Petrol Bags to end Production

[ggrantly]

Per the News Shooter Blog, our friends at Vitec are apparently going to kill off the Petrol brand. One of their other brands, Sachtler of tripod fame, will apparently pick up some of the designs and produce them under the new name. What models would be kept, or not, is unknown at this time.

Hard to know how this will shake out as Vitec has had some pretty ruthless business practices amongst their many brands. It is pretty difficult to avoid them in the marketplace. I have always liked Petrol bags and have many pieces of their gear including my audio bag. It would be a shame for them to disappear.

 

[nutmegger]

If you are referring to this: http://www.tvbayshow.com/event/BVE_2015_37/clip/Sachtler_Bags_at_BVE2015_879 it appears Sachtler made some improvements to the Petrol bags. No mention of prices.

 

[wgtwo]

Pretty sure this is not the case. They're just consolidating brands. Manufacturing and staff remain the same - though I could be wrong here.

They did this with Kata, branding their bags Manfrotto, retaining the same designs but improving them slightly.

 

[Run&Gun]

I think I bought my first Petrol bag around '03-'04. All three of my mixer bags are Petrol, I have a few rolling bags/cases for audio support and my C300. I also have two of their large backpacks for ENG support for some of my VariCam's. I'm thinking about picking up another one or two of the backpacks and rolling cases in-case they don't make the cut once they are completely rebranded.

Vitec has been gobbling up companies for years. Some of the companies/brands they own: Anton Bauer, Vinten, Sachtler, Oconner, Manfrotto, Gitzo, Avenger, Kata, Petrol, Litepanels, smallHD(acquired late '14) Parallinx(just announced a few weeks ago), Teradek and Bexel.