KATA Bags Discontinued

Recently I set about on the quest to find the Kata 3N1 Pro Lite 35 camera bag. It is prominently featured on Kata's website, so I thought the process would be easy. As it turns out, the bag is unobtanium in the U.S.

The only sources I found were eBay and Amazon sellers from South Korea with questionable feedback and long shipping times.

I contacted Kata via email with no response, so I called to ask if they could recommend a vendor, only to be told to look at the Kata Dealers by state. I then searched every website of every Kata dealer in America, state by state, with zero luck.

Can you tell that I wanted THAT bag to the exclusion of all others?

Anyway, after about 10 days of concerted searching, and WTB ads, I found the bag in Canada. Minutes later I finally got a response to my initial email, stating that the Kata brand of bags were discontinued and that the line was being absorbed by Manfrotto.

The Manny bags look pretty nice, but don't appear to offer anything the Kata line didn't, and in some cases actually appear to be more expensive bags with fewer features than their predecessors.

I figured I'd share the news in the event anyone else is contemplating a Kata bag purchase, as they're about to be relegated to the secondary market.

That explains a lot.. I was in the market for a new bag until yesterday when I bought a Lowepro. I always loved the Kata bags and have one of their larger UL models. I wanted something more suitable for air travel and Kata was the first brand I sought out, but what I could find here in Sydney was limited and not nearly as impressive IMO as in the past.

Thanks for sharing, sad news.

Savethemoment wrote in post #16885661
That explains a lot.. I was in the market for a new bag until yesterday when I bought a Lowepro. I always loved the Kata bags and have one of their larger UL models. I wanted something more suitable for air travel and Kata was the first brand I sought out, but what I could find here in Sydney was limited and not nearly as impressive IMO as in the past.

Thanks for sharing, sad news.

Actually, during my search for that particular bag, there were a few shops in Aus that listed it on their sites whereas none in the U.S. did. I was contemplating having one expedited as a last resort.

Lowepro has a huge share of the market, and I've liked some of their bags, but many of them feel like you're carrying around a polystyrene cooler and are way too blocky and obvous as a camera bag for when I travel.

I used to be a huge fan of Kata bags and purchased 6 or 7 of their bags. They have a tendency to discontinue their line of bags more than any other companies. I no longer look at their products.

SYS wrote in post #16885717
I used to be a huge fan of Kata bags and purchased 6 or 7 of their bags. They have a tendency to discontinue their line of bags more than any other companies. I no longer look at their products.

I'll confess that I didn't really pay attention to it until I wanted that one particular bag, and once I started researching I found out that you're exactly right. It's a shame because they made some distinctive bags in market where a lot of products tend to run together.

Not surprising as they seem to tout equipment that no longer is available. Their website is atrocious in this regard. Apparently their customer service is **** as well.

Gimpinator wrote in post #16886066
Not surprising as they seem to tout equipment that no longer is available. Their website is atrocious in this regard. Apparently their customer service is **** as well.

Yeah, I ripped them badly on the customer service survey they sent me. It's a shame because the corporation handles some of the industry leaders in Manfrotto and Gitzo, but their support doesn't seem to match up. I had a problem with a Manfrotto tripod that they were indifferent about helping me fix as well.

I continue to choose a good number of their products when I'm shopping for one reason or another but just opted out of one of their monopods in favor of another brand just out of irritation with the way they handled this one.

Yeah, when I was looking at bags for my gear for work, I considered them but the amount of unavailable bags was mind boggling.

Gimpinator wrote in post #16886114
Yeah, when I was looking at bags for my gear for work, I considered them but the amount of unavailable bags was mind boggling.

After my marathon search for THE bag, I got a glimpse of how huge of a market share that Lowepro currently has. I was really kind of amazed.

Lowepro is part of the Day Man Group and they own, or have a controlling interest in, a lot of camera brands. Lowepro absorbs brands like KATA, kills them and integrates them under the Loewpro name. They bought Joby, but have kept them separate.

You wanna see big though - Manfrotto is flipping huge. They own a whole bunch of brands, including Gitzo and a bunch of pro film/studio rigging and lighting companies as well as some production service outfits.

gakoenig wrote in post #16886192
Lowepro is part of the Day Man Group and they own, or have a controlling interest in, a lot of camera brands. Lowepro absorbs brands like KATA, kills them and integrates them under the Loewpro name. They bought Joby, but have kept them separate.

You wanna see big though - Manfrotto is flipping huge. They own a whole bunch of brands, including Gitzo and a bunch of pro film/studio rigging and lighting companies as well as some production service outfits.

Right, the Vitec group holds Kata, Manfrotto, Gitzo, Lastolite, and a few others. I was just surprised that they discontinued Kata since that was the one dedicated brand of bag in their lineup.

I forgot that Gitzo was part of the even larger Vitec group...

Damn, I need to get Luma Labs bought out for $100M... =)

Interesting read, I was just looking at the Kata owl camera backpack. Maybe I should just look elsewhere.
I was originally considering the Lowepro Flipside 400.

swoCanuk wrote in post #16886297
Interesting read, I was just looking at the Kata owl camera backpack. Maybe I should just look elsewhere.

On the contrary, I was passing the word on Kata so that all the other folks considering one of their bags could try to find it now before the only option is the secondary market.

I realize I went off on a rant about it, but at the end of the day, I went through HELL trying to find this particular bag because in my opinion Kata had an offering that no one else matched.

Thats very sad, I really liked their bags.

Manfrotto bags seem to me to be poorly designed. I was staggered when they brought out a white set last year. I presume its to leave about your designer house as a sort of name dropping thing, as they would not last 2 seconds in real use before they were grubby and unappealing.