This will sound like a cross between a rant and a troll. It is neither. We the consumers have a lot of the power; no matter what a light supposedly costs, it has no value if no one buys it.
Background: Between here, and that other candle place, and that one other place that's more knives/guns than lights, I've got a good decade of actual forum use and nearly two decades of participating in the purchase, testing, and destruction of said devices. I have many HA-III lights that look like you dug them up from an ancient battlefield. I use and abuse them, not just the EDCs. I put drivers on boards never intended for, directly solder LiIon cells knowing what a no-no it is, and in general I'm just like you - another semi-intelligent monkey with too much free time!
BUT - over the years, many of us have considered doing our own, and in that, I've also figured out exactly what it costs to make them. Especially when we're talking Shenzhen production. I know what OEM runs cost at what volume for whatever pieces of the light you may possibly want. And like many of you, when one of our forum "friends" does a run, it's quite easy to tell it's a stock OEM unit from a certain company, assuming you pay attention to this stuff. A common one everyone knows... iTP goes to Olight Technology Co. Ltd and hey dude aren't you the chairman and running foursevens yourself? Yea, we know. And now the iTP remaining stock is Aimkon and sold by Jim in Durham, NC. They also did another forum member's run or two, like Brian's shiningbeam lights in Brooklyn, NY. Right? (I used those two examples because I think they are both done and just liquidating remaining stock.) We all know this stuff, and if we don't, just spend a few hours reading on the appropriate forums.
But lately the word BUDGET doesn't fit. It's getting crazy. Can I blame international trade, the recession v2.0, converting usd to yuan to hkd or any other currency... yes! For all I know, it's good ol American greed rubbing off on our Chinese friends. Example: I saw a C8 host (no pill, emitter, or driver) for $20usd on one of the more popular sites. Today. Right now. Not kidding. Not $2. $20. It's just insane. We live in a world where I can just open a chat window with Yuki at Shenzhen Trustfire Technology, place an order, watch it go from the bare tubular stock on the racks to a completed and tested batch of lights in less than a month.
WE have to do something to help regulate/control this market from the customer perspective. They're aluminum tubes with a battery and an LED on them. There's so many people trying to take more and more of our money, and WE, of all people, we should be immune to all marketing. What's a gimmick and what's an outright lie and what actually works. How many times have you looked at pics of a head's design, the LED in question with the supposed driver current, and just laugh knowing it's going to reflow the solder in 10 mins? More than once, anyway.
And that's the point: We get it, some aspects of Capitalism sucks. Greed is infectious and it kills. But this is the world as it is - Getting bar stock costs money, running that mill to crosshatch and thread 30 more flashlight bodies costs money, those anodizing tanks smell terrible and cost money... but when one of "us" goes and plunks down ~$1800usd for a run, unless it's a group buy (and I'm still skeptical unless every transaction is disclosed).We know said person will want some profit for his time, we all would. By time I don't mean ordering the lights, I mean setting up a website with a catalog db and ecomm modules, reading/posting on all the forums, taking and uploading photos, answering our inane questions at every hour of the day :-)... and if it's not dropship it's worse -- finding storage space for the units and all the shipping supplies, constant runs to your shipper, keeping the cat fur off the boxes so they look professional, etc.
I'm not saying I begrudge a man who wants to try to make a living at this, or at least make enough to call it a part-time job, I'm saying when I know that damn light didn't cost you $5 much less the $29.95 you're trying to sell it for, it is too much profit! It's offensive. Nevermind the next level where you attempt to sell me a ~$30 light for ~$200, IMO that's not even something that should even be on a site called BudgeLightForum. I guess budget is variable. (That furniture store DesignWithinReach has the same problem, they mean within the reach of Saudi princes and tech startup millionaires.)
And therein lies the issue: I'm not buying your light at $xxx when it's simply not worth it, in terms of product alone. And what really hurts those sellers, is that non-flashlight geeks will hit up the internet before shopping. Guy A is a flashlight enthusiast-in-training, and Guy B just wants a couple lights; for the car, for the junk drawer, for the power outage. Both will buy what was suggested to them, and both will have an idea of value vs. perceived value. Fenix is the biggest of the marketing overload, but you know as the market tightens the literature will get worse. Custom laser etched bamboo storage box? SURE!
Where am I going with this? No f'n idea. Like the Trump protesters who have no idea what they expect to change, but they still got to protest.
I would love if we could go back to the way I thought of BLF in the beginning. We were the CPF rejects, dude you don't need to pay $100 for an excellent light, check out these for $11.49 free shipping!! You/I/We were the broke but addicted flashlight fools. Everyone's welcome to the party. And no one would dare think of posting a favorable review of a $200+ light because you got a comp'd one. No beamshots? No comparison to other lights with that emitter/reflector/driver/battery setup? You would have had people posting turd emojis for days. stink. stinky review. Ew. Some of the reviews in the last few years, by people I previously respected, make me throw up in my mouth a little. We use the word shill here, but it's not just that, the lost (or never had) the hunter aspect, the great find, the "OMG grats on your find these rock I'm ordering 3 now! $11.99? And it blows away my blablab easily!" posts that captured the energy (youth?) of BLF!
But beyond the actual feel and participation of a forum, which admittedly is like wrangling cats, what about at the very least, a "TRUE BLF" forum? Perhaps a subforum on the Commercial Seller's Spot for starters, where no lights can be posted that cost over $20usd or whatever. Deal Alerts kind-of works like that, but I want to get manufacturers & vendors into the spirit of BLF... and I think that by the token of being on a subforum for lower-priced lights, that they know people will look in first (you know, 'they') it will cause price lowering overall. Not a marketing person by any stretch.
Whew. I feel better. Thanks for reading.
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