Sofirn (let's know more about the brands)

LED Flashlights – General Info
1

Hi there
I’m Renato From Brazil, I love flashlights and I’ve been wanting to know more about the brands so I asked Sofirn a few questions and Barry was kind enough to answer. I’ll keep updating with more info as I can, any help would be great!

Here’s what Barry from Sofirn sent me:

Before the brand name “”sofirn“” was born. The company founder Qidong Yang pondered a name easy to remember, meaningful and above all to reflect his love and passion for his fledgling company.
He chose SOFIRN to match the name of his dear wife.
Yang loves SOFIRN as deeply as he loves his wife and two children. Yang made it his mission to make SOFIRN a worldwide, well-known brand name.

First and foremost we are passionate about, and value our customers. We have made it our goal to service those customers in the best possible way. Our philosophy is;

  1. Provide flashlights suitable for all users with a wide variety of design and applications,
    2.Utilise industry leading and unrivalled design coupled with non compromising quality.
  2. Implement efficiency within our company structure enabling cost effective manufacture.
  3. Providing value for money was, is and will always be a primary consideration for us. At the start of our journey back in 2016-2017 we listened to our customers along with our friends at the ‘Budget Light Forum’, enabling the release of, amongst, others the SF14, SP32, and SP31.

Since then SOFIRN has expanded and added some the best known and talented engineers within the Flashlight industry to our family. Subsequently we went on to release new models including the: SF14 V2.0, SP32A V2.0, SP31 V2.0, SP36 series, C8F, C8G, SP70, SP33 V3, IF25 and LT1.
Additionally we indulged our passion and made custom units for our aforementioned fans and friends at the ‘Budget Light Forum’, which proved to be very popular.

We believe we can and will continue to grow. We will strive to improve our designs, inventory, shipping services, quality control and marketing along with all the other aspects needed to realize our dream.
To realise that dream will not be easy, but we promise our best.
Our dream? Bring light to the world and make SOFIRN a well-known and a trusted brand offering a complete range of premium quality designs at affordable prices.

Trust SOFIRN, we will stay with you, as we hope you will with us, our collective future will be brighter!

Barry Lee

Here is the link to our official website ‘About us’: https://sofirnlight.com/pages/our-company-38(link is external)
Hope this informations helps for you! Thanks!

2

Thank you! :slight_smile:

3

Very cool! I own several Sofirn lights and am very pleased with them. :+1:

I appreciate their willingness to work together with the BLF community to bring us great lights.

4

Sofirn is the best budget brand in the galaxy :sunglasses:

5

Sofirn best budget brand. CS is on point - always respond to my emails in hours, sometimes minutes :slight_smile:

6

I own 7 Sofirn flashlights and have given away 2 others so far. I have been a closet hobbyist for the past 40 or so years. I have seen the products change from Kel lights in the 70’s to the current LED variations and Sofirn still impresses me for value, quality, and honesty with their ad copy and response to user input.

7

Who came first Wurkkos or Sofirn?

8

Text is exactly the same as shown on the Sofirn website.

9

Thanks for bringing that to my attention, I realize it’s not easy to get every answer we want from the brands but if we love flashlights I believe we should try to know more about the brands and how they work, I’m trying to get other brands to talk to us and help us have a better understanding of their philosophy, their evolution, their design process … I have prepared some questions I sent them, will post them so you can help with more questions of interest.
Thanks again

  1. THE BRAND
    (how they work and their history)

1.1 When was it started?

1.2 Where did it start and is it still in the same place?

1.3 Why did the brand choose the NAME OF THE BRAND and what does it mean

1.4 How many people were in the beginning?
How was the manufacturing/assembly of the flashlights in the beginning and did it change much since the beginning? Is it all manufactured inhouse or is it outsourced?

1.5 Now in 2021 how is your company, do you have employees or help from friends and family, how big is your team?

1.6 What makes this brand unique in the flashlight community and what makes your products be recognized as being a part of the brand (design/ customization/ high performance / budget friendly…) Are there any relations or collaboration with other companies?

1.7 Where/how do you currently sell your lights? Is there an official store? AliExpress? Amazon?

1.8 Is there a customer support team ? How are the problems solved?

1.9 Which country is your best market?

  1. THE FLASHLIGHTS
    (and development)

2.1 Where did it start, what was the first model produced? How did it evolve from there?

2.2 What is the logic behind the different models? Are they divided by their proposed use or budget or by the country or region they sell…

2.3 How is defined the characteristics, the design and development of the products ? Is it one person, a team? And how is the process? Is the community or anyone outside the company able to contribute with suggestions?

2.4 Can you tell us how many models you currently have in the portfolio? And say a little about each (price range, what it is for, EDC? SOME SPECIAL WORK? THROWER? FLOOD?)

2.5 Which model was your biggest hit

2.6 Which was the worst seller

2.7 Are you working in a new model? Could you tell us about it?

10

I love Sofirn’s products, but this whole thread seems a little strange…

11

If it matters I’m not related in anyway to Sofirn or any other flashlight company, actually I work in a hospital in Brazil. That said …

Well I guess it is strange,
It is very strange that we like flashlights so much that we spend our time talking about it, discussing what would be the best tint, the best LED, the best UI … And when I try to tell someone outside this community that I just bought a new Sofirn flashlight and they ask me what is this brand they never heard about and I taught that’s strange!
I know so much about the flashlight and so little about who makes it, I wanted to know more about Sofirn, Convoy, Fenix, Nitecore, Skilhunt, Imalent, Acebeam, Wurkkos … I tried contacting them all because I realized that it makes a difference to me as much as what LED or what tint or what UI is in the light. For me and I bet for you it would make the experience much richer.

We are strange people, we are passionate about flashlights, luckily we are not alone. Hope we can be friends

12

I would like to see some videos from flashlight manufacturers showing how particular models are manufactured

13

Well, that are too many questions to answer. I never knew I would be asked these questions.

I am not good at telling story and people who know sofirn for years know that sofirn team don’t tell story but believe products tell themselves.

But if people want to know, I am trying my best.

SOFIRN is a brand owned by Jinba ltd which is a factory company owned by Qingdong Yang, the founder of Jinba ltd. In about 2010, Jinba ltd started as OEM and ODM. Business is always not easy in the beginning. But Jinba ltd surived and had a great cooperation with “T*Fire” which is known by many BLFers, but finally all “T*Fire” flashlight projects were cancelled by the owner for some reason. Yang started to thinking about having his own brand. Then sofirn was registered.

More and more people started to know sofirn brand since we started selling on amazon, aliexpress, sofirnlight.com (official retail website). Sofirn products means high quality but reasonable and affordable prices. That’s caused low profits but Yang believes sofirn will be liked when buyers have one. Jinba ltd doesn’t have enough funds on beautiful boxes, ads, key opinion leaders cooperation like other big brands do. It’s all right. If sofirn sells more, more people have and like sofirn products, more people will share sofirn products online or offline. It feels like sofirn products promote themselves.

Where to buy sofirn products?
sofirn has official store on amazon, eBay, aliexpress, shopee, lazada as well as official retail website: www.sofirnlight.com

If you are located in North America, EU, and love the fast shipping service, choose amazon.
If you are located in South-east Asia, choose shopee. Oh, South America is included too now. (especially Brazil)
No matter where you are located, if you want better price and good service, choose our official retail website: www.sofirnlight.com
Well, you can also choose other platform if you are used to.

OTHER BRANDS?

YAKORSEI is a new brand of Jinba ltd, Yang wanted to have a higher standard brand like Fenix, Olight, Nitecore. We believe this higher stardard brand will make the desgin team, QC team, and CNC team better.

Wurkkos? It’s not part of Jinba ltd, not part of sofirn. Jinba ltd keeps the role as OEM and ODM. Wurkkos belongs to another company that I don’t know much about. But since products were designed by the same team, you will notice the similarity between sofirn and wurkkos. If you want to support sofirn team, choose sofirn first please.

NEW MODELS

LT1 new is released; Q8 Pro new batch will be available soon
SP10 V3; SC21; SC01; HS05; SC31T; SP35T; SF22; Shorter LT1 will be available one by one in the coming months.
I am working on the LT1-mini with Dennis too, he will update the post when new thing is available.

14

You remind me. A video is made but not ready yet. I will check.

15

That was interesting, thanks for sharing!

16

Very interesting thread, thank you!!! :white_check_mark:

17

Exciting stuff!!! Sounds like I’m going to have to make room on the display shelf.

Thanks for the update, Barry!

18

Hello Barry! Could you please explain the naming scheme of the Sofirn line-ups. Like SC**, SP**, C**, IF**, SF*, etc.

Thank you.

19

Thank you Barry! I recently bought a SF11 from the official Sofirn store on AliExpress, next time I’ll try your retail site! Knowing more about the brands makes the flashlight that more special to me.

Thank you again

Renato

20

Sorry for the late reply
These are just model series, no much meaning but if I have to explain
SC stands for sofirn lights with charging port