On the Vivtar website it states that "This designer camera is clearly inspired by 70 years of Vivitar heritage."
Vivitar was called "Ponder & Best" before it changed its name to Vivitar and merged with Hanimex. One can say that Vivitar has been around, in one form or another, at least 70 years.
Despite this fact, Vivitar NEVER MADE ANYTHING. They only imported products and put the Vivitar name on them. Some of the things they put their name on may have been made ONLY for Vivitar - such as some of the famous early "Series 1" lenses, and the famous flash units, the 285 and 283. But Vivitar did not actually own the factories that made the products. They just had others make them for Vivitar.
However, over the years, Vivitar did indeed gain brand name recognition.
Today, Vivitar is owned by SAKAR, and it appears that SAKAR is going to continue the Vivitar name brand. If you look at digicam offerings by companies like Voigtlander (in Germany), GE, Vivitar, and Polaroid (among others), you will find they are all basically the same cameras. That's because they all buy them from the same Chinese factories, have the color schemes and design touches changed slightly, and put their own name brands on them - they're all essentially the same cameras.
It just looks like this particular Vivitar digicam was intended to look something like the famous 1970's compact rangefinder Vivitar 35 ES, which was made for Vivitar (I believe) by Cosina.
