Mini Maglite LED AA-Cell Flashlight

Mini Maglite LED AA-Cell Flashlight

The new Mini Maglite LED flashlights are now available with new MAG-LED technology. Choose the super bright two-cell AA model for its smaller size, or the longer three-cell AA model with its high performance. These flashlights provide a powerful beam that focuses by rotating the head. They can also be used in “candle mode” by unscrewing the flashlight head and placing the head on a stable flat surface, then setting the flashlight barrel in the head. MSRP: MAG doesn’t set retail prices, but we found the two-cell model at retailers for around $24. MAG Instrument: 909/947-1006; maglite.com.

Mag Instrument is the only flashlight company with significant market share that still manufacturers its entire line of flashlights in the United States. Unlike its competitors, Mag Instrument has chosen not to outsource the manufacturing of its flashlights to foreign countries in order to take advantage of cheap labor and less stringent environmental standards, which may also result in inferior quality.

To say that Mag Instrument is "a U.S.A. Manufacturer" does not mean that the company never imports anything. As is typical in manufacturing a product of any complexity, and as common sense would suggest, not all of the components that go into a Mag flashlight can practicably be made in Mag's own factory. For example, Mag Instrument purchases from an outside vendor the Lexan discs that, during the assembly process, are incorporated as lenses into Mag flashlights. Nor are all items that are packaged with Mag's flashlights made in-house. For example, Mag does not manufacture batteries. The batteries it sometimes packages together with its flashlights are purchased from outside vendors. The same is true of the nylon and leather holsters and wrist lanyards that are offered as accessories to Mini Maglite flashlights. Although it can be necessary, from time to time, for Mag to purchase a flashlight component or accessory that is made overseas, Mag's flashlights themselves are always made in Mag's own factory in the U.S.A., and it is Mag's policy to give very strong preference to U.S. vendors, dealing with domestic sources whenever feasible. Purchases of imported items are limited to those situations where the items in question cannot, consistently with Mag's quality and performance requirements and/or its needs for steady, dependable supply, be practically met by any known domestic source. Even in these instances, Mag Instrument works to develop and cultivate domestic sourcing, and has sometimes taken an operation in-house to avoid reliance on a foreign-source of supply.

So when Mag Instrument calls itself "a U.S.A. Manufacturer," what is meant is that its flashlights are made in the U.S.A.—in a U.S. factory, by U.S. workers—even if some components might sometimes have to be imported.