Could Coast be #1?

In annual sales volume that is.

Trust me...I'm no Coast aficionado but I find this unbelievable.

I just read where Coast's annual sales for domestic flashlights are $470 million ($900 million total sales). That's HUGE for the flashlight industry. Most flashlight manufacturers are privately held, so financial figures aren't readily available but I read about a year or two ago that Maglite sales were $120 million annually. You could argue that Maglite should be the perceived sales leader, so $470 million for Coast is just surprising to me, even considering that fact that the general public is not as fastidious about flashlights as we are and could possibly perceive Coast lights to be superior to what's commonly available in general retail outlets.

Is anyone else amazed by this? Am I underestimating the sales of other manufacturers?

That is a pretty impressive figure, but remember that Coast is sold in many of the largest retailers in the US, which do many hundreds of billions of dollars in sales each year. I would be surprised if they are bigger than Mag though. Maybe they have some subsidiaries that contribute to their sales figures.

Is it possible that the number includes all Coast sales? If you assume an average selling price of $20 (half 9.95, half 29.95 ), that's 2.4 million flashlights in the US. Even if you assume 10,000 retailers (Home Depot, Target, Lowes, etc), that's a lot of sales.

Coast also sells cutlery. That may be included.

OK...I went back and re-read the article (here: http://www.cnbc.com/id/19412755). I got my facts mixed up. $900 million was domestic sales for the whole industry, $470 million of which was LED flashlight sales. It did say that Coast was the industry leader in LED flashlight sales though. I guess I could believe that.

That would make zweibrueder the industry leader since they are the ones manufacturing the LED lights and licensing companies to put their name on it. Coast isn't the only one selling the "Lenser"

I spoke with some guys at Coast at SHOT a couple years ago and I was told some sales numbers and purchase quantities of Luxeons that was most impressive and frankly believable given the context of the discussions; I saw no reason for fabrication of those numbers.

I took those numbers into consideration and figured that this was an indication of what Mag had left on the table due to their activity or lack thereof, in entering the new century. In fairness to Mag, Coast had and has the advantage of off shore production and costs and this advantage is huge.