Originally Posted by
9watts
I try, really hard, to buy domestically produced, and/or used, quality products that are repairable and durable and well designed. This is increasingly difficult to do in some categories. Let's take bike lights--taillights to be more specific. Do you have any specific recommendations for how to source a high quality, made in USA taillight? I'm really curious. How about an LED flashlight? I have used a Streamlight ProTac 2AA for a bike head light, and although the website and product literature claimed made in USA, when I dug further they started to equivocate and backed away from those claims. It is a great light, and I would happily pay more if it were made in the USA but it is hard and in some cases impossible to register that preference if the product in question does not exist.
I'm generally a do it yourself person and will try to make something over buying it - if I can. In the case of LED products, though I understand many people are savvy and have figured out how to assemble their own, this is not something I am going to learn right now. So I'm kind of stuck buying something. We don't own a car so bikes are our primary means of transport. Getting the lighting right is pretty important.
Thoughts appreciated.
It really depends what you're expecting by 'made in the USA'. The leading LED manufacturers are: Nichia (South Korea); Samsung LED (South Korea); Osram Opto Semiconductors (Germany); LG Innotek (South Korea); Seoul Semiconductor (South Korea); Cree Semiconductors (USA).Manufactured products are built from a combination of parts or materials, at least some of which are imported. China's largest imports are raw materials.
Some products are designed, engineered and assembled in the USA or Canada but still use parts imported from other countries. Bicycle tires for example, can be sourced from France, Germany, the Philippines, Taiwan or mainland China.
What really makes the difference in all this is the standards and level of quality control in place and the resulting manufacturers warranties.
I did note that in spite of your reservations about that flashlight, it does meet specific standards, has a lifetime warranty, and has a North American network for sales and service.
I've been interested in this myself for a number of reasons - largely because I've been dismally disappointed in the quality and performance both of whats being marketed as bicycle specific lighting by retailers here as well as the junk thats being directly marketed over the Internet from mainland China.
There's no easy answer. At one point I asked, if these bike lights were so great, why they weren't being adopted by the off-road motorcycle and automobile market. Short answer? Because they're neither reliable enough nor bright enough to do the job. Nor is the heat sinking adequate for continuous operation.
So I asked why off-road motorcycle and automotive lighting wasn't more popular with cyclists. Short answer? Because cyclists apparently don't use lights enough to be seriously concerned about durability or heat issues.
So there are a number of companies that cater to the off-road market that produce small sophisticated designed or made in the USA lighting with lifetime warranties that perform well on bicycles, but currently the mounting interfaces aren't what I consider ideal and up to this point the manufacturers don't consider the market large enough to take a serious interest in. Trail Tech and Vision X are just two examples and borrow some parts from each other.
Which is where if enough of the 100,000 member base on these forums spoke up - that could change. I've been playing with various light and mounting combinations over the past year and expect to post details later this month. Most of the time has just been simplifying mounting interfaces and looking for optimal beam combinations. I don't expect everyone to be interested in I've come up with, and personally I don't care since I'm not going to be selling anything. However, some of the USA suppliers do run tooling shops and will do small production runs of bicycle specific mounts so they feel there's enough interest.
The rest will be up to you guys. I'll start posting photos next week now that the bicycling season is winding down.