[PART 1] Official BLF GT Group Buy thread. Group buy officially closed! Lights shipping.

They are making profit at $165. Gaurenteed.

On Alixpress? Is it clone of GT? They can clone pretty fast.

At 200$ there is more that some profit,i assume the cost of the GT &65$ - lets ne serious,the GT wont be the light for ‘everybody’/to have arround the house,it has a specific customers (lets call em flashaolics)and they have a max budget to pay probably max 200 - i expect to see the GT around 120$ with coupons during this year maybe less then that,besides that,in Europe there are other fees that sums up to another 100$ easily ,so don’t think that would workout good with DHL - time will say it

Even at less than $100. I live in Asia, l buy agri equipment from China all the time, and you’d be surprised how low cost-of-production is in China, guaranteed.

They’ll ship to you a small farm tractor at only $150 more, CNF, by boat.

Never mind ,wholesale in China not the same like USA or EU,is like : i’ll sell you as my interest is right now; in this case,lets say LT has lots of stock wholesale is every piece just to get cash and “pay bills” (just like Martin said)

This is at Lumintop Official Store, so I doubt it’s a clone. Besides, clones are usually cheaper in price not more expensive.

Are the links working for you?

Im not surprised. They would not have sold it at $110 if they were loosing money. Yes, it was probably very slim profit, but there was some. Except the few countries that have exceptionally high shipping costs. I think that was one thing delaying the group buy. How to keep in the profit and make it seem they were actually loosing money the whole time.

All in all, they were given this light. No designing, or R&D. They got a light that was very well designed and top of its class.

Then on top of it, selling lights to people outside the group buy before it was complete. A huge slap in the face whether it was 1 or 1000 lights. We (The designers and the original 555 members) gave them this light and money for tooling to start production. “We need to make money” is not an excuse.

Then this most recent “we need more money to ship your light” to the member that posted recently… How could Neil honestly request that after it was already agreed that members that have already paid will not need to pay more to ship, and he claims his paypal is locked down?

I already have my light. I dont have a dog in this fight. But I have been keeping up on this thread anyway to see how it ends. The longer it goes the more I see Lumintop taking us for a ride. Every few days I see people claiming they got their GT direct from Lumintop outside the group buy, and about every mention of the GT on FB has Lumintop reps telling people how to get theirs direct from them outside the group buy.

TA, I admire your patience. At this point, if it was my project, I would tell Lumintop to *$ off and bring the light to another manufacturer.

I know, but I’m pretty sure they were wanting to get away from these really low Group Buy prices so they can make some better profit margins. Let me crunch a few numbers.

If the average shipping cost is $40 then $157 - $40 = $117. Maybe they are making a tiny profit, but combined with the losses from the $115 price ($115 - $40 = $75), it equals out to practically no profit. That’s like 4 months of no profit from this light since it started rolling off the assembly line. Plus the months spent developing it. That’s quite upsetting for the company who had to invest a really huge amount of money to produce this new model.

At $165 plus shipping, that’s an extra $43 per light. I guess that is pretty decent profit, but still not enough to make up for the last 4 months. I assumed they would sell it for a higher price than that.

I guess if it were selling through Banggood or Gearbest then $200 plus shipping might be about right. I assume their Aliexpress store is factory direct, so they cut out a middle man and can still do okay at the $165 plus shipping price.

The bad thing is, they still have at least another 3 months of group buy orders to put out (650 lights) at this lower profit margin price. Lumintop execs might consider the GT a flop. They may not be able to pay off their investment until well after the Group Buy is finished and they can sell them to the public.

Sorry for the rambling.

Earlier it was part of project GT 101 basic knowledge that alternative shipping(via a chain of mail organizations) to some countries was more expensive, and sometimes a whole lot more expensive which was supposedly the core of the whole problem.

It was also one reason for splitting the light in two boxes for alternative shipping, the other being even restrictions in maximum parcel maximum size and/or weight. These factors in turn probably caused the split-in-two shipments to have very little padding in the larger box to protect the more delicate head.

You wrong: for Spain,LT used registered 2 boxes no padding at all and 1 box (DHL style perfectly protected) ; never there was a mention that would say that registered shipping doesnt deserve the least padding at all , more it seams they’ve done it so people would change their mind in future with registered shipping (even though in Europe, DHL means another 80-110€ fees)!,There is no excuse that registered shipping to be sent with no protection at all……

They dont, because they have been hustling the GT direct threw FB and other channels for a while now.

PS: Thanks for the rude mark for the above post… :+1: :person_facepalming:
Guessing by whose been active recently, I got a good idea who it was

Wow, there is some wrong information and some bad assumptions. Was it you who said all this same stuff a while back or was it someone else? I’ve heard all this same rhetoric before about how Lumintop and Neal are trying to scam us. Normally I would search the thread to find out, but it’s super slow recently. I’ll just write it fresh.

The $110/$115 price was definitely set too early, before Lumintop knew how much the light would cost to produce as well as ship. Texas_Ace has already confirmed they lost money on those orders.

High shipping costs was not the big delay in the group buy. It was the very slow reflector production. The stupid reflector company said “Yeah, give us the contract and we will crank them out lickety split.” Only they couldn’t. After rejecting the bad ones, it only came to 125 to 150 reflectors per week. This is still causing a slow down.

High shipping costs did push certain orders to the back of the list, like registered mail orders and remote area addresses. Were these 235 or so orders delayed? I think they did take an extra week or two so they could figure out the packages and how to best send them. So I guess certain orders did get delayed a little. Still, the biggest delay, by far, was the reflectors.

You really think we designed the whole light? Everybody here knows it was a joint effort. We came up with ideas, Lumintop was the one who actually had to go from ideas to reality. That is a huge amount of work we did not have to deal with.

Do you really think the $8,250 worth of deposits actually helped pay for tooling and to start production? That is a drop in the bucket compared to the huge financial investment to make these lights. That deposit money was simply to prove people wanted to buy this light. It helped persuade Lumintop to go forward with production. That’s all.

Assuming the Group Buy is finished by June(?) and they release it to the public at $165 plus shipping, they might have their initial investment paid off by 2019. (This is based on facts and figures talked about in private in case someone is going to ask me how I came to this conclusion) This really sucks for them. At this point in time I’m sure they consider the GT a failure. They just have you stick it out and eventually it may prove a success.

I does suck that they sold some lights before the GB was finished, but it definitely makes a difference whether it was 1 or a 1000. If they sold a 1000, it would push back the GB by 7 to 8 weeks. If it was 1 light, it would have no effect at all.

A slap in the face? Emotions and business do not go together. They are running a business. I don’t think we have a written contract preventing them from selling to the public before the GB is over. It is all a handshake deal as we try and work together. Technically they can sell them if they want. We can’t sue them to stop. When they sold them on the side in the past, we found out, told Neal or Lumintop management and they stopped it. If they are starting to sell again, let’s see if management will stop them again. Lumintop management “seems” to be honoring the deal of not selling until the GB is over even if some of their employees do not.

The request for more money from g_sintornillos is indeed strange. We need to get more info before we assume the worst.

TA has already said why our partnership with Lumintop is so important. We definitely could not just switch to another manufacturer like you’re suggesting.

I also have my light and don’t work for Neal, Lumintop or BLF Forum. I’m trying to be neutral about things.

And there is the one that gave me the rude mark for speaking my mind in a civilized manner

“I also have my light and don’t work for Neal, Lumintop or BLF Forum. I’m trying to be neutral about things.”
Yet has not been involved in the team from the beginning, yet speaks as if he was one of the original team members

Eh, I’m not even phased any more.

That is not even close to the 650 orders ($100,000) they will get over about a weeks time when the last batch of PM’s go out.

The sooner they can get all the issues sorted from the first 850 sales (missing or damaged items, etc…), the sooner they can get serious money rolling in.

It wasn’t me who gave you a rude mark.

Thank you?

Finally got my Gtvn with CFT-90. I measured 1.535m cd. This thing is insane




Now that’s interesenting point of View of a fellow member or a business partner? So many words ,but let’s assume that you would of payed on 2december and by now,instead the light that you got,you would have a shipping number dated on 7february that ever since, is saying : preregistered,pending of deposit ,and there is nobody capable to give you a proper answer where your light is it……yes,i was about 200 on the list and payed right away but of course,you were luckier than me to have the3 light and now only see how good Lumintop/Neal has done everything (and nobody really payed you to do so)

Yes, that’s how it went. Why does that imply “You wrong”?

Me or Pulsar? You quoted us both.

If me, I think I know what you are asking. It’s just worded strangely:

If I got tired of waiting, I would ask for a refund and move on.

If the paypal protection deadline got close and I still got no response about a refund, I would move to make a dispute. Maybe a week before the protection runs out. If the light showed up during paypal dispute, I would close the dispute.