Rich
My name is Ed Gilmartin. I work for Calorique, the inventors of thin film radiant heat that manufactures Flexwatt heat tape. When you decided to switch recently to another product we decided we needed to take a look at our reptile business. Although it has only been a few million in revenue thus far we realize their is much more business to be gained from this industry. You are correct that we have treated the reptile heat tape as an afterthought. No one at Calorique comes from the reptile industry and fully understood the portential of this market. Your community are very passionate about it and that is not something we could match. We are now also aware that we are overpriced just as you said. That is why we are now looking for someone from your industry to spear head this product growth and will be manufacturing packaged finished mats that we see on the large websites from a foreign manufacturer. We fully understand that you win some business and lose some over the years and have no hard feelings about you switching but I do have to correct the misleading statements in you post. We are a much bigger company with many different products so we don't want any false statements out there.
1) we use a tin plated copper with a conductive silver buss under the copper. Yes we could use a cheaper copper with out the silver buss but will not risk the product burning out to make a few extra dollars.
2)our product is the most consistent on the market. We invented thin film radiant heat in 1980 and have original installs running flawlessly since then. The fluctuation on our product is +- 3% not 5% as you stated. We got a sample of the THG heat tape and in just over a week it dropped 16%. That is very concerning. Korean companies trying to imitate our technology have been coming and going for the last few years. They cannot get our ink mix correct. It is something we guard tightly. This is done using our state of the art proprietary software that monitors the ink at 10,000 images per second. If it spots a slight imperfection the roll is discarded immediately. We will not cut corners on safety and product reliability.
3)in the US we have tight regulations and Calorique is an ISO9000 certified company. We are the only company with a UL listed radiant heat film. Both THG and Flexwatt heat tape are UL component listed not a full listing. The reason we are UL listed for radiant heat film is because we get rigorous audits by UL in our plant.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6FriXv_2wUA
This is a link to our manufacturing facility that was recently featured on national television here in the US. I told Dave when he called us that he shouldn't be using the term sweatshop because there is no way of knowing who they actually are. The website has no address or any information except pricing so he would have no way of knowing where and how it is manufactured. It is not a fair statement to make when you don't know who the company is and how long they have been in business etc.
4)we use a number of different sub straights for our products. The ink reacts different in select thickness' of laminate. We use only the best laminate for that watt density. Further more we use only virgin material and never use low quality or reused laminates. We've never had a complaint about the laminate in 30+ years. The claim that the roll is unusable at the end is incorrect. That is something we do before the roll is packaged. No manufacturer should be throwing a whole roll into the market and should trim the "dead ends" that are of no use. Our proprietary software tells us exactly where to cut.
5)Calorique uses only the USA supply chain. Nothing in our product is made anywhere but the USA. I thought you would be aware of this and would like to know where you go the information that we use Chinese material. This is something that is of the utmost importance to us. We are a proud manufacturer in the USA and want to correct anyone who says anything different. We are 100% manufactured in the USA!
6)I commend the new ownership of Calorique. They saw a unique opportunity to keep a manufacturer right here in the USA and invested into it. They have hired close to 10 new people that are highly specialized in thin film and ink technology and plan to add additional equipment. They have staved off offers from government officials in china to keep the plant right here in the USA. I do remember once having to hold off a few days on printing the reptile heat tape to do an overly large order for military targets for the US military.
In another note we can and have tested a similar connector to the new connection system you have. This was done a few years back. We have a lot of different connections depending on the environment it will be going into for all our products. The result was that since the only connection to the buss was the thin edge of the punched area there was too high a risk of arching. We are working on addressing this as it hasn't happened with our tin plated copper with silver buss bar.
Unfortunately we had to address your concerns in this way as opposed to meeting and getting feedback. We were unaware that anything was broken and now that we know that pricing and understanding of the reptile industry is a must we are working on new finished mats and lower costing product. There is more than enough business out there for both of us and we are fully aware that it usually takes around three years to get a distributor back when they have switched to a Korean product. Since losing you as a distributor we have been making contacts in the reptile industry to hire someone. Each and every one of them know your company and speak very highly of you. With our new push in the reptile industry we will be crossing paths regularly and we can enjoy a good working relationship. If you have any questions that you would like to clear up feel free to reach me in the office or at e.gilmartin@calorique.com. If you had any info on the manufacturer of the THG heat tape (address, name, manufacturers website etc) I will be more than happy to post a positive comment disagreeing with the sweatshop comment.
Thanks Rich
Thank you
Ed Gilmartin
National Sales Manager
Calorique LLC
646-369-2527
e.gilmartin@calorique.com
www.calorique.com
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