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Old 07-26-2002, 06:40 PM   #1
mhotek
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Finally made it back. Got to meet and sit down with several vendors we've worked with. I also got to see a lot of products.

The most interesting thing about walking the show floor is that booth after booth after booth offered many of the same products. There had to have been a dozen booths offering several lighter lines that were the same. Same goes for several other items.

There are a LOT of lighters coming on to the market with lifetime warranties. Since those are warranties that are being given by the wholesaler and NOT the factory, I'd let them settle in for a while. You may wind up with a lighter that has a lifetime warranty only to find the supplier that sold it go under and your warranty is not any good.

Even then, you still need to be careful on some. I played with a few lighters that had lifetime warranties that were pure, unadulterated CRAP. I think the worst one was a torch lighter. It has the looks of a flint and made a very loud ping when you flipped the cap. Nice looks, nice feel, nice flame. Pressing the ignition gave you a torach flame and releasing it gave you a dual candle flame. 15 minutes after picking it up and lighting it probably 50 times, the entire interior of the burner chamber fell out. Now, these are two pieces of relatively sharp metal that sit inside a burner camber. They come out glowing red. It's a good thing they didn't fall out in my hand or on the floor. It would have burnt a nice hole into my hand or scorched the floor. When I was at their booth asking about the reliability, they told me that had less than 1% returned. When I went back, the same person admitted that he knew the burner chamber falling out was a problem since them usually had about a dozen or so from every gross (144) sold that came back. BUT, they would replace anything that was defective. No thanks and they can guarantee I will NEVER buy a product from them. It's one thing to have a problem with a product you don't know about. It's quite another to know there is a problem with a product, never tell anyone, and then admit after it fails that you knew about the problem all along.

Out of all of the lighter lines, the most impressive that we saw was in the line of Tiger lighters. They come in single, double, and triple flame torches. Parabola flames, candle flames, as well as regular torches. They come with a lifetime warranty and the kicker is that they sell for $30 and under. We played extensively with some double and triple torch Tiger lighters that look like they will stand up to some abuse. At a price point of ~$20 for each one, it's pretty hard to justify spending $100 on a Trifecta or Triplex.

Stopped by the Atoll booth and I darn near bought some stuff for myself. We really liked the Atoll cases which simply BLOW AWAY any other leather case on the market and in some cases are priced significantly less. This is definitely the travel case for dress occassions. They also had two other manufacturers in their booth. One I'm not going to remember, but have some literature someplace dealt in the wine industry. They showed us an aging mechanism that really was wonderful. It is basically two very powerful magnets which act upon the tanins to speed up the aging process. Instead of lying a bottle of wine in a cellar for years and doing the 1/4 turn aging thing, these magnets produce a much more concentrated and powerful flux pattern that the Earth will. The difference between a bottle straight off the shelf and one that had been treated using this system was quite astounding. The Wesley Bober company was also there. They make ultra-high end furntiture/wine displays. The one that really caught my eye was a large wine barrel which had a bar in the center on a lift. The entire thing would retract into the barrel via a control or power the bar area up. The bar area had space for 4 bottles of wine along with a rack system above for glasses. At $9,000, not exactly in everyone's budget, but I REALLY liked it and will probably get one eventually.

We finally tracked down Hippo-tec. I first saw the Quadr-punch in a shop a couple monthds back. The Quadra-punch is exctly what you would think - 4 punches in one unit. Now you can get a punch with 4 different blades to have the perfect size cut. At a price point of something like $20 - $30, it is in the same price range and many other punches on the market.

We also found 3 more digital hygrometers that look interesting. The first one has an accuracy of +/-2% RH and contains a mini-recorder inside to log your RH over time so that you can now view your RH trends over time instead of just high/low points. The second one also has an accuracy of +/-2% but is even smaller than the digital pen everyone raves about. (The accuracy on both of the above is still questionable as I haven't had the time to really test them yet.) The third digital blew us away. It is called the Caliber II and is being shipping in September. This is a rectangular hygrometer that is extremely thin. Large LED readout and a guaranteed accuracy of +/-1%. That is the best accuracy of ANY digital on the market today and it is completely guaranteed to be accurate. On top of that, the price point on this one was something like $20 - $35.

There were a few other products out there that looked interesting, but nothing else caught our attention like the ones above. Should be interesting to see which companies are back at the RTDA next year and which products manage to survive through the next year.
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