What happened????

What happened to the custom Titanium flashlight market? There use to be several makers that would make new style lights. I know some have moved on to other things, like ride bikes But some makers have seemed to stiffed people on the cash. Is it because the market is soft or is it because Manufacture's are putting just as powerful flashlight at a cheap price?

I miss the action in the BST section and everyone racing to buy the light. Does anyone else?

I'm thinking these days are gone.

Hasn't been much action over there lately, has there? It's almost impossible to sell right now unless you take a huge hit on what you paid for something. I don't know what the reason is either.

+1... The market has really slowed down. Not just titanium, but higher end lights overall. There are a bunch of beautiful SF's over on the Marketplace that should have been scooped up long ago. I think there is a lot of uncertainty about healthcare, the economy in general, etc. I also miss the thrill of the chase...

I think it is a combination of many things.
- Economy is still hurting globally so buying luxury items may be out of the reach of many.
- New users here are not moving to customs a much as before (possibly due to the next item).
- Production lights have quite a lot to offer these days making some of the simple UI offerings of the customs less desirable.
- There are fewer new customs coming up on the threads - less visibility to the custom market for many.
- Some customs makers insist on giving us the UI and levels that they like rather than listening to their customers and offering what the users demand - that's a certain fate of death for any product.
- Cheap drivers. Some custom makers charge a lot of money for their lights but then use $5 drivers.
- Profit - It's hard to make money on expensive lights in low production quantities. Everyone needs to pay their bills and it is hard to on a low profit margin and long manufacture times

I think offerings with more unique UIs would bring the custom market back up. Something more than just 2 or 3 levels. Programmability of desired settings is always a nice feature and I have found some driver offerings that have great UIs where you can customize how many levels and what they are - very similar to the Aqua line from Don.

The custom Ti forum has been a bit slow but the CPFMP has had some really sweet offerings lately. I am amazed at the number of HDS lights that have popped up over the past few days. Some great grabs on the Rotary lights.

Everything is cyclic so hopefully we will see a resurgence in the custom market as the year rolls on.

+1 to most of what SOYCD said. I think it mostly has to do with a lack of innovation. You can buy several different titanium lights from all different custom makers but they are essentially the same light. Its only the form factor that changes.

The problem is its really hard to innovate in this space. I spend almost all of my spare time designing new lights for fun. So far they've all been ditched because they'll be either too expensive to make any money from, or the demand will be too low to be worth doing.

My 2c

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