LazerBrite is a camping and overland brand founded in Moab, Utah, in 1999.
The first LazerBrite was a chem light with its insides poured out. Doug and Greg Kennedy were running a camping store in Moab when some battery-powered glow sticks they ordered as samples turned out dim, Greg told the Moab Sun News in 2013. Doug cut the bottom off a real chem light and dumped out the contents. Then he pushed an LED inside the tube, and it was far brighter.
They had tested the samples in the store bathroom, the darkest room they had. The brothers had opened Gearheads Outdoor Store in 1998, and the big gear companies would not back a new shop, so they went looking for things to sell. According to the company's About page, the idea for the light came out of a conversation after work, and Clear Products Inc. was founded in 1999 to make the first one. In 2005 the business became Tactical Lighting Solutions.
The design is simple to hold. Two LED heads screw into a translucent tube, and either head can face out as a flashlight or turn inward so the tube glows like a chem light. A full unit weighs about 3 ounces and runs about 75 hours on the two coin cell batteries in each head. It is waterproof to 50 meters and comes in six visible colors plus infrared.
The military took some convincing. "They loved the concept, hated the engineering," Greg Kennedy said. A better prototype at the Modern Day Marine show in Quantico, Virginia, changed that, and by 2013 the Army was the company's biggest customer, with the Marine Corps second. The Defense Logistics Agency once ordered 132,000 units for a stocking warehouse.
LazerBrite says its lights are made in the USA and built in Moab. In 2013 the paper reported that nearly every component was made in America and that the lights were assembled and shipped from Moab. The About page now says the company buys from more than 12 other American manufacturers in eight states. Lights carry a five-year limited warranty against defects.
The store is still pitched at soldiers first. Product pages list a direct line to Greg Kennedy for military and agency bulk pricing. The Ultra-Lite Landing Zone Kit packs six lights and their aluminum marking stakes into a pouch that weighs 1 pound, and the company says it is pretty sure that makes it the lightest helicopter landing zone kit on the planet. Few outdoor stores can say they have one of those on the shelf.
Greg Kennedy told the paper what success would look like. He wanted people to pick up an ordinary flashlight that only shines forward and ask, "Is that all it does?"
A LazerBrite Glow Dome screws onto a light head and turns the flashlight into a small lantern.
