MAGLITE®, facts!

Every single Mag Instrument production employee lives and works in the USA. Of course, Mag® employs sales people in the other regions of the world where Mag® flashlights are sold, but all Maglite® flashlight manufacturing facilities and manufacturing employees are located in the United States.

Every Mag Instrument flashlight, no matter where in the world it lands, comes from this factory in the USA and by American workers.

Many companies in Mag Instrument's position would succumb to the temptation to "outsource" the manufacturing base of flashlights. Some laid off their American manufacturing workers and moved their factories to low-wage countries to become importers to the United States rather than exporters from the United States. Other flashlight companies have laid off their American manufacturing workers and also left the difficult manufacturing field altogether. They have instead chosen to be just marketers and intermediaries, taking orders from customers on the one hand and placing orders with small-scale contract manufacturers on the other. These flashlights, manufactured “offshore,” were then purchased by the foreign company and imported into the United States to be retail-purchased by Americans who were lucky enough to still have jobs.

This scenario is anything but far-fetched. In fact, every flashlight supplier with a significant US market share now manufactures all or most of its flashlights outside of the US. Except for Mag Instrument.

Among the major suppliers of flashlights to the US market, Mag Instrument is unique in its commitment to US manufacturing.

"Mag Instrument is very busy, his flashlights to export from the United States."

While competitors in the flashlight industry are busy exporting flashlight manufacturing orders from the US, Mag Instrument is currently exporting manufactured flashlights.

Why? Again, the answer is the constant commitment of a man. Outsourcing flashlight manufacturing jobs—taking those jobs away from American workers and sending them “offshore”—would go against Tony Maglica's philosophy in several ways.

For one, it would go against his faith in the American system of free enterprise and the spirit of giving back. Mr. Maglica knows that Mag Instrument got where it is as an American company. He firmly believes that Mag Instrument could only have happened in America - nowhere else but in the US could someone who started with as little as he ever built from scratch grow into a company like Mag Instrument could have. He also knows how important it is to the well-being of the people of this country to encourage entrepreneurship and maintain a vibrant industrial base. That's why he's proud to be at the forefront of the current renaissance in American manufacturing. That's why he's committed to proving that US manufacturing can excel in the global marketplace, using technology to continuously improve quality and reduce costs. This is why Mr. Maglica has been so active in ensuring a level playing field for American manufacturers.

“Outsourcing” the manufacture of flashlights would also go against Tony Maglica's commitment to quality. There's a reason Mag Instrument has been able to maintain its world-renowned product quality. This reason has to do with his personal vigilance, which requires all of Maglite's flashlight making to be realized in a place where he can personally watch this happen. His approach to continuous product improvement is to walk around the factory observing, teaching, hearing suggestions, praising what is getting right and not doing, constantly holding and inspecting the product as it is being made to nip quality problems in the bud, to look for a small way to further improve efficiency, to avoid bottlenecks or waste of time or materials.

Mag Instrument's nature of continuous quality improvement needs to be up close; at a distance it just wouldn't work. Mr. Maglica knows the difference between good quality and excellent quality and what makes that difference - an ongoing commitment to real, true product quality. He also understands that quality is not a goal but a process. Not an end point, but a persistent, unrelenting pursuit - all day, every day.

To outsource Mag's flashlight manufacturing and move it to a location where Mr. Maglica could not personally observe the process would, in his view, compromise cost control and quality too much. If he did, he would risk the entire excellence of a MAGLITE® flashlight.