GoodBuyGuys Blog

No, that’s not a misprint. I really did mean “mil“.

I recently came across an online ad for duct tape that listed this information under “roll length”.

60 Yds.-180 Ft.-55 Meters

Yes, a standard roll of duct tape or gaffers tape is 60 yards, or 180 feet, but that is not the same as 55 meters. 55 meters is longer than 60yds. Just a little longer, but nonetheless, it helps me make a point.

Tape manufacturers seem to constantly mix standard and metric measurements at will, usually to serve their own purposes.

The width of a roll of gaffers tape was two inches for decades. Simple, easy to remember, and true. About ten years ago, all the major manufacturers of this and other cloth tapes changed to a metric standard for width, and reduced the width of a roll of tape to 48 millimeters. The change was hardly noticable on a single roll of tape but when you spread that size reduction over literally millions of rolls made by a major manufacturer in a single year, the difference was huge. It adds up to almost a full roll of actual tape in a case of 24 rolls.

By using the metric standard for width they reduced the roll size by 4%, but by not adopting the metric measure of 55 meters for length, they didn’t have to increase the roll length.

To confuse things further, the thickness of tape is measured in “mils” with “mil” meaning a thousandth of an inch. Here the mix standard (inches) and metric (thousandths).

If you’ve got any good ideas on how to standardize this system, let me know.

GoodBuyGuys.com is your online source for Shurtape gaffers tape, Duracell Procell batteries, MagLite flashlights, Nashua duct tape, Bay State wire ties, Electratrac and Coast Wire extension cords and OnStage Stand mic stands. We’re your first choice for “Satisfaction Guaranteed” tape products.

I don’t watch much television, and if I do, its usually “late night”. I’m always surprised to see how prominently musical equipment manufacturers logos are displayed when you see bands on programs like Late Night With David Letterman or The Tonight Show. While its true that some of these players have endorsement deals with the equipment makers, others don’t. More importantly, in most cases companies like Yamaha and Tama aren’t paying the networks directly for this tremendous exposure. Meanwhile companies like Ford and GM are paying millions for advertising on the same shows that might be nearly as effective.

Its a lot easier to get video exposure for your band than it was a few years ago. You Tube, cable and satellite TV, and other online channels mean that performers using musical equipment have tons of opportunities to be seen. If you are interested in the possibility of getting some sort of endorsement deal, try using a little well placed gaffers tape to cover up the logos of any equipment that might appear in your video.

You can be sure that if someone from Marshall or Fender sees you using their equipment with the logo obscured they will realize that they are missing an opportunity to put their name in front of lots of eyeballs. With a popular YouTube video getting millions of views, this type of exposure can rival that of a 3 minute performance by a popular artist on a network program.

Equipment manufacturers pay lots of money to popular performers to use and be seen with their gear. There’s no reason that you should miss out.

GoodBuyGuys.com is your online source for Shurtape gaffers tape, Duracell Procell batteries, MagLite flashlights, Nashua duct tape, Bay State wire ties, Electratrac and Coast Wire extension cords and OnStage Stand mic stands. We’ve got gaffers tape in 13 colors!

I try spend part of every day visiting forums where there are discussions among hands-on users of the products we sell. You can get a lot of good information about how people use what we sell to solve problems and its possible to develop good theories about how trends will develop over the coming months and years.

Unfortunately, those who moderate these forums (a thankless task, I know) have become so concerned about members using their forums to sell products that they are denying their membership the chance to take advantage of some of the most expert opinions available in the marketplace.

We have a very large product user base of stagehands and theatre techs, and almost every problem they face is going to cost them something to solve. Why deny these hard working technicians access to information from those who know these problem solving products the best.

I tried for a while to post solutions and start legitimate discussion on some of these forums, but I was constantly being threatened with banishment because the moderators did not want any links in their forums to any commercial sites.

Here’s a couple of quick examples.:

A number of theatre techs were discussing how to best remove adhesive residue from cables. I’ve done a lot of this and we sell a product that does the job really well. A link to this product on one of our web sites might have saved somebody a lot of time. Not Allowed!

I came across a post from a church sound technician who was concerned about poor battery life in her wireless microphones. It turns out that the church was using old-style carbon batteries in an attempt to save money. A simple link to buybattery.com where we sell the most highly regarded wireless mic battery around at very competitive prices might have been of real use to this person. Not allowed!

I understand the need to control spam and prevent postings from people who are selling something completely irrelevant to the discussion, but as long as these forum moderators attempt to block information from those who have the most to offer, they are not serving their members the best they could.

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

One of my favorite household products is WD-40. I probably use it everyday and you might find a dozen or more cans around my house and shop at any given time. There’s not much it won’t do. It’s sort of like duct tape, just in a spray version.

I bought a new can yesterday and was amazed to see that they still attach the nozzle to the side of the can with a piece of cellophane tape. The same as they have done for 40 or more years. Its not a good solution.

Believe me, I’m all for anything that uses tape, and the makers of WD-40 must use miles of the stuff, one inch at a time, to attach these removable nozzles. The nozzle (just a plastic straw, really) is necessary to get the lubricant/solvent/penetrant into hard-to-reach places but there’s no place to put it when you want to put the cap back on the can. So, you lose the nozzle long before you use up what is in the can.

Rumor has it that the WD-40 company is preparing to release a new type of can with a feature called “Smart Straw“. I hope it works as well as WD-40 does.

GoodBuyGuys.com is your online source for Shurtape gaffers tape, Duracell Procell batteries, MagLite flashlights, Nashua duct tape, Bay State wire ties, Electratrac and Coast Wire extension cords and OnStage Stand mic stands. We’re here with great supplies for work and home.

My Google news alerts this morning pointed to a report about the anticipated growth of the pressure sensitive tape industry over the next several years. The report projects strong growth through 2010. Shurtape (the maker of 665 gaffers tape) sure thinks so.

Shurtape now has a new 130,000 square foot distribution facility in Hickory, NC . That’s room for a whole lot of tape. This new center has 45 foot ceilings, 33 loading docks, and there is room to grow. The Shurtape facility is the anchor tenant of the Catawba Industrial Business Park a 45 acre development in Catawba County.

Shurtape’s acquisition of the Arts & Entertainment division of Permacel, along with their strategic alliance with Pro Tapes and Specialties assures that they will be at the center of these rosy growth projections.

GoodBuyGuys.com is your online source for Shurtape gaffers tape, Duracell Procell batteries, MagLite flashlights, Nashua duct tape, Bay State wire ties, Electratrac and Coast Wire extension cords and OnStage Stand mic stands. Count on us to meet your pressure sensitive tape needs.

We’ve been struggling with a solution for temporary gym floor marking for about a year now, and it looks like we may have finally solved a vexing problem.

I had a chance to attend the home opener for UNC’s Womens Volleyball Team (congratulations on your win over Villanova) as part of the Carolna Classic at Carmichael Auditorium.

We have been working closely with Joe Sagula, UNC’s coach this fall, and he has graciously helped us to test Permacel 724 Paper Tape for temporary gym floor marking. He’s been a great help.

The floor at Carmichael is an historic one. This is where Michael Jordan led a UNC team in their home games as they marched toward the 1982 NCAA mens basketball championship. Floor damage would be out of the question.

I watched several matches on Friday and the Permacel 724 seemed to hold up very well. The temporary lines were amazingly straight and the end lines (the ones that really take a beating) held up to heavy foot traffic. This gym floor also serves as the home for UNC’s womens basketball team, so it sees a lot of temporary floor markings.

Thanks in part to the thorough testing at UNC, we have tentatively arranged for the US Volleyball Assoc. to endorse this product and we have seen sales to lots of other NCAA volleyball programs.

It was frustrating for us when the makers of SafeOff were unwilling to stand behind their product, but we did not hesitate to drop them.

We are grateful to Shurtape, the makers of 724, for stepping up to the line.

GoodBuyGuys.com is your online source for Shurtape gaffers tape, Duracell Procell batteries, MagLite flashlights, Nashua duct tape, Bay State wire ties, Electratrac and Coast Wire extension cords and OnStage Stand mic stands. Look to us first to meet your floor marking needs.

Occasionally, I get a call (a complaint, really) from a customer who is unhappy because a tape product they ordered was described as being two inches wide, but turned out to really be only about 1 7/8″ in width. They’re not happy, and I don’t blame them. This is usually someone who wants to use tape as a trim or binding product rather than for securing cables, and they discover that they did not get what they expected. All we can do is apologize, refund their money and honor our guarantee.

We’ve been selling tape for a long time and the change in width came about 5 or 6 years ago. Rather than raise prices, all the major US domestic tape manufacturers changed their standard from being two inches wide to 48 mm wide. For most users, this did not really impact their ability to use the tape and they never noticed the change.

Unfortunately, the tape makers changed the width but did not change the description. The metric equivilent is usually marked in parentheses on the box (each 1 inch in width is actully 24 mm) but this info rarely appears in the tape description and some manufacturers fail to acknowledge the disrepancy at all.

Odder still, while tape makers converted to metric equivilents for tape widths, they continued to use the imperial measuring standard for lengths. Most tape continues to be offered in the industry standard of 60 yds. Nobody really has an explanation for mixing the two standards. It really servers the manufacturer and no one else.

We have include info on this width standard in our website, but as long as the major manufacturers continue to label standard gaffers tape and duct tape as being two inches in width, we’ll have to stick with their standard.

GoodBuyGuys.com is your online source for Shurtape gaffers tape, Duracell Procell batteries, MagLite flashlights, Nashua duct tape, Bay State wire ties, Electratrac and Coast Wire extension cords and OnStage Stand mic stands. Look to us first to meet your gaffers tape needs.

I have written a number of times about the recent retiring of the Permacel brand name for gaffers tape. It has caused a minor upheaval in our marketing and shipping departments, but most customers seem willing to accept the change. It’s true that Shurtape had been making these products under a license from Permacel for the last couple of years, so the only real change has been in the name.

Now a new question has arisen. Who, among the major tape converters and distributors, is going to be the first to totally abandon the name Permacel and go with the designation Shurtape 665. We have played with different labeling designations includeing Permcel/Shurtape 665, Shurtape-Permacel 665, and just “665 Gaffers Tape” but nothing has taken hold. Most of the resellers of this product continue to call it Permacel 665 and the primary converter continues to call it Permacel 665 on their own web site.

Furthermore, Shurtape has been slow in updating their own web sites to show the correct specifications and colors for the products that have been rebranded Shurtape.

We work with many high volume customers who base their purchasing decison on maufacturers specifications and it has been difficult to convince them that the products are unchanged. When we tell them the product are the same, yet the Permacel and Shurtape web sites disagree on the specs of the tape, it is difficult to support our position.

It will be interesting to see if individual resellers are allowed to make the name change at their own pace or if the manufacturer (or Permacel) will force an accelerated adoption of the new name. More later!

GoodBuyGuys.com is your online source for Shurtape gaffers tape, Duracell Procell batteries, MagLite flashlights, Nashua duct tape, Bay State wire ties, Electratrac and Coast Wire extension cords and OnStage Stand mic stands. Look to us first to meet your gaffers tape needs.

I periodically analyze something called a “web log,” which gives us information about how many visitors we have to our sites and how they arrive there. One of my primary interests is in the analysis of search terms, as this is a good indicator of how potential customers are seeking us out.

Recently the logs indicated that someone had found one of our sites using Google, with the search phrase “tape“. We’ve been selling tape for a long time and score really well with search phrases like “gaffers tape” and “Permacel 665” but I never even considered that we could be found through a search term as broad as “tape”. After all, when you search for “tape” in Google you get over 147,000,000 returns.

Imagine my surprise when I searched for “tape” and buytape.com came up as no. 5 on the first page. That’s truly amazing, especially when you consider how many kinds of tape there are and how many different companies sell some kind of tape.

I never cease to be amazed at how diligent, if somewhat boring, search engine optimazation will return truly amazing results. There is really no substitute for attending to the details of what Google and other search engines look for in a well-optimized page. A company of our size and with the resources we have at our disposal should not be able to go head-to-head with companies like 3M and Polyken and come out on top in web search. This can’t even really be called “leveling the playing field”.

Still, we are pleased to get this sort of recognition and hope that we can hold onto our ranking for a long, long time.

GoodBuyGuys.com is your online source for Shurtape 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 tape.

We’ve made some changes here recently that have meant that I now have additional web developer responsibilities. It is work that I enjoy, but it can be complicated. The learning curve is steep.

One of the new tasks that has landed on my desk is managing our Google Adwords account. Most of our search engine traffic comes from non-paid search since our web sites score well for lots of keywords, but we still feel that Adwords is worth the trouble.

New, at least to me, is that Adwords gives some additonal value to your site if the landing page (the page that the link in your Adword actually takes the user to) is relevant to the text in the ad. Its hard to believe that this isn’t obvious to anyone who is spending money on Adwords or any keyword driven online advertising.

Why would anyone pay good money for an ad for the keyword “gaffers tape” and then take you to a web page selling paint when you click on their ad. Their site may offer tape somewhere in its pages, but someone doing an online search is not likely to drill down in the site far enough to find it. They will simply click on a competitor’s site.

The amount of time needed to create a custom landing page that has useful references to the actual keyword used in the search is small when compared to the wasted money spent when a keyword-driven search does not provide the information that the user hoped to find.

Google has made tons of money on Adwords and they are to be applauded for being willing to forego some revenue in order to improve the customer experience. Giving less value to a landing page that is not relevant to the search terms is another reason why Google will probably continue to rule in online search.

GoodBuyGuys.com is your online source for Shurtape 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 other useful products.