GoodBuyGuys Blog

As the raw material in batteries continues to increase in price, we feel real pressure to try and save customers some money. We’ve steadily watched the cost of alkaline batteries increase, so I like to test non-name brand competition whenever I can.

I’m sitting and staring at two glowing flashlights on my desk as I write this blog-one flashlight is using a couple of Duracell Procell AA batteries and an identical light contains a fresh pair of AA from a company called Permalife.

Unfortunately,it looks like the “Permalife” is going to be considerably less than “Permanent”. It’s already starting to dim.

We were excited when we got pricing information about the Permalife brand, as these batteries had real potential to save our customers some money. The savings evaporate in a hurry if it takes three or four batteries to match the performance of one ProCell.

It’s bad when a flashlight fails in use, but you usually get some warning. It gradually fades out rather than failing all at once. A wireless microphone is very different. Once its voltage in the transmitter falls below a certain point, the receiver becomes vulnerable to all sorts of outside interference. This can be disasterous or funny. Usually the former. Rarely the latter.

As the sun sets on this blog, the Permalife-equpped flashlight fades to black and our quest for a good no name battery continues. If we ever find one, I’ll let you 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 source for honest battery information.

Proctor and Gamble has made a major move towards confirming rumors about the sale of its Duracell division with the announcement that The Blackstone Group has been retained to advise it on finding a buyer. The Duracell brand generates  over $2 billion in annual battery sales, so this is a very big deal. The sale price may reach as high as $7 billion dollars.

While Duracell remains healthy, it apparently is not generating the sort of growth numbers that P&G expects to see. It has been clear from the point of view of distributors that P&G did not meet the same standards for dealer support that had been provided by Gillette when they owned the brand. It will be interesting to see if a new owner can improve product delivery.

P&G has owned the ProCell brand for well over a year, yet there is still no reference to the product on their own web site. Not even a link directly to the duracell.com/procell web site. A “brand” search at the P&G website doesn’t even acknowledge the Procell brand.

The Blackstone Group is an international leader in the area of mergers and acquisitions, so the public announcement that they are involved in this project means that a change is inevitable. Check back here regularly for updates.

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 a great source for entertainment industry news too!

I have written before about counterfeit Duracell batteries, but I had no idea how big the problem really was.

Gillette, the division of Proctor & Gamble that makes Duracell Procell batteries is involved in a daily struggle around the world to try and keep these products off the market. It’s a daunting task. Gillette reported recently that in a span of only one week they seized 1,000,000 counterfeit batteries in two provinces of China. In addition, they also found hundreds of thousands of razors and tooth brushes made with their brand names.

The problem with batteries is particularly vexing, as the problem of lost revenue is just the beginning. The safety concerns over unstable battery chemistry and the potential damage that can be done to the device in which the battery is used make it difficult to know the real cost of this problem.

The blog posting that referenced Gillette’s battle against counterfeit batteries made an interesting point that I had never considered. That is that the international sale of counerfeit goods is at least partially run by organized crime and terrorist organizations that are able to raise money through these sales. Apparently there have been seized Al Qaeda training manuals that recommend the sale of counterfeit merchandise as a funding source.

Our Duracell Procell products come directly from the manufacturer and we stand behind them with a “Satisfaction Guaranteed” promise.

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 microphone accessory and battery needs.

After working on it for almost a year, last summer we were finally able to get a dealership for MagLites. I have enjoyed using these flashlights for years (every stagehand has one) and I was confident that the would be a big seller. I assumed (obviously incorrectly) that lots of our customers would be familiar with this line of flashlights and if our prices were competitive and our selection was good, they would sell.

We registered the web site, buymaglite.com, built a good e-commerce and information site, linked to goodbuyguys.com and waited for the orders to roll in.

Nothing!

We can’t give them away. Our offer on flashlights is always “batteries included“, we were never “out of stock” (I wish!), and the other sites affiliated with goodbuyguys.com were generating lots of traffic and lots of sales.

The quality of a Maglite has never been in dispute and the company does lots of national advertising to support the brand. These flashlights are durable, bright, and have a great warranty.

After several months of working on the web site, it scores well with major search engines, so it seems that buymaglite.com should be easy to find if someone actually wanted to “buy a Maglite”.

We’ll keep working on the site, but this problem is a real mystery to me.

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 flashlight and battery needs.

You don’t usually think of car batteries as expendables, but it looks like that is changing. An interesting article in this weeks Wall Street Journal talks about how the demands of today’s electronic-laden cars are taking a real toll on their batteries. A car battery has traditionally lasted 3-5 years but the addition of power sapping devices like DVD players, GPS systems, heated cup holders and security systems has radically altered the life of these batteries.

The design of the auto battery is little changed in decades and what we ask these batteries to do was never imagined 10 years ago. It used to be that about the only thing that used power when the car was shut off was the clock. Now all sorts of items from the cooling fan to your cell phone charger continue to use power long after the car has been parked.

Experts in battery maintenance recommend that the battery be disconnected when the vehicle is parked for more than a couple of weeks. Better yet, use a device called a “trickle charger” to keep the battery charged up even when the car is not being used. These same experts warn that the biggest threats to battery life, extreme weather and harsh vibtration,can’t be avoided.

With the cost of a replacement battery sometimes exceeding $200.oo a little thought given to battery mainteance can go a long way.

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 maintenance supplies

Daylight savings time starts this weekend. The clock is being set forward three weeks earlier this year and some confusion is probably in order.

One thing you don’t want to be confused about is the need to change your smoke detector battery. Using the time change as a reminder to change these batteries twice a year is a great idea, and the date change doesn’t diminish the need to attend to this important task. It takes just a minute and its easy to do.

Lots of new residential construction uses hard wired smoke detectors and some homeowners don’t realize that these detectors need battery changes too! The battery provides a backup in case there is a power failure. Quite often an electrical fire can lead to a quick shutdown of your electrical service, leaving the smoke detector without a fresh battery useless. Just because the LED indicator on the smoke detector is glowing doesn’t mean that the battery is good.

A battery that is no longer adequate for your smoke detector may still have enough power to use in other non-critical applications. Try it in some other device before throwing it away.

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 hard to find products.

One of the unfortunate aspects of expendable sales, is they create a lot of waste. Batteries are an important part of modern day life, but it does present a waste issue. Even recycleable batteries must be disposed of once they have expired.

The Rechargeable Battery Recycling Corporation (RBRC) is in the business of recycling recharageable batteries and cell phones. Rechargeable batteries are commonly found in cordless power tools, cellular and cordless phones, laptop computers, camcorders, digital cameras, and remote control toys. The mission of the RBRC is to keep these batteries out of the solid waste stream while preserving natural resources. When you see a battery recycling bin in a retailer like Radio Shack or Circuit City, it is probably a part of the RBRC network. Participating retailers display this seal.

The rechargeable batteries that RBRC collects are sent to a state-of-the-art facility where they are recycled to reclaim reusable materials that are used in stainless steel production (nickel and iron) and to make new batteries (cadmium). This organization collects cell phones as well, and refurbishes them or recycles the material in an environmentally sound manner.

If you would like to sign up your organization to participate in the RBRC recycling network, here’s a link to the sign up page.

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.

Matsushita, a Japanese consumer electronics company (you probably know them better as Panasonic) has come up with a clever solution to an age old flashlight dilemma.

Here’s the problem. You always have a flashlight around the house, and you always have batteries. But, when the power goes out, the batteries you have are always the wrong size for the flashlight with the dead batteries.

Matsushita has the solution. They have won an Industrial Design Excellence Award for a flashlight that will use three different sizes of batteries. Imagine being able to rob the remote control or your CD player when the lights go out. The Matsushita National BF-104

will use C cells, D cells, or AA cells. When one size runs down or is unavailable, just turn the switch and you have access to a whole new power source.

The National BF-104 flashlight is only $8.00 and is available directly from the company. Too bad the web site is in Japanese!

Seen a good (or bad) flashlight idea? 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 get lots of pitches from manufacturers of the types of products we sell, hopingthat we will consider offering their product at our web sites. Our profile online is pretty high, so a lot of sales people find us.

We just recently added flashlights to our product offerings, and a number of interesting products have recently crossed my desk.

Evaluating these products inevitably led to the question “what makes a good flashlight?”. After years of no real changes in the incandescent lamp/alkaline battery combination, we have recently seen a number of innovations in flashlight design. Some are great, but others won’t be with us for long.

Most of the recent samples I have seen use the new LED lamp technology. The cost of LEDs has continued to go down even as their brightness has increased.

LCD flashlights offer longer battery life, longer lived, more durable lamps and the potential for decreased weight. Even with all these potential advantages, some manufacturers just don’t seem to be able to get it right.

The most recent example comes from Energizer-their Hardcase Line. For starters, there was more plastic in the package than there was in the

flashlight. No exaggeration. It was heavy plastic too. The kind that costs real money. The flashlight was attached to the package with 50 lb. wire ties, so I had to have wire cutters just to get it loose from its holder. Two strikes against them, and I hadn’t even held the thing yet.

The package included two batteries (Energizer, of course) which were supposed to clip into two separate holders on the package. They had come loose in transit and were rolling around in the bottom of the box.

Ok. Now it was time to put in the batteries. It only took three of us about ten minutes to figure this one out. Maybe its just me, but I don’t believe that most people expect square-shaped fittings to be threaded. The packaging had no information regarding how to install the batteries and the cap on the back of the body of the flashlight was square. It just didn not appear like a screw-off fitting.

Once the batteries were in, we turned the light on and it did have pretty good brightness. However, Energizer, the maker of

the batteries, claims right on the package the this flashlight has a run time of 17 hours. This is terrible. The

LED flashlight we have been selling for a couple of years will run continuous 7 days on one set of batteries.

Finally, the flashlight had a couple of totally useless brushed metal plates on the side, held in place with steel hex head

screws. These add weight, but must be very expensive, and I can see no way that they would actually add durability to the flashlight.

Back to the drawing board, Energizer!

Next time, I will discuss what makes a good flashlight worth the cost.