GoodBuyGuys Blog

Several months back I wrote about our new web site and our web developer, Dale. I predicted that his efforts would move goodbuyguys.com to page one for non-paid Google search. It took a little longer than we hoped, but Dale has made my prediction come true. Yesterday we climbed to page one for the very important key word “gaffers tape“. I check these search engine rankings all the time and this really made my day.

Which brings me to my real point about this posting. We also run Google Adwords for key products, and compete for your attention like everybody else. I look at the sites of others who buy the same adwords. When I click on their ads, I’m amazed at how little the keywords they have paid for actually appear on their pages. Why would someone pay good money for the keyword “Procell Battery” and then take you to a page that is primarily about hard hats and safety goggles? Google search is such a powerful tool for getting your products in front of potential buyers, but making your pages what Google wants to see really takes a lot of work. Work that can pay off in page one listings that cost you nothing. This diligence, day in and day out, is something at which Dale excells.

Congratulations to Dale. He is modest about his accomplishments, but I know that achieving a Page One ranking for an important key word in Google is a feather in any web developers cap.

Goodbuyguys.com is a collection of web sites (including buytape.com, buybattery.com, buymicstand.com, buyextensioncord.com, buyaflashlight.com and buywireties.com) designed to deliver a great selection of entertainment production and audiovisual supplies.

If the new mic preamp device from Sabine, called “Phantom Mic Rider“, can do what it claims, the days of the sound man may be numbered. This inline preamp plugs directly between a microphone and a mixer, at the mic end, and provides almost all of the functions the sound man would perform at a spoken word event.

I spent a lot of time spinning knobs for spoken word and televised events, and this thing would have been a life saver. It eliminates (or at least reduces feedback), provides automatic gain control when the presenter moves too close or too far from the mic, provides proximity effect equalization, controls popping “p” sounds, and, most important, includes an infrared noise gate.

The noise gate automatically turns the mic and and off, depending on how far a presenter is from the mic position. This sensor can be detached from the rest of the preamp and taped somewhere like the top of a podium if that suits your needs better.

the “Phantom Mic Rider” is phantom powered, so no battery is needed. It will work with a stand mounted or podium-style mic, and Sabine claims that its internal digital signal processing will improve the overall sound of almost any microphone.

Only one problem that I can see. The infrared noise gate is activated by body heat, and some of the presenters we’ve worked with over the years appeared to have been dead for some time!

GoodBuyGuys.com is your online source for Permacel gaffers tape, Duracell Procell batteries, MagLite flashlights, Nashua duct tape, Bay State wire ties, Electratrac and Coast Wire extension cords, and lots of other great products for the audio visual industry.

When we were still active in event production, one of our “bread and butter” event types was conference audio. We live in a college town and there are lots of meetings that have to be reinforced for audiences and recorded for later transcription.While not as exciting as concert audio, this was lucrative work with good hours and a high quality clientele. Best of all, it did not require constant updating of equipment and trying to meet performers performance riders and eqiupment wish lists.

It did require microphones-lots of microphones. We worked with boundary mics like the Crown PCC160, podium goosneck mics like the Audio Technica 857 and more standard mics like the Shure SM57. Regardless of the mic choice, there was need for lots and lots of cabling. A neat look was always required and micing up tables, tucking wires under table skirting, long runs of multicables to prevent trip hazards and lots of taping down mic cables was always necessary. It meant a lot of set up and strike time.

Revolabs, a European microphone manufacturer, has a great new product that solves all those problems. Their Solo TableTop Wireless Boundary Microphone provides the conference audio technician with up to 16 separate, digitally encoded, boundary table mics. They are rechargable (only two hours charge time) and will perform for up to 8 hours of talk time. Over the life of this system, it could pay for itself in battery savings.
Revolabs offers this mic in both omni and cardiod patterns, so it should be possible to work this great idea into lots of different conference set ups.

Bandwidth is a very reasonable (for spoken word) 100-6800 hz and the range, depending on pickup pattern, can be as much as 100 feet.

This is a package any conference center might want to consider for their Christmas wish list.

Seen a good idea for audio technicians? Share it with us.

GoodBuyGuys.com is your online source for Permacel gaffers tape, Duracell Procell batteries, MagLite flashlights, Nashua duct tape, Bay State wire ties, Electratrac and Coast Wire extension cords, OnStage Stand mic stands, and lots of other useful production supplies.

It’s hard to imagine a more important customer service function than answering the phone. I have been trying to contact a couple of our suppliers (companies that we send thousands of dollars to on a regular basis) and I can’t get anyone to answer the phone. Voice mail followed by unreturned calls. Over and over again.

I’m not talking about customer service or sales calls. I am talking about calls from an existing customer to a supplier who spends millions trying to get us to buy and distribute their products.

I can understand the need to use voice mail and message taking when absolutely necessary, but it is difficult to imagine anything of more value to someone who sells a product or service than talking to your customer. After all, my calls are all about my desire to give your company money. What could be more important than that?

The advent of e-commerce and online sales has been incredibly liberating for us at GoodBuyGuys.com. We’ve always tried to make sure that a customer got a live human being when they called to order gaffers tape or batteries, or when they called for product info. Our phone rings less and less often, even though our sales are increasing, so we have lots more time and resources to field every phone call without adding phone lines or employees. It is the most important customer service function anyone around here performs. It’s easy and it is a service that is rarely abused by customers or prospects. They don’t call unless an interaction with a human voice is really needed.

We have resisted adding hold music or, even worse, some sort of recorded message to bore you while you are put on hold. If a caller is left on hold for more than 45 sec. the phone starts making a really loud and annoying beeping sound.

Occasionally, you may get voice mail if all our incoming lines are busy, but we strive to return ALL calls within the hour. It’s something that really matters.

When we make decisions on adding new suppliers and expanding our relationship with exisiting ones, how they handle the telephone is a very big part of our decision making process.

Why more companies don’t take advantage of the decrease in demand that e-commerce puts on their human resources is a mystery to me. Having a human answer the phone is a great way to build business relationships in a way that online interactions will never replace. You miss an awful lot when you are unwilling to answer the phone.

Got an insight into good customer service? Share it with us!

GoodBuyGuys.com is your online source for Permacel gaffers tape, Duracell Procell batteries, MagLite flashlights, Nashua duct tape, Bay State wire ties, Electratrac and Coast Wire extension cords, OnStage Stand mic stands, and lots of other useful production supplies.

We are finally seeing some headway on the acquisition of Duracell by Proctor & Gamble (see my Sept. 20th post). The sale of the Duracell brand (along with the rest of the Gillette-owned family of products) has led to a lot of confusion for us and meant that our battery shelves have been essentially empty for the last couple of weeks.

Shipments have begun arriving again, and we are hopeful of catching up on a huge stack of backorders by week’s end. We appreciate the patience of lots of loyal customers and hope that we can get back to our “same day shipping” policy on most of our orders. Backorders are problems for everybody.

Duracell was named to the 84th position in Business Week’s list of Best Global Brands last year. They had 2005 sales of $3.57 billion dollars and it looks like the are continuing to gain market share from competitors like Energizer.

The acquisition of Gillette and all its brands was a $57 billion dollar deal and its hard to say how ProCell may fare in an acqusition like this.

Some see it as a great step.

“This merger is going to create the greatest consumer products company in the world,” said billionaire investor Warren Buffett, whose Berkshire Hathaway is Gillette’s largest shareholder with 96 million shares, or about 9 percent of the company.

We’re not so sure. A specialty brand like ProCell may not fit in well with a company that is focused on consumer brands. ProCell, as you may know, is not packaged for retail sales and is intended for distribution to end users in the industrial, medical and electronics industries. After spending a lot of effort in promoting the brand to these industries, Duracell, under Gillette’s ownership, dropped most of these efforts, reduced their sales staff, and scaled back promotion of the brand.

Initially, it looks like P&G may scale back even further. They appear to have replaced all the folks at Gillette who handled the nuts and bolts process of getting ProCell batteries to distributors and they have had great difficulty in keeping product in the pipeline. Industry reports indicate that as many as 6000 jobs may have been cut in the implementation of this acquisition. Who know how many of these cuts will impact ProCell?

I am hopeful that things will get back on track and Proctor & Gamble will realize what great customer loyalty ProCell has. Its a brand worth a lot more attention than they have given it so far.

Got an opinion about this mega-merger? Let us know.

Buybattery.com is about batteries. Duracell Procell batteries. The kind you use in flashlights, wireless mics and electronics. We don’t sell automotive batteries, but maybe we should.

Here’s what happened to me yesterday.

I have to keep lots of vehicles on the road. Seven at the moment. They all need batteries. In fact our trucks all use dual batteries.

I bought a battery for an older car that I don’t drive very often, so I decided to get a really good one so I could start this cart up every month or so, even if I wasn’t driving it regularly. I went with Interstate, supposedly one of the best batteries you can buy. I got a 75 month model, one of the best you can buy.

Well, after 34 months that battery failed. It wouldn’t hold a charge. In fact, it wouldn’t even take a charge. Since I thought I had gotten the best warranty available, I assumed that I could just take it back to the dealer and get a replacement-with some sort of pro rating, of course.

Boy, was I wrong. Since I had bought the battery through our company account, the manufacturer, Interstate, claimed my car was a “commercial vehicle”, so the warranty was immediately cut in half. Interstate would not offer any warranty support. The dealer, a company that I had done business with for years, simply washed their hands of the whole matter, so I was out of luck.

Interstate, a privately held company with $650 in annual sales could have solved this problem for just a few dollars and made a customer for life. Instead, they claimed more warranty exceptions than any warranty I have ever seen.

The results:

~I will never buy another Interstate battery. That’s a fleet of seven vehicles, and growing, that will never use another of their products;

~I will never buy another battery from this local dealer, a company that has had my business for over 20 years;

~I will take every opportunity I get to make sure and tell this story to anyone who will listen.

Interested in how a honest warranty that really cares about the customer should work? Here’s ours.

GoodBuyGuys.com is your online source for Permacel gaffers tape, Duracell Procell batteries, MagLite flashlights, Nashua duct tape, Bay State wire ties, Electratrac and Coast Wire extension cords, OnStage Stand mic stands, and lots of other useful production supplies

We have avoided selling rechargeable batteries because we just really didn’t feel like the technology currently available gave good value to the customer. The combination of the cost, the decreased battery life over time, and the inability to predict performance over time has meant that our primary battery customers-those who use batteries in wireless microphones-couldn’t count on rechargeables to dependable meet their needs.

While we still don’t recommend rechargeable batteries for wireless mics, I just came across a rechargeable battery that may be just too cool to pass up.

The USB Cell from Moxia Energy, a British company, uses a computer USB port to recharge a AA battery. What could be handier than a battery that can be recharged while you work and doesn’t require a dedicated charger. While this battery may not have a discharge rate that is reliable enough for a wireless mic, there are lots of applications where it would be great.

People who travel with lots of electronic devices can now leave the battery charger at home and walk right by the overpriced batteries at the airport kiosk.

Unlike most rechargeable batteries that must be fully discharged, the USB cell can be inserted into a computer port for just a few minutes for a quick “top off”.

This item could save tons of money for gamers, and anyone who travels with both a computer and an MP3 player or radio that uses AA batteries. Cameras, flashlights and remote controls can all use the USB Cell.

We are in contact with the UK manufacturer, in hopes of becoming a US distributor. Check back here to see if we can make this available.

I got the answer to my question about copper in the CopperTop a lot sooner than I expected and it certainly wasn’t the answer I had hoped for.As you may well be aware, Gillette, the maker of Procell Batteries, has been taken over by Proctor & Gamble, one of the largest consumer products companies in the world. They are now in the process of implementing this take over with their distributors (including goodbuyguys.com) and the first thing they did was announce a price increase, effective 1 January 2007. Welcome to the neighborhood! In their letter to us they cite the increase in raw materials to justify the price increase and specifically reference an increase of 128% in the price of copper, as well as an increase in the costs of zinc and nickel. Both Duracell and Procell alkaline batteries will feel this price increase at the first of the year.This is our first experience with P&G and it remains to be seen if they honor the pledge outlined in the price increase letter to only raise prices to recover costs already incurred, rather than to do it on speculation.We are hopeful that a company with the resources to provide both product and info on a massive global level will be willing to serve the small but growing distributor at the same level Gillette has served our market. Check back here to see how they are doing.

One of the most desirable characteristics of alkaline batteries is their long shelf life. They last a lot longer than zinc-carbon batteries and lose their storage capacity in a very linear pattern.Duracell rates the battery life of its Procell line to have a 7 year shelf life. Here’s how they come up with that figure.

After one year of storage at room temperature alkaline cells will still provide 93-96% of their initial capacity.

Over five years of storage at an average storage temperature of 70 degrees these batteries will still deliver about 85% of their rated capacity. Here’s what the discharge curve looks like.

If stored at higher temperatures than 70 degrees or in high humidity, this capacity will be reduced somewhat.

The ideal storage conditions for Duracell Procell batteries is 50 degrees F-70 degrees F degrees with no more than 65% relative humidity.

Here are the details directly from Duracell.

You can always be sure that any Procell battery you get from GoodBuyGuys.com is factory fresh and was made no more than six weeks before it is delivered to you. Your satisfaction is guaranteed and the expiration date is stamped right on the box.

GoodBuyGuys.com is your online source for Permacel gaffers tape, Duracell Procell batteries, MagLite flashlights, Nashua duct tape, Bay State wire ties, Electratrac and Coast Wire extension cords, OnStage Stand mic stands, and lots of other useful production supplies.

My musings on how the price of copper (Aug. 8 blog) has had an impact on extension cord manufacturing led to another question that has me scratching my head.

Duracell has been calling their line of consumer alkaline batteries “The Coppertop” for years. Is there any copper in The Coppertop?

If yes, then when should we expect to see the volatility in copper pricing impact this product line?

According to the Duracell web site, copper is not part of the equation. It would appear that the metals in this popular product for consumer electronics and flashlights are zinc, potassium and manganese.

More than likely, the alkaline line of batteries is nothing more than a very effective marketing idea that appears to create a loose link in the consumers mind between the Duracell product and the metal that we all associate with electrical conductivity.

Hopefully, battery prices will remain stable for a while longer.

Unfortunately, there is still a big “X” factor on the horizon. Gillette, the company that owns Duracell, has been acquired by Proctor and Gamble, the huge consumer goods company. Continual consolidation in the consumer goods industry can’t be dismissed when trying to look into the future.

More about this in a future blog.