Just out of curiosity, are the private label flashlights, such as Gander Mountain, Bass Pro, etc. flashlights made by one of the companies that makes the flashlights for DX, Manafont and other budget light suppliers? I.e. are they re-badged Ultrafire, Fandyfire, etc.?
I am curious because it was browsing those two sites that I started to dig further into budget lights and found DX and others which seem to offer lights with more bang for the buck.
Thx.
Usually not the same lights, but they may come from factories in the same general area. They're specifically manufactured for US export/retail.
What often happens in china is that smaller "shanzhai" companies copy what larger firms (often started by folks formerly employ there) to get in on the profits, but they maintain personal as well as business relationship with each other and each other's suppliers, and operate in the same general vicinity. The networks of suppliers is quite competitive and quite complex so it's very hard to say from the outside that one thing is completely unrelated to another.
The only universal fact you claim is that there's no free lunch, just cheap ones because the labor and margins are usually low. For example, a <$10 light is usually going to be crappy, the well known ~20 ones are ok, and many of the 30+ ones are comparable in functionality to "premium" products though they sometimes come with flaws.
They look like they are made to the retailers specs.
Without handling one it's hard to judge, but they look to be better quality than some of the 'generic' branded stuff in some stores.
That said, it looks like those retailers are getting a healthy mark-up.