They should have walmart only items so the purists don’t get there panties in a twist.
If it means more people get to enjoy their great lights, why not? Now if they started selling Fandyfire, I can see why some would get upset.
Snapper is the lawn mower company referenced a a few times. They declined to make a Wal-mart model that would be of lesser quality than their normal line. I can see having SF at Wal-Mart as a bit of a positive for the community and independent dealers too if it exposes more people to the hobby. Who stops at buying just one light?
i read back through some of the comments on this site going back to 2010 until august of this year…i am not the only one who knocks cpf…
tumbleweed48 wrote…
Surefires stock will probably drop 10% today….
I kind of thought something was funny this morning when I booted up my computer and didn’t hear the clatter of jackboots on the cobblestones.
zeroed4x wrote…
This is the fun relaxed side of flashlight forums where you can speak freely and get great advise without any power tripping moderators or @$$ monkey rules about how and what you post. I’ve only been here a short while and I enjoy this place and the people here. I’m sure you will too.
Home Depot actually does that but no one complains, Walmart is hated largely for political reasons and because they sell guns.
In the 1990s Moen ran full page ads apologizing to the plumbing trade and saying that Home Depot was requiring them to introduce cheaper lines, and that that they had to comply because they could not afford to be shut out of what had become the number one seller of faucets, now Home Depot sells cheap American Standards, cheap Moens, cheaper versions of Insinkerator disposals, stuff that isn’t sold to the pros.
Home Depot was a disaster in ways that Walmart can’t be, people who knew what quality remodeling and repairs by professionals looked like 40 and 50 years ago, compared to what they see today from the weekenders flipping houses and becoming instant ‘Home Depot remodel experts’ have many examples.
Introducing a cheaper line of Surefires might or might not happen, but it would do less damage than introducing to an unknowing America the reality of cheap plumbing fixtures, that instead of being measured by many decades of use, are measured by as little as two years before the finish goes, and that will not see the 25 and 35 and 50 years of use that we used to see, and what they did to “remodeling” and fix it work around the home, where house wives and illegal aliens who have no grasp of any trade, the weekender husband, all become experts in any trade when they buy stuff from Home Depot, now that is a mess, not to mention how alike everything looks since everyone is buying the same stuff from the same store.
But Home Depot doesn’t draw political heat.
This paragraph makes me sad.
Between Home Depot, Walmart, and IKEA, things are being made more and more to be disposable.
Fewer and fewer things are built to last.
When Home Depot first came to the area, I was amazed at how… “semi-disorganized” the stores are.
Roofing Paper that’s 100 feet away from the Roofing Nails. Roofing Cement? That’s yet another 4-more aisles and 50-feet farther away from the nails. Need a brush for your cement??? Somewhere in the middle of lumber.
I was talking to my work manager (at the time); who had a close friend that was a Home Depot manager, who told him the scattered store layout is deliberate, and totally planned out.
The reason is obvious… if you have to wander the aisles for 10-minutes to find the batteries to go with your new flashlight, you’re likely to grab/buy something else in the meantime.
And the low prices only last until they put all the local Mom & Pop hardware stores out of business.
I’m perfectly OK with buying stuff at Home Depot/Lowes, but if you need something that isn’t basic (vanilla/chocolate); to quote the commercials… “Ace is the Place”.
If you need that weird bit they use to drive screws in Mobile Homes (and there’s no standard bit that fits it); you’ll never find it at a big-box store. It feels good to support a local shop and help a neighbor pay their rent, versus shopping at a “Big Box” where your dollars mainly go to feeding the hunger of the Wall Street monster.
I’m probably in a minority here but I actually enjoy the long trips around Ikea! 
I don’t even see where he was wronged, the term troll comes to mind.
I did not know about home depot doing this, but i wasn’t squarely blaming walmart for this trend, i’ve posted in many different threads that this industry wide trend of reducing quality is detrimental to customers, if you want to buy an air conditioner, dehumidifier, tv, pre-assembled computer or many other “durable” products it has become difficult or even impossible to get actual quality and i despise this trend because i don’t like having no choice but to be fleeced.
I look for value in all my purchases wherever that takes me. And it’s true that from Walmart in some cases you are getting a sub-standard product sold to you with the same name on it, but in some cases you’re getting the exact same product at a deep discount. Hmmm … where have we seen that before? Oh yeah, with Chinese flashlights LOL.
So shopping at Walmart to me is part of playing the game of getting good value along with a wide range of other stores and sites.
…which still doesn’t make me a SureFire fan. ‘Value’ to me is the ratio between cost and quality, and I just think that at least for flashlights, that ratio is much higher with other brands like Fenix and Sunwayman.
Goodness, I sounded like a douchebag. I deleted the post, and I apologize for being unnecessarily condescending and harsh.
“i am not the only one” is still a pretty lame excuse. However, that’s no excuse for me to act like a a—hole.
rojos apologies if you thought my post was directed towards you, my post was directed at the OP, your observation was perfectly reasonable.
No apologies needed. I didn’t think your post was directed to me. It just gave me a chance to re-read what I had written, and the opportunity to see that it was harsher than necessary.
I say bring it on….if they want to sell a cheaper quality, do so, just don’t charge the same price. Same thing happens with Kershaw and Gerber knives IMHO….they basically have their “walmart grade” and “real grade” quality levels for their products.
As for sure fire in general….I was at a meeting of my campus’s Hide and Seek club, and somebody had a Surefire p60 host he was using, and I had my convoy s8 in hand…he was COMPLETELY BLOWN AWAY by the performance out of my Convoy, and when I told him the price, his jaw dropped (And i of course plugged BLF, told him to check it out for reviews of it and similar flashlights….I mention BLF atleast once or twice a week in normal conversation with people 
)
Honestly i d rather see Eagle tac fenix nitecore or olight the Walmart s around here i still won't pay what they are asking.
Idc because if i want to buy one then i can use my darn walmart gift cards 
Always forget i have those darn things!
Whilst I am not from the US I reckon they will introduce a cheaper range which will be exclusive to Walmart.
Plenty of brands do it at our Bunnings stores over here in AUS. Makita, Kincrome, Caroma etc all have Bunnings exclusive model ranges and they are cheaper and lower quality than their normal lines.
I’ll give you a little experience from my dealings with home depot and lowes.
I live in a small town just outside a larger city. There use to be a local hardware store here, where the people that worked there where local owners, operators and had most of their family working there.
.
I purchased my entire house package from this local store and they had very competitive prices compared to other stores around, not to mentioned I had known them for 20+ years. They are gone now because, a new lowes was built a half a mile from this hardware store.
Here’s what lowes does that most people may not have been aware of. A large box of drywall screws at my local hardware store, was only a few dollars more than the same brand box of screws at lowes. What’s the catch, hardware store sold a 50lb box and lowes sold a 40lb box. My local hardware store actual sold the screws cheaper by the pound in the large box than lowes. If you looked at the boxes they where exactly the same size and both where the same brand. But the better deal was at the hardware store. They did this marketing tactic with all kinds of stuff, this is just one example. Now I think the box size has been reduced to 25lbs. Most people just don’t realize this and this contributed to my local hardware store going out of business. They have the manufacture’s actually make them special size products that contain less product just for them, that appear to be the same as other sellers. 
Surely those boxes were marked with the weights? I’m sure they are and so I guess Lowes is playing the average Joe as a FOOL. Too stupid to figure out the cost per pound?
Shame on those who stoop to conquer.