I was browsing the countycomm website and stumbled upon the Maractac Chickpea. I couldn’t ignore the ressemblance between the Lumintop Frog and the Maratac Chickpea. They look almost identical apart from some different knurling here and there. Did Lumintop copy the Maratac Chickpea?
no
maratac buys lumintop lights with special order tooling
maratac is a brand of the company called countycomm, they a reseller, not a manufacturer
Ah! Interesting. So they buy Lumintop flashlights an rebrand them?
I’m guessing it’s just a custom run. Might have even gone to (one of) the factory (/factories) who makes lights for lumintop, rather than Lumintop directly, the exact manufacturing location/company of many lights is uncertain.
sort of… CountyComm buys the lights made to their requested specifications from Lumintop.
Some brands, such as CountyComm, enter into a production contract for example with Lumintop, for the manufacture of a Special Factory Order (SFO), with the knurling and other design elements, that CountyComm requests.
Maratac AAA and AA twisties, are also made by Lumintop. They use the same heads as Lumintop Tool AAA and AA. CountyComm may request a certain LED, they may also ask for the driver mode sequence they prefer.
In an SFO arrangement, the buyer has to meet a Minimum Order Quantity (MOQ) of 500 pieces. The buyer, in this case CountyCom, then takes delivery of that production run and markets it themselves. CountyComm sells several other lights based on other Lumintop models.
In the past, Lumintop also made the Prometheus Beta, which is now made by Olight. Darksucks stopped working w Lumintop after the Lumintop Worm came out. Darksucks was upset that Lumintip used a similar body design as the Beta. The FourSevens brand, also owned by DarkSucks, is manufactured by Olight also.
Lumintop also manufactured the Original Reylight Copper Tool AAA. I think Reylight now uses Wuben manufacturing. Lumintop also made the Massdrop Ti Tool AAA and Brass Tool AAA.
Wurkkos lights are made in the Sofirn factory.
Very interesting. I didn’t know things were so intertwined in the flashlight market. Now that I think of it, I have indeed seen some other Maratac flashlights that looked familiar and had similarities with other flashlights I had seen around.
Didn’t know Darksucks used Olight as their current supplier and Lumintop in the past and didn’t know that Lumintop used to be Reylight’s supplier either nor that Wuben is their current one. The only link I knew about is the Wurkkos Sofirn.
Thanks a lot for the detailed insights into the flashlight manufacturing industry. I appreciate you taking the time to explain all that.