GoodBuyGuys Blog

We continue to suffer fallout from the retiring of Permacel as the brand name for 665 gaffers tape. While customers who have agreed to be shipped the Shurtape version of this product seem satisfied, the long range prospects for this product are clearly in doubt. It didn’t have to be this way.

Lots of our large volume purchasers of gaffers tape place their orders on a quarterly or semiannual basis. The ordering is done by a large (and often offsite) purchasing office and their purchasing decision quite often has little to do with the actual needs of the “hands on” users of the product. These folks in purchasing write specifications for a product and once they have approved a specific product and its specs, then this information is embedded in lots of documents and procedures that control what can actually be bought.

Even though we have assured these customers that the products are identical, their procedures and purchasing manuals don’t allow for a quick and simple change from one manufacturer to another. The process of approving a new product may require writing new specs, submitting their purchasing needs out for new bids and getting approval from folks far removed from those who use the tape. This decision making can take a long time and sometimes the results are not what anybody really hoped for.

Because the brand name “Permacel” was so deeply entrenched in the purchasing process of large institutions it can’t simply be replaced with “Shurtape“. Permacel was the dominant brand for gaffers tape for so long that their name had become synonymous with the term “gaffers tape“. Since distributors were given no warning that this change was coming, we did not have a chance to get samples into these buyers hands in time to aid in a smooth transition.

We are hopeful that, over time, these loyal customer can accomodate this change and we can pick up these relationships again. These were good customers and we miss them.

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 cloth tapes.

It seems that Portland Oregon, the home of the Rose Festival Parade is ready to go to war over duct tape. For years local tradition has allowed parade attendees to mark out and reserve prime parade viewing locations with duct tape so that they don’t have to wait hours on the curb to see the parade. The town is up in arms over attempts to end this tradition and it has escalated to the point that its is being viewed as a dispute over private ownership of public property.

Portland Commissioner Randy Leonard reports that what he calls the “duct tape affair” has generated more public comment than discussions about the Iraq War and the FBI’s anti-terrorism force combined. This has become such a big deal with Portland locals that the town council is actually going to have to pass a resolution for or against this practice.

While we are all for the use of as much duct tape as possible, this is one issue where the solution seems so self-evident that it wouldn’t call for wasting the time of a legislative body. If someone is willing to wait by the side of the road for a parade, it certainly isn’t fair for a last minute arrivee to push them out of their place.

Duct tape can do a lot of things for you, but standing in line is not one of them.

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 tape products.

Miles Davis, the famous jazz trumpeter, once said “don’t play what’s there, play what’s not there”. That may be great advice for a musician learning to improvise, but it would not have gotten much traction with internet search engines.

When I write an article or blog post about gaffers tape or microphone cables I certainly hope that my writing is something that someone would actually like to read. Regardless, my true intended audience is something known as a robot or a spider. Internet search engines constantly send around these spiders to sample internet content and make notes of what links to what. This is the major source for data to determine what information you are offered when you enter a word or term in a search engine.

Since Miles was famous for playing a piece by completely ignoring what the composer had actually written, what he played would be completely invisible to an internet robot. At this point, robots are indexing text, not sounds, but you can be sure that someone, somewhere is working on a version of spider that can read music and index it for search engines. Its going to be an even tougher challenge to index Miles.

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 lots of other great products for musicians.

Most of our gaffers tape customers use gaffers tape for securing cables to the floor. The keep people from tripping over wires when its necessary to run cables across a stage or in an area where there is lots of foot traffic. It works great for this purpose but can get a little pricey if you have lots of cables to install.

We got an order recently from a customer who uses this tough, durable cotton cloth tape for a much more permanent purpose.They use gaffers tape for making wallets. These aren’t the duct tape wallets kids make in summer camp. They are really beautiful accessories that are designed for many years of use. They have even developed some sort of photographic process that lets them print images directly on the tape.

A roll of 4 in . x 60 yd. gaffers tape costs $24.99, and I am guessing that it takes no more than a yard of tape to make one of these wallets. That means that at prices of $40.00 or more for one of these billfolds, the wallet makers can generate a gross profit of $2400.00 for their $24.99 investment in raw material.

Now I know that there are some other materials involved, as well as a lot of labor. Still, it looks like these guys might end up with a lot of $$$ in their own wallets.

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 lots of other useful tape products.

I’ve lived in North Carolina my entire life and have been in some aspect of the entertainment business since the mid 1970’s. North Carolina is a healthy business environment and I have been at this long enough to have survived a number of economic cycles. Sunrise, sunset!

One of the most interesting rise and fall stories of our state’s economy has been the film industry. The area around Wilmington has been the host to the film and television production industry for over 20 years and there have been a number of boom and bust cycles. Major motion pictures like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and television series like Matlock and Dawson’s Creek have called Wilmington home.

I get an online news letter from the NC Film Office and if their newsletter is a true indication of what is going on in our state, then this industry is pretty healthy.

Unfortunately, one reason for the increase in in-state productions is the continued efforts by our state government to favor certain industries with tax breaks. It seems that a production company can accumulate as much as $7.5 million in tax breaks on sales tax, payroll taxes and services taxes. All because they are willing to set up business in NC long enough to make a movie.

I’ve written about similar tax advantages provided when Google decided to locate a server farm in western North Carolina earlier this year. While I understand the importance of bringing jobs to the state (even temporary ones) it is difficult to see how this is so much more important than giving tax breaks to the businesses that have been providing jobs for North Carolinians for years. These are businesses that don’t immediately pick up and move on when some other state (or country) lures them with a better tax incentive. NC has seen major film and television productions move to other states or abroad based solely on who would give the producer the most tax advantages.

Maybe its time to add long term loyalty to the requirements for getting a tax break.

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 products for film and television production.

Daylight savings time began yesterday, and the best part of an extra hour of daylight is the chance to get into the garden after work. Yesterday was a beautiful early spring day and the extra hour was put to good use getting things ready for early spring planting.

I regulary haul home various samples of products we sell or consider offering to customers, as lots of them have applications in non-production uses. If you’re an avid gardener, you might find these are useful things to have on your garden workbench.

Cotton tie line is the best thing I have ever found for tying plants to stakes. It’s soft so it doesn’t damage the plant and it is easy to tie and untie over and over.

I keep a roll of paper label tape and a Sharpie Marker handy for quick labels. The Sharpie is waterproof and the adhesive on Permacel 724 label tape allows it to be removed and replaced.

Tool hands can be repaired or padded with a quick turn of gaffers tape.

Need to do some color coding? Electrical tape comes in lots of colors and it is waterproof.

My fences are getting pretty old since I have been gardening the same space for a long time. A quick and strong fence repair is easy with a nylon wire tie. Black ties with UV protection will hold up outdoors for years.

A quick waterproof repair to a boot or a glove can be made with a strip of duct tape.

Happy gardening!

Goodbuyguys.com is a collection of web sites (including buytape.com, buybattery.com, buyextensioncord.com, buyaflashlight.com and buywireties.com) designed to deliver a great selection of hard to find products for use around the home.

We’ve had a satisfaction guaranteed warranty for everything we sell since the day we opened. Its unusual for someone to have a problem, but we are always happy to stand behind the guarantee, no matter why the customer is unsatisfied.

Still, it was tough to give this customer their money back. The customer was an avant garde dance company doing a performance on a vinyl dance floor that they had soaked with water (think slip & slide)

The customer was unhappy because the vinyl dance floor tape they had purchased wouldn’t stick properly. “But your website said it was waterproof“, she kep saying over and over.

After a little more discussion, I realized that she was unhappy because the tape wouldn’t stick properly AFTER they had soaked the floor. Maybe there is a tape that will stick to water, but we haven’t found it yet.

We’ll keep working on it, but name Liquid Tape is already spoken for.

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 theatrical supplies.

I wrote a while back on the subject of how people who produce video in front of live audiences are blind to anything that the camera does not see, regardless of what the audience in the hall might be viewing. Well, it certainly seems like they are ahead of folks who do radio shows in front of live audiences. It appears that they see nothing at all!

I have been watching a lot of digital tv and I stumbled upon a telecast of a live radio show produced weekly by the company that broadcasts basketball games at the University of North Carolina, my alma mater. Apparently I was the only person who realized that people might be watching as well as listening.

This show is broadcast from a local restaurant and is done for a live and broadcast audience. The set consisted of the coach and the host sitting at a table with a banner slapped on it with duct tape ( wrinkles and all) and it looked like it had been lit with a couple of maglites. About half the time the single static camera shot was blocked by people walking back and forth in front of the camera, probably on their way to the bar.

Its difficult to understand how an organization that should be as media savy as an NCAA Division 1 athletic department could allow a presentation like this to be seen by anyone. It wasn’t good enough for YouTube!

The proliferation of digital television channels is going to mean that more and more program material that was intended to be heard but not seen is going to be broadcast. I’m not advocating that the bar for production values be set very high, but it’s got to be set higher than this.

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 video production industry.

Yahoo recently did a very unscientific survey of the kind of cases people used for their iPods, and the results were pretty amazing. The number four choice was DUCT TAPE. That’s right, the duct tape wallet craze has moved on to iPods.

Somebody has actually started a business making iPod cases out of duct tape. These cases are colorful and durable and certainly make a fashion statement. At $16.00 each, this may be the most income ever derived from a single roll of duct tape.

Here’s how the Digital Music Weblog described these fashion accessories:

“The cases themselves are everything you’d expect from such a fun-loving company: bright colors, eye-catching, target-like designs, clear plastic windows to protect screens, the right holes for cords, and a touch wheel that works even through the case.”

They must have made a lot of these cases, because they had enough tape scraps to decorate a car:

As for that Yahoo survey, like I said, it wasn’t exactly scientific. They had a total of nine responses.

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.