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Photoflex 1985-2015 Share This on LinkedIn   Share This on Google   Tweet This   Forward This

1 April 2015

The first image on the Photoflex site's image slider announces the news that the company is "closing business" after 30 years. "We want to extend our thanks to all of our supporters over the last 30 years and wish you all the best in the future," the announcement says.

Other images, presumably older, on the slider, however, announce partnerships with Flaghead Photographic in the U.K. and Ireland, which continues to display Photoflex products, as well as Cyfrowe.pl in Poland.

Email to the address in the announcement notes that the company's operations ceased March 2 with contact information for the company's bankruptcy attorneys.

In one of our several reviews of the company's lighting products, we detailed the company's history and we reprise that below.

About Photoflex

In 1985 Gene Kester grew increasingly frustrated with the softbox options he found. He turned to Scott Reeves, an old friend from their days in the ski industry who manufactured fiberglass rods. Working with Kester's design, Reeves created a collapsible rectangular softbox with extruded, fiberglass rods that improved on the hollow rods of other softboxes.

Kester liked the new softbox and asked Reeves to make a few more to outfit his San Francisco studio and a set for location work. Reeves explained it wouldn't be financially feasible to produce less than 100 softboxes. Kester placed the order anyway.

A few weeks later he took the softboxes to a small photography trade show in San Francisco -- and sold out within two hours. The owner of a major retail store offered to display more at his shop and another 100 sold quickly. A sales rep who saw them at the store said a rep group to which he belonged could sell even more. It did.

Even though he'd developed a commercial photography clientele that included Apple, Hewlett-Packard, Macy's and Bullock's, Kester literally saw the light. He sold his interest in the studio to his partner and teamed up with Reeves to start Photoflex.


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