My assignment is to create a business venture. Being a flashlight enthusiast, I have found it hard to locate a solid place to buy flashlight. BladeHQ is too “big” and others feel sketchy.
What would really draw you guys to a flashlight website? What features would be mandatory?
I was thinking about - Free t-shirt with every order, 30 day returns, money-back guarantee, 24/7 customer support, lots of great, rare lights.
What pain points are you guys having when buying lights?
Reliability, 5 year warranty. Name brand, never use the word fire in brand name! a good UI is always a plus for me. Free shipping is a big one too.
Doug,
I really, really appreciate it! This is a huge part of the assignment “What are customers saying”. So I owe you one! Have a good weekend, I love this community!
Great assignment for your degree, congrats!
1) for regular consumers:
really good detail about the differences that they can understand. what are the different form factors for batteries and why do they exist? why are there different LEDs? Which flashlight brand is “known for” which feature set or quality level? How do certain brands and modes line up with the various price points?
Not too much technical stuff, most average consumers won’t understand that. A buyer’s guide would be good for them. Type in what they want to do and their max. price and throw out a list of flashlight models and explain why they are good.
2) enthusiasts, like BLF folks:
This is where it is gets tricky. The level of knowledge in this group is as vast as the diversity of thought.
These type of consumers or prosumers know what they want and are willing to invest time, money and patience to get a very specific product. They collect flashlights as a hobby, need lights for their job or for scientific purposes like forensics. There are very different requirements a business needs to fulfill in order to cater to these customers. I believe the best approach here would be different stores for different purposes or target clients (ie BLF, commercial clients, gov clients, …)
Video/youtube reviews are good for all of these customers, hence the huge amount of product reviews in recent years. A shop should find a way in bringing transparency across these reviews on top of the information they provide. Because flashlights are a commodity it is difficult to differentiate in this segment. Average Joe doesn’t know the difference between Nichia and Cree.
Also, while the typical e-commerce ideas here are great, the biggest competitor in many product segments is Amazon. People got used to their logistics, quick delivery and that they can put anything else they need in the same basket. Flashlights are one of the most popular products on there.
Wow,
Thank you so much, that is incredible information and insights into the industry. Thank you thank you thank you!!! I will use it all!
Keeps making me think how we can bring in the other 99% of people who think a phone is a flashlight!
“I was thinking about – Free t-shirt with every order, 30 day returns, money-back guarantee, 24/7 customer support, lots of great, rare lights.”
There goes your profit margin 
I like the innovative,reliable and good value designs. Emisar,sofirn,astrolux for example
Company would have Quick shipping and be able to respond quickly if a issue arrives with the order
Absolutely! I showed off a few of my own flashlights to my friends. I hand-picked the parts, ordered them from China, built the drivers, and assembled the entire light in months long processes. If I accounted my own time these flashlights would be in the hundreds of dollars. guess what? My friends thought they are less than 10.00 bucks… it is difficult to justify high price points for these products unless the consumer has an actual demand for a specific use case (and if you need a flashlight on your job, chances are high your employer would have to pay for it or there are potentially other regulations that blocks the professional from buying his own light).
Flashlights are not a product many average consumers are willing to invest a lot of time or money in. Because they have other interests that are more obvious to them, they don’t have the money for it or simply no interest because a flashlight is seen as a commodity. A flashlight can typically be purchased in pretty much every retail outlet (Walmart, every gas station, every Home Depot, …) - for most consumers it isn’t worth it to invest more time or money to get a light that is potentially only marginally better. (one question you could look into is which type of customer is even willing to purchase a flashlight online vs. retail)
Plus, most people don’t even use a flashlight on a regular basis. Unless there is a power outage, you need to fix your car (again, assuming that this consumer even knows how to do this), or you are a prepper, or similar… why bother?
Even I didn’t have a flashlight for the first 20 years of my life and I was fine.
“What pain points are you guys having when buying lights?”
1. Free Shipping. always and for any product i buy online.
2. Free Returns. nothing’s perfect, so free returns mitigates.
3. A lot payment options. Bitcoin, Paypal, Visa…on and on.
Price is my main point.
I think a flashlight shop can only survive if it’s owner is knee deep into this hobby, is part of the community and invests a lot of work. Not a get-rich-fast thing, so nothing really for a MBA.
That sounds fun! In high school accounting we had to manage a hypothetical business and I enjoyed it.
As far as selling flashlights…you touched on most of the pain points I’ve had. One is standing behind your product, not just say free shipping and money back guarantee. That’s easy to say but a lot of vendors fail at it. Offer a warranty you actually honor and not try to weasel out of with all kinds of legalese and contradictions. Communication is also important. Fast follow up within 1-2 business days is acceptable in my book for a business.
Price-match guarantees are nice too! Find it cheaper? We’ll match it. Offer budget and higher end lights and also full range of accessories like batteries, etc. Maybe offer battery and flashlight combos so we dont have to buy those separately (maybe throw in a free battery with the purchase of a light?). Batteries are getting expensive to ship separately!
Thank you everyone, seriously, this is amazing.
If you want to draw in a customer group that may have a different spending threshold on a flashlight (in comparison to general population) then you might think about aiming the marketing at those who like collecting finely made ‘edc’ items (?men’s toys). There is quite a large consumer base in this area with a willingness to spend $50+/month on having new nice looking/well designed things. Flashlighs are one of these items (alongside knives, small tools, wallets, pens etc).
Edit: Another thought, as mentioned above, those that spend more on flashlights (but are not specifically flashlight enthusiasts) are those that have a specific use case. So designing the online shop with marketing towards the most common areas of use for performance/ specialist flashlights: attaching to weapons (hunting or military); law enforcement/ security; fire and rescue; workplace/industry; sport(diving/caving/off road cycling etc); ?edc
Steve Jobs’ philosophy was that a hungry crowd results in more sales than a perfect burger. The reason some of Apple’s innovations took off is they were the best way to perform a function that nobody previously thought about. Like the scroll wheel on iPod in the era of button controlled MP3 players, or the MagSafe power adaptor on MacBooks, or the magnifying glass that popped up on iPhone so you could select text.
The fact that all of those have been REMOVED from Apple’s products as part of “evolution” is a whole other debate, but you get the idea. What’s a way to do flashlights that’s obviously the best thing that nobody has thought about?
If you can’t do free shipping, have honest shipping costs and have some options.Often I can wait a week for a light, I have plenty.
Never charge for handling!
I have almost purchased several lights but stopped because the shipping costs were outrageous without any options.
I would target professionals who use flashlights reguralery. Law Enforcement, Fire , EMS, Search and Rescue, Military.
Civilians will follow along, they love to have “profesional” type gear. Avoid the trem “Military Grade. All my Army buddies laugh when they hear that.
Good luck
An MBA checking in here, and I remember doing a similar project. Good luck!
Like jp9mm said, keep an eye on profit margin. Having perks is good, but not at the expense of needing to close your doors. Too many “let’s start a business!” ideas start out with the thought of being the low-cost / high-perk option… but that’s how you bleed yourself dry. Consider these alternatives / thoughts:
And what Marshall (RIP) from Going Gear did!
That also seems a good idea to show a product you’ll sell!
If I understand right it is more retail rather than having your own brand products, but worth looking at Olight and how they promote their products through special edition colours, promotional bundles etc.
This. As a business owner myself, the best advice I was ever given was to read Romeo and Juliet.
For me, I think customer engagement is a big one. A lot of stores pop up and shift merchandise from distributors to customers, and that’s it. When they’re active on the forums and Reddit, talking to customers, asking questions like this you can tell they care about what they’re doing and they care about their customers. Make some fun YouTube videos. As a customer I know that when you have a problem, I can go to them and get it fixed, rather than getting ignored until I get frustrated and give up. Build a reputation, and maintain it. Be honest and up-front when there’s a problem. Don’t bury it and pretend it’s not there until it gets so bad that you have to fold. Everyone makes mistakes and I find it easier to forgive people when they’re honest about it (and learn from it).
A couple of things that bug me about the shopping experience:
Some web sites don’t explain what things are. When they show a list of things with no thumbnails and I have to just guess what the different names mean and click it to learn more, I get pretty frustrated. It really helps to have a list or tiles that have a picture, name, and a brief description. Also have meaningful categories. For an example of what I mean look at EagTac. They have a bunch of buttons that just say “D Series, P Series” etc. but no explanation of what those represent, you have to click a lot to see what’s inside, and on the main page they have a few pictures and names, but no explanation for how big the lights are, what they do, price, etc. Lots of clicking and scrolling to compare things. Illumn mainly has a list of brands, where you kind of have to know what you want. After you click a brand you can apply filters, but it’s not great. GoingGear sells a lot of non-flashlight gear, and it causes the filters to have a lot of irrelevant junk. Two examples of a great experience in this regard are BatteryJunction and BrightGuy, you have a bunch of different ways you can browse, or you can easily look at everything. The filters are comprehensive and relevant.
The other is when they omit specifications or don’t keep their data clean. If I’m comparing lights, and using filters, it helps if each light I’m comparing has the same specifications available, listed the same way, and produced using the same test criteria. If one light lists their output as 95000cd, and another is listed as 200kcd, or one is 3000 estimated lumens vs 1500 ANSI FL1 lumens, you can’t compare the two. Often times things end up duplicating due to a typo or change in punctuation. Say I want to buy an 18650 light, but in some cases I might need to select “18650” AND “1x18650” AND “18650/2xCR123”, etc. If the only criteria I care about is being able to use an 18650, the rest should be inclusive. It’s very annoying. There might also be a filter called “Output” and “Lumen Output”, they mean the same thing, but because the site just dumped data from two manufacturers who call it different things, they have two filter categories which only contain a subset of the lights. This drives me crazy. I shouldn’t have to visit a bunch of different sites to compare, I’m less likely to come back to yours to make my purchase.
I couldn’t care less about a free t-shirt. I think it’s cool to have a t-shirt or hat or pin, but maybe make it an optional at-cost add-on. Customers know that nothing’s free (even if they enjoy it), and I’d rather save that money on the light, especially if I order frequently. If you have good store and people order a lot they’ll just pile up t-shirts.
Shipping should either be free or at-cost, with clear expectation around processing time, and good communications through to delivery. With modern tools that shouldn’t require a lot of work on your part. For what it’s worth, I’ve been impressed by the Shopify.com process lately.
Feh. The first half was boring, but livened up a bit when the Cylons showed up.