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.