VIDEO: TOOLING UP: Streamlight’s Best Flashlight Features

AARON FREUND: Typically, a pair of CR123 batteries costs somewhere between 10 to $12, and every time the user opens a battery door to replace those batteries, you incur that cost. So that's where our SL-B26 battery really comes into play, allowing you to reduce that operational cost to a, to zero cost and having the same ability to insert a rechargeable battery stick and use that in the same platform that you would two disposable batteries.

Narrator: This video is brought to you by Streamlight, the leader in professional lighting tools. If you're looking for real world insights, tips from leading industry experts, the latest trends in products and technology, you've come to the right place. From MSC Industrial Supply, this is Tooling Up.

TONI NEARY: Hello and welcome to Tooling Up. I'm your host, Tony Neary, and I'm so glad that you've joined us today. Before we get to today's guest, let's mark a couple of things off our to do list. Go ahead and click those like and subscribe buttons and that way you'll never miss an episode of Tooling Up. All right, everybody subscribed?

Great. Today I'm really excited to be talking about rechargeable lighting systems with Aaron. He's the director of sales for the industrial division at Streamlight. Aaron, thank you so much for joining us. And welcome to Tooling Up.

AARON FREUND: Thank you for having me. I'm excited to be here today.

TONI NEARY: So if you've ever seen Tooling Up, you know, I like to start by finding out a little bit about your career path. So tell us how you ended up at Streamlight.

AARON FREUND: Yeah, I started in the industrial world as a manufacturer's rep. I sold industrial safety products in the Midwest covering Michigan and northwest Ohio. Which led me to the path of working not only as a manufactur rep. then worked for a small safety distributor in Michigan. And then led me down the, down the path into the journey of Streamlight.

TONI NEARY: And I love the fact that at 13 years in, when you're still a newbie. Tell us a little bit about some of the tenure of the team there at Streamlight, because it's pretty impressive.

AARON FREUND: Absolutely. Yeah. I very much am still one of the new guys on the block, our CEO has been with the company 48 years. We've been in business 52. There's folks that work out back in the in the plant that have been here 40 years. We have people in inside sales, marketing, accounting, all 20, 25, 30 years of experience with the company.

So it's a it's a great place to be. It's a great company that cares about their employees and the products, and the people that they serve with those products.

TONI NEARY: And I was going to say that must say a lot about the strong culture of your organization as well. So tell me a little bit about Streamlight. Tell us about the company and and why it's got the staying power with their employees as well.

AARON FREUND: Absolutely. Streamlight’s a family owned company that really cares about one, the product that we manufacture and making reliable product but two, the people that work here at Streamlight, and the family's very dedicated to making sure that they have great employees, that those employees stay and that they're comfortable. And then even more so, the product that we're putting out into the field.

We like to say that we're family owned but professionally managed. So the folks here that run the day-to-day business are not family members, but the family oversees the overall direction of the company.

TONI NEARY: And I'm super thankful because you actually sent me a couple of flashlights, and my husband's a firefighter and was like, wait, Streamlight, what are those for? Those must be for me. Not only do you have 35 engineers, you have lifetime warranties on your products, but you only have like 20 service technicians. Is that right?

AARON FREUND: That's correct. Yeah, we have a warranty service department that has about 20 people in there, repairing products that have been in service from, you know, the last 10, 15, 20 and 30 years. It's incredibly important for us as a company to stand behind the product that we manufacture and to be able to get that product back into the folks’ hands that use it every day, whether it's somebody in a food processing facility, whether it's a firefighter, law enforcement officer, military personnel.

That light is so critical and so important to them, that if there is something that went wrong with it, we want to take care of it and support it and get it back to them as quickly as possible.

TONI NEARY: Absolutely. And let's talk about reliability, because I would say that's very synonymous with Streamlight, especially with my husband being a first responder. So whether they're going on medical calls, going in buildings without power, like there's so many different situations that you have to be able to count on your lighting equipment. So let's just touch on reliability a little bit and how important that is to Streamlight as an organization, when you're going through and developing and creating these new solutions in innovative technology that has been used for, you know, for a very long time.

AARON FREUND: Sure. Reliability is so important right? And the folks that are relying on our product and grabbing their product to do their job need it to work, right? If that's a law enforcement officer, you need to be able to illuminate the situation so you understand who's friend and who's foe. If you're a firefighter, you need to be able if you're going into a structure fire, you need to understand where they're little holes in the floor and be able to see that you need to illuminate a scene where there could be a, you know, a car accident and be able to see, you know, who needs to be rescued and assess that scene.

If you're in a plant, you need to be able to understand where there's a leak in the corner of a ceiling and be able to put light on that so that you can repair it quickly or see into a machine and understand where that machine is broken, it needs to be fixed. So you need that ability to have that rechargeable battery ready to go and charging in multiple different options so you can grab it and go and see what you need.

TONI NEARY:  All right, Aaron, we've talked a little bit about rechargeability, but let's shed a little light, a little more light if you will, on like affordability and long term ROI on rechargeable devices.

AARON FREUND: The value of the rechargeable system is that you can flop back and forth. And it's a dual fuel system. But what ends up happening is if you're powering that flashlight off the CR 123, it ends up costing a lot of money. Typically, a pair of CR 123 batteries cost somewhere between 10 to $12, and every time the user opens a battery door to replace those batteries you incur that cost.

So you can incur that cost once a day, once a week, or once a month. So typically if you look at replacing those batteries in typical industrial use, you're replacing those batteries on average once a month, maybe a little bit more frequently. If you look simply at once a month, that at $10 you're at $120 in just operational cost to operate that high-performance flashlight.

So that's where our SL-B26 battery really comes into play, allowing you to reduce that operational cost to a to zero cost and having the same ability to insert a rechargeable battery stick and use that in the same platform that you would two disposable batteries.

TONI NEARY: And I think that's amazing. So looking at rechargeable batteries, stacking up and in terms of longevity, how much can you get out of a rechargeable battery? And how often are you recharging them? How often do you need to replace them?

AARON FREUND: The batteries themselves usually are good for about 3 to 5 years of heavy industrial use. It's somewhere around 1000 charge cycles. The recharge time and the run time varies on how much you’re pulling out of, out of the LED so that that varies from light to light. And same with recharge time as to how you're recharging it.

If you're using the USB port a little bit longer than if you're using a traditional bank charger system, plugged into the wall. But again, the longevity of the battery, you're not buying and replacing this battery once a year. It's really kind of over that 3- to 5-year cycle of true, you know, everyday use of that product.

TONI NEARY: So, Aaron, I think it goes without saying, we've touched on the fact that Streamlight is a great company dedicated to just really an amazing team of engineers, service technicians, long-term cost savings and sustainability. It goes above and beyond what general expectations are for delivery. But let's talk a little bit about overall cost saving. So even if you're saving $120 in batteries in a year on one flashlight, that's a good savings.

But let's talk about what that compound looks like, because most organizations are not just buying one lighting solution from you.

AARON FREUND: No, no absolutely not. Most end users are buying multiple flashlights, whether it's 10, 20, 30, 100 or 1000 units. So that impact of $120 cost savings is on one light, so really you see it across the board when you start looking at it at a hundred units or thousand units, how impactful that can be from a cost-savings standpoint in your facility.

Not only from that cost-savings standpoint, but the reduction in disposable batteries and not putting, you know, dead and discarded batteries downstream in the waste, and creating a more sustainable footprint.

TONI NEARY: Aaron, I cannot thank you enough for the time and dedication and for joining us here today.

AARON FREUND: Well, thank you so much for having me. I enjoyed the conversation and really appreciate the time.

TONI NEARY: It was great hanging out with Aaron today, and if you enjoyed our conversation as much as I did, and you want to make sure you don't miss any upcoming episodes, go ahead and click that subscribe button. To learn more about Streamlight rechargeable lighting systems, visit https://www.mscdirect.com/products/streamlight. Thanks and we'll see you next time on Tooling Up .

Narrator: Want more insights and ideas to improve the efficiency and productivity of your operations? Check out the Tooling Up video playlist to hear tips that can take your company to the next level, and subscribe to our channel so you won't miss out.