializing in guns or some unique sporting goods product. This strategy could help draw a narrowly-defined interest-demographic of customers who know they cannot buy what they want at the nearby WalMart or national discount chain sports store. However, few gunshops seem to make much money these days. Stores in this vein really need (a) special (high visibility and access) locations, (b) serving favorable "affinity" markets, i.e., not hostile-to-weapons "metrosexual" population centers like most big cities, but, instead, high-density military and LEO populations, and (c) extraordinary management and customer service that places them far above the local discounters.

However, I think such specialized retailers might still need an additional on-line entity to build sales volume... and a wider/beyond-the-local-market reputation... and outsell the already-fierce national competition. Most start-up retail operations fail in 2 years because their owners had stars in their eyes, lacked hard-nosed business acumen... and no deep pockets to fund the "red ink" for the grow-the-business ramp-up timeline.

Such stores may not make much money for a while, but they'd sure be fun places to work!

You need to draw the customers in with blinky lights and such. Once inside have comparison beams setup and videos playing showing the real world brightness by illuminating a distant tree or walking up to a car. Basically your store needs to turn people into flashaholics or you're not going to stay in business very long.

Some of our preferred vendors have a hard enough time staying afloat doing online business, I don't think a B&M locale would do better. You'd have to sell lots of blinkies!

It's definately feasible to start a Flashlight only store. The hard part is staying in business.

As I was thinking about your question, it seems to me that we are seeing a major change in the way we use lights. The led technology is going mainstream as you say, large flashlight sections in the discount box stores, and we already have led traffic lights, vehicle lighting, etc...

How about a lighting store that brings the latest technology home to the consumer. Flashlights would be a big portion of the product, but also include items like led wall and ceiling panels that light up the home and almost never need to be replaced. I think I saw that one in Popular Science or something. UV lighting hasn't gone mainstream yet either. If you had a "hotel room" bed on display and demonstrated a good UV light, I bet you could sell quite a few. A light store could be a good idea. How about calling it "A Bright Idea".

O.k. starting to ramble here. Good Luck to anyone with the time, money, and energy to start something like this.

WAY back in the pre-e-commerce days of the mid-80's, a then co-worker and I considered starting such a business as sort of a diversion from our humdrum existence selling photo equipment. At the time, the store we worked at stocked some M*g, Streamlight and Pelican lights which seemed awfully cool at the time. We even came up with a store name ("World Of Flashlights", or WOFCO), sort of a business plan (paper catalogs, perhaps a kiosk, phone orders, LEO and First Responder discounts, etc.), I came up with a logo and we had some t-shirts made* (I still have mine). It never really got beyond that point, but in retrospect, who knows what might have happened had we followed that "dream"...

*An amusing flashlight shirt anecdote: Another one of our other co-workers was wearing his "World of Flashlights" t-shirt while at a local mall. A passing shopper asked him where this shop was. Before out friend could answer, a salesperson from a store they were standing in front of gave the curious shopper directions to the store he thought was located at the other end of the mall!

Flashlights only? I think your traffic would consist of a few local flashaholics who would want to handle everything in the store and then go home and look for a lower price on the Internet.

Excellent info from everyone! Thank you so much.

I'm not the type to start a business on a whim and I'm glad your contributions knocked some sense into that idea bouncing around in my head. It seems that the typical mall shop approach of selling swords, tweezers, chef knives, and lights rolled into one makes more sense. That's just beyond me.

Until then, I'll just keep digging through catalogs at my local electronics shop to find what I need. oh, and more waiting for my parts to arrive in the mail.

Flashlight only store would only work online. If you had an actual walk in store people will come in, pick your brains check out the lights and then go home and buy it online to get the best price and not pay sales tax. The competition online is tough also so its not really feasible unless you have unlimited funds.

Another possible option would be to rent a table at trade shows, gun shows in particular. The low overhead would allow for some discounting, which would be necessary since people mostly go to these shows looking for bargains. A great opportunity to bring more people into the world of flashaholism. You would need to buy some display cases as there are lots of shoplifters amongst the crowds.
Guns and flashlights - like peaches and creme baby!

Macaw said:

Another possible option would be to rent a table at trade shows, gun shows in particular. The low overhead would allow for some discounting, which would be necessary since people mostly go to these shows looking for bargains. A great opportunity to bring more people into the world of flashaholism. You would need to buy some display cases as there are lots of shoplifters amongst the crowds.
Guns and flashlights - like peaches and creme baby!

Click to expand...

Agreed. Also, hamfests always have atleast one stand selling led lights, and another that's selling lithium and coincells.
Though, usually the lights are always horrible shake lights, dynocranks, and the cheaper model 3-5 led ones. If someone could atleast sell ones as inovative and inexpensive as the ones emilion offers, I'd be very happy to see it.

A flashlight only store probably wouldn't work unless you were in a large city and had commercial clients that bought high end lights often. The average person buys about $10 worth of lights every 5-10 years if even that often and buys mostly the throwaway plastic ones at stores. You would also have to compete with super stores like target, walmart, home depot and lowes selling a handful of lights. Trying to sell stuff at attractive prices other than perhaps no name brands it tough to compete with the buying power and profit margins. It could work if you were willing to advertise heavily and educated people over a long period of time with flyers and had a few other things like batteries etc to draw them in but what probably would end up happening is as soon as the big stores noticed you selling a lot of an item they would start carrying it at 10% less than you could sell it for.

These days everyone wants to sell everything to everyone. You used to never see blank CDRs and electronic equipment at grocery stores now they are selling it and more.