Who is buying all these lights???

strideredc · Mar 12, 2020

Sounds like a stupid question but stay with me on this...I have been into this since the Arc LS era...There are/must be 1000's of more manufacturers of lights than there were so are we at saturation point or has our hobby expanded exponentially??? I really dont know?Thoughts pls...Is the membership of say here proportional with the expanded marketplace?

wicky998 · Mar 12, 2020

strideredc said:
Sounds like a stupid question but stay with me on this...I have been into this since the Arc LS era...There are/must be 1000's of more manufacturers of lights than there were so are we at saturation point or has our hobby expanded exponentially??? I really dont know?Thoughts pls...Is the membership of say here proportional with the expanded marketplace?

I'm sure the hobby has expanded, we have new members signing up every day. But I think the industry has far grown since then. I think the big manufacturers are still there but a lot more custom/family operated business operate today.

I also think the membership here and other forums are proportional to the hobby. I mean Gene, Henry, even Don get backed up from orders and custom GB runs. I mean genes site stayed pretty much out of stock for I know two months at the end of last year.

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

ElectronGuru · Mar 12, 2020

There are multiple variables that can throw off perceptions. 15 years ago China didn't have a middle class. Now they do. And they can't have weapons. So they want blinky modes. So if you saw and increase in brands but they also have strobe model, it could be the 3x buying population that came online during the same period.

Similar examples apply at home. Gene is an inc and inc's have to count inventory every December. And if gene has more than last year he has to pay taxes on the difference. So he'd have an incentive to cut production in November, ensuring he doesn't go over.

Chauncey Gardiner · Mar 12, 2020

ElectronGuru said:
...
Similar examples apply at home. Gene is an inc and inc's have to count inventory every December. And if gene has more than last year he has to pay taxes on the difference. So he'd have an incentive to cut production in November, ensuring he doesn't go over.

"We're from the government and we're here to help." :aaa:

ChrisGarrett · Mar 12, 2020

strideredc said:
Sounds like a stupid question but stay with me on this...I have been into this since the Arc LS era...There are/must be 1000's of more manufacturers of lights than there were so are we at saturation point or has our hobby expanded exponentially??? I really dont know?Thoughts pls...Is the membership of say here proportional with the expanded marketplace?

Flashlight companies come and go, just like any other segment of industry, with the good ones lasting longer than the not-so-good ones. Even the former tend to fade away, like Sunwayman, ShiningBeam (both languishing) et. al, while new ones emerge like Emisar, AstroLux and Convoy.

Now the trend is shifting to modders and inexpensive makers like Sofirn, Lumintop and Manker, that immediately get ripped down and modded with different drivers, emitters and even firmware.

The big box makers are still producing lots of products, like Fenix, Olight, Acebeam and Nitecore, but their prices are spendy, out of the box.

This place started slowing down, by my estimation, in the fall of '17 and for some reason, people have left and/or, just don't post. With the modders coming on strong, BLF has grown into a more popular place. I first noticed it when the 'reviews' forum almost became a ghost town, almost overnight and now with the 'batteries/electronics' forum being devoid of many new posts.

Things are no doubt cyclic, but that's how I see it.

I still love posting here, but CPF isn't what it was, even three short years ago.

Chris

thermal guy · Mar 12, 2020

Oh I don't know about it not being what CPF used to be. I think it hit it's Plateau when LED's started to take on the market. Gone we're the super high power 60-100 lumen lights with 20 minutes runtime and in with the 200-300 for hours. Then they slowly started get brighter and brighter and runtimes are back into the minutes😂😂 we're still going strong and every now and again a company comes along and we fall in love with them.but yes it's a crazy market.

bykfixer · Mar 12, 2020

I think the market grew way faster than CPF when LED lights became brighter than light bulbs in flashlights at big box stores, eBay, Amazon and check out counters everywhere, and cheap. Everybody suddenly had a flashlight. Then everybody had a flashlight brighter than their friends and neighbors because theirs were now 350 lumens. But then those friends and neighbors had brighter because theirs were 500 lumens, then 700 lumens. At about 700 lumens the mass market kinda platued as folks wanted smaller. A 2x aa light at 300 lumens or 350. Then 1x aaa lights crossed the 100 lumen barrier and folks wanted those. Afterall a generation ago it took a 5D flashlight to put out 60 lumens.

Then celphones put out 35 lumens and suddenly the flashlights on store shelves began collecting dust and those 500 lumen 3C jumbos began collecting dust out in the garage near the Harley, the giant stainless gas grill, and the popcorn machine they always wanted. The demand for flashlights (at least from stores) seems to be dwindling to where it was in early LED days when the light bulb was still king.

CPF kinda flowed like a lazy river. Postive growth at a pace not so fast as to become outrageous, but steady gains from day to day. One day it seemed to go from new members wanting 600 lumens from a triple a battery or 60,000 from a pop can light that looks like a sprinkler head……who cares if it steps down to 4500 in 3.9 seconds to what appears are more educated consumers looking for quality, durability and utility.

Everything tacticool seems to have run its course. That market though will probably stay pretty steady. I think the one thing that bugs me is noticing more people are stating reliance issues with long time solid reputation outfits like Streamlight, while all those new kids build some pretty good stuff at really cheap prices. Not that I'm against good lights at low prices. No, not at all. Afterall even bad flashlights aint bad these days. Yet it is troubling to see good flashlights are seemingly no longer good these days. At least some anyway.

strideredc · Mar 13, 2020

bykfixer said:
I think the market grew way faster than CPF when LED lights became brighter than light bulbs in flashlights at big box stores, eBay, Amazon and check out counters everywhere, and cheap. Everybody suddenly had a flashlight. Then everybody had a flashlight brighter than their friends and neighbors because theirs were now 350 lumens. But then those friends and neighbors had brighter because theirs were 500 lumens, then 700 lumens. At about 700 lumens the mass market kinda platued as folks wanted smaller. A 2x aa light at 300 lumens or 350. Then 1x aaa lights crossed the 100 lumen barrier and folks wanted those. Afterall a generation ago it took a 5D flashlight to put out 60 lumens.

Then celphones put out 35 lumens and suddenly the flashlights on store shelves began collecting dust and those 500 lumen 3C jumbos began collecting dust out in the garage near the Harley, the giant stainless gas grill, and the popcorn machine they always wanted. The demand for flashlights (at least from stores) seems to be dwindling to where it was in early LED days when the light bulb was still king.

CPF kinda flowed like a lazy river. Postive growth at a pace not so fast as to become outrageous, but steady gains from day to day. One day it seemed to go from new members wanting 600 lumens from a triple a battery or 60,000 from a pop can light that looks like a sprinkler head……who cares if it steps down to 4500 in 3.9 seconds to what appears are more educated consumers looking for quality, durability and utility.

Everything tacticool seems to have run its course. That market though will probably stay pretty steady. I think the one thing that bugs me is noticing more people are stating reliance issues with long time solid reputation outfits like Streamlight, while all those new kids build some pretty good stuff at really cheap prices. Not that I'm against good lights at low prices. No, not at all. Afterall even bad flashlights aint bad these days. Yet it is troubling to see good flashlights are seemingly no longer good these days. At least some anyway.

On a side note how are Surefire doing now? I must admit i am not really interested in anything new they have (from what i have seen on the web) but to be fair i haven't really handle anything made after 2015!

richbuff · Mar 13, 2020

"Who-is-buying-all-these-lights?"

People who want more quantity and/or recent advances in technology. I am in the process of adding lots of Osram W2.1 emitter, LEP emitter and SBT90.2 emitter lights to my collection.

De-Lux · Mar 13, 2020

Who is buying all these lights? Me, That's who!

BattleBrat · Mar 14, 2020

bykfixer said:
Everything tacticool seems to have run its course. That market though will probably stay pretty steady. I think the one thing that bugs me is noticing more people are stating reliance issues with long time solid reputation outfits like Streamlight, while all those new kids build some pretty good stuff at really cheap prices. Not that I'm against good lights at low prices. No, not at all. Afterall even bad flashlights aint bad these days. Yet it is troubling to see good flashlights are seemingly no longer good these days. At least some anyway.

I assure you at least Maglite and Streamlight are just as good as they've always been, just as tough at least.

bykfixer · Mar 14, 2020

Maglite, yes BB. They are still making rock solid performer with an occasional failure. But Streamlight not so much. Failure rates of switches are a problem that seems to be getting worse. Even in some of their ProTac series.
Streamlight is one of my favorite brands so I am not a Streamlight hater. Yet I will admit when they foul up too. But when companies like 511 started competing for contracts in places where police departments, and fire/rescue departments and winning, Streamlight chose to lower manufacturing costs at the manufacture level and time has shown the result led to reliability issues with a lot of their big sellers.

Regarding SureFire strider, they are not the same as they were. They down sized and tailored their lineup towards law enforcement, and special ops instead at "the Army" or other giant contracts like they once were. Not a bad thing I suppose.

BattleBrat · Mar 15, 2020

Initial generations of Streamlights always had switch issues. The first Incan Strions has switch problems, the first LED Strions REALLY had switch problems. I heard that the ProTac HL USB 850's had switch problems, our 1000 Lumen ones have been great (here's Bosses at about a year of USE https://imgur.com/a/0tvCXeY ) and have had no problems. The only Maglite that gave me an issue was the first gen AA LED Minimag, switch issues. But one I got 5 years ago has been a tank.

F250XLT · Mar 24, 2020

My affinity still lies with many of the originators, I sold of a bunch of lights back in the day, but I still have many original HDS, ARC LS & First Runs. Modded or stock, they are still bright enough to do the job, and the cool factor is second to none IMO.

Stress_Test · Mar 30, 2020

Things DO seem oversaturated, especially to me when I started looking at lights again after a long time away. There are dozens of companies/manufacturers now.... who do I trust? I don't recognize any of them except maybe one or two that were just starting out when I left. If they're still around I guess that could be a good sign.

At any rate, I guess I'm not the target market that your post is referring to. Most everything I see now is just so over-the-top that they are falling into the "toy" category when I need a work tool instead.

Luckily I've still got plenty left over from back in the day.

F250XLT · Mar 31, 2020

Stress_Test said:
Things DO seem oversaturated, especially to me when I started looking at lights again after a long time away. There are dozens of companies/manufacturers now.... who do I trust? I don't recognize any of them except maybe one or two that were just starting out when I left. If they're still around I guess that could be a good sign.

At any rate, I guess I'm not the target market that your post is referring to. Most everything I see now is just so over-the-top that they are falling into the "toy" category when I need a work tool instead.

Luckily I've still got plenty left over from back in the day.

I have to agree with this, so many have the "cheap toy" appearance, just looking the same as others in the category.

Who is buying all these lights???

strideredc

Enlightened

wicky998

Flashlight Enthusiast

ElectronGuru

Flashaholic

Chauncey Gardiner

Flashaholic

ChrisGarrett

Flashlight Enthusiast

thermal guy

Flashaholic

bykfixer

Flashaholic

strideredc

Enlightened

richbuff

Flashlight Enthusiast

De-Lux

Enlightened

BattleBrat

Newly Enlightened

bykfixer

Flashaholic

BattleBrat

Newly Enlightened

F250XLT

Flashlight Enthusiast

Stress_Test

Flashlight Enthusiast

F250XLT

Flashlight Enthusiast

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