Point of Purchase Displays for Sunglasses
Ditto ad infinitum.
Comparisons of products, discussions of advantages and disadvantages,
and of performance,wishes and so on, are all creative contributions
and valid subjects for discussion. Mean spirited malicious criticism
isn't. It is the intention that categorizes the communication, and
the intention always shows.
This juvenile complaining we have been hearing says more about the
complainers than they realize. Nobody who has been in business for
himself and developed a product is likely to have such an ignorant
and arrogant attitude about those who have or are, or about their
difficulties in doing it, because it isn't a thing you wave a magic
wand at and it all comes out right. There is no such thing as total
perfection and no such thing as unlimited resources. There are always
problems to be solved, choices to be made and deadlines to be met or
shoved back when they can't be met adequately; when things aren't
perfect. That's reality, and it is also an indication that they would
rather take more time to deliver a good product than quickly deliver
a flawed one.
Maybe I have learned to be more tolerant because I've been in
business for myself, and have laid my share of eggs. One time, when I
was managing a small factory, we got an order to produce thousands of
revolving Point of Purchase displays for a company that made
sunglasses. The concept called for a departure from our long standing
and time tested method of affixing the little holders for the
glasses, to the panels. We had to glue two dissimilar plastic
materials to each other. Being already familiar with some of the
problems in doing that, I set up tests for several adhesives. We set
those test panels under a combination infra-red heat lamp and an
Ultra Violet source for a week, at temperatures and radiation levels
much higher than they would get in shipping, storage and on the
counters in stores. I dropped them on the concrete floor from a
distance of ten feet. I tossed them out in the snow and let them
freeze there. They got wet, they got dry, they got bounced around.
Then we did it all again, hot and dry, cold and wet, hot and wet,
cold and dry, slam, bash, pull and so on. We found an adhesive that
passed all the tests. As a final test I tore away the pieces from
each other and that broke away the material on one side or the other
but the glue line held ...it was stronger than the materials
themselves.
We made 10,000 displays and shipped them to the client, who installed
them in stores all over the US and Canada. Six or seven months later,
the things fell apart all on their own. The glue line just gave up,
and the little holders fell off. The client was outraged. It was like
"The Man in The White Suit", the old Alec Guiness movie, where he
invented the indestructible textile that turned out to be unstable
over time. It damn near bankrupted us. The next time we had an order
like that, we used old fashioned screws.
That's one of the reasons why I don't get too critical when someone
else doesn't deliver what I would like to see as fast as I want it,
and don't automatically assume that they are stupid or are trying to
cheat me if I don't like their prices and marketing policy. I'll
leave that to morons who for whatever reasons, get something out of
criticizing people smarter and more competent than they are, and who
couldn't come up with a product like GoLive if you gave them ten
lifetimes to do it in.
There are, as I recall Rick the list moderator saying, a thousand of
so people subscribed to this list. Most of them never say anything,
and who can blame them when we allow a handful of jerks to degrade
the tone of the list to their own low standard?
Here's a unique idea I'd like to present ...
This was once the best list on the web. We have allowed a few to
degrade it into something less. How about we get back to helping each
other out doing better web designs with GoLive and leave off all the
whining, snivelling and malicious gossip? Those who disagree, or who
can't control their neurotic impulses to use the list for a personal
platform to criticize their betters, please go away, get yourself a
copy of Dreamweaver or whatever you prefer, and let the rest of us
get back to creative endeavors with GoLive, and helping each other
with web design issues.
... Doug