Popular Photo Accessory Company Photoflex Just Went Out Of Business Without Warning

After 30 years in business, the popular photography and video lighting accessory company Photoflex has suddenly and without warning closed its doors. To this day, I still use and enjoy my Photoflex extra large softboxes, and I am shocked by the news considering they were just at Photokina earlier in March. Read below to learn more.

According to Photoflex's website prior to their closing:

For a quarter century Photoflex® has produced lighting products that are driven by: Innovation, Quality, Versatility and Durability. We’re proud to present our products to the photo, film and video industries worldwide. 

We base our products around three simple, but crucial rules.

1. Quality. Produce the finest, most versatile product at a fair price and back it up with the best warranty possible. We take personal pride in putting the Photoflex® name on a product that you pay money for. That pride is reflected and backed up by giving you a warranty that is at least two to five times longer than almost all other manufacturers in the industry. We will not sacrifice the credibility of our products simply to cut prices. 
    
2. No Gimmicks. We won’t build something that we wouldn’t use ourselves.  We have two photo/video studios where we test the prototypes and shoot all of our product photos, instruction sheets, and product demonstration lessons for PhotoflexLightingSchool™. If the products don’t pass the test there, they don’t go to market.
   
   Other “manufacturers” shop the trade shows and buy products off the shelf from factories that they then put their labels on. Not Photoflex®. We design and build our products from scratch. We produce our own fabric, build our own molds, and create our own designs into prototypes to be tested in our own studios, sometimes taking over a year to get the finished product.
   
   This is why products such as the LiteDome®, LiteDisc®, and LitePanel have been in production for over 20 years virtually unchanged. They were designed correctly the first time, and all have five or six year warranties because of it.
    
3. Customer Service. We don’t make the customer pay for our mistakes. We believe that you, the customer, signs our paycheck. Therefore, our goal is to provide the finest customer service in the business. We have always had real people answer the phone to help you with your issues and questions and we will continue to pursue our goal of being there for you in the future.

The top professionals in the world have been using Photoflex® products for 30 years and continue to do so because Photoflex® is driven by these three rules.

When you email the GMAIL address listed in the announcment on the top of this post, you are met with this autoresponse: "Photoflex Operations have ceased on March 27, 2015.  Please contact our Attorney Michael Malter or Nan Corber..."

The curious part of this story is the fact that Photoflex announced a partnership earlier this March with Flaghead Photographic to expand their operations.

Photoflex also was active on their social media right up until they announced that they were going out of business. It's a sad state of affairs when iconic award-winning photographic companies are closing their doors like this. I reached out to some folks that I knew worked for Photoflex right until the final days. I will update this article if and when I receive a statement.