Back to the subject of the post, Notch is particularly interesting to me. It's a house brand, but not. And in an industry which many of the products are life support, they have many of their products made by other industry leaders and not just anyone. Which leads me back to another point about Chinese brands...
THIS is a great way of phrasing my concerns over Sherrill/Treehouse calling out-of-house produced goods "Notch". We ALL, if we care at least, give a damn about the integrity of the company that is
making (not re-selling) the gear we use. I've ZERO issue with Sherrill sourcing things from all over, in fact I LIKE that. It's when they obscure the manufacturer and instead stamp Notch on it that bothers me, as this is clearly a move that makes the average-reader of adverts think that Notch is its own company, when it is not. It leads one to think they can expect a consistent degree of integrity, since they expect Notch is a consistent entity, when in fact it's stamping-brands not producing.
You say "in an industry which many of the products are life-support, they have many of their products made by other industry leaders and not just anyone".....1st, 'most-of'? That, in a sentence with life-support, is a major issue (though I'll grant that you probably just didn't want to use the absolute 'all' w/o being positive so will ignore that one)
But, if the products are being made by "industry leaders" then why not just list it those companies? Surely everyone sees the conflict-of-interest when Sherrill puts out a magazine and places Notch as company alongside others w/o any indication that Notch doesn't have its own facilities.....do Notch products get promoted in a way that's deceptive or do we assume that, sure, they're obfuscating product-origins, but when it comes to promotion they are being 100.0% honest? Nick seems like a great guy, but almost-everyone (and I'm not excluding myself here) is prone to selfishly going after their own incentives, and in a context like this it is VERY easy to imagine how profits could become more important than innovation or even safety- hell just consider the example of Weaver trying to stifle Mumford's innovations so they can have a slightly better edge on their knee-ascenders, it's not surprising/confusing
why they'd do it, but they do it all the same- with Sherrill/Treehouse/Notch there are all the hallmarks of aggressive sales (from Notch being presented as its own entity to having 2 store-fronts for the same enterprise), the only uncertain thing is whether the quality is there which is usually assessed by trust in a brand, with Notch it's trust in...Nick Bonner and nameless people at Sherrill, so far as I can tell. Nick seems a good guy but that doesn't change the fact that products that are supposedly from "industry leaders" are being promoted as-if they were coming from an entity called Notch when it's really just a sub-set of brands in the Sherrill inventory that they're able to stamp Notch on. I know Nick is claiming to be all-over the design of everything, maybe he was for the Portawrap and the Safebloc but it's hard to think that's the case considering the age of the portawrap, and the well documented usage of the THT/Safebloc by Dave before it became a Notch product. Even if I ignored those, and even if I found Nick to be the most-reputable guy ever, I could never buy life-support gear based on 1 guy's promise that he's involved in every part of it, and short of him the entire operation just reeks of for-profit
regardless of what's best for the industry.
This was always an interesting economic paradigm to me, in BMX we were all very very big on only supporting rider-owned brands but in reality it was "rider-owned brands that are doing what they do to advance things, and profit from doing so", because at one point pretty much all BMX brands were started by a biker, but - just like here in arborism and in most niches - some companies get big, the owners get rich and begin to care more about their company than the industry served, these are avoided like the plague by serious bmx'ers and for good reason (may sound silly to you guys but we did things where bad hardware could most-certainly cause massive injury even fatalities, not to the degree of arbor stuff but you are still in the position of trusting your body/your safety to a product, ergo knowing that the producers are for the industry first and profits second is incredibly important) With Notch eager to put their stamp on all these products, with them positioning Notch among other brands (instead of "Notch lineup by Sherrill", I mean I couldn't imagine setting that up w/o acknowledging it and not feel like I was a liar..), it leaves Nick's assurances as the
sole thing that'd make me think Sherrill/Notch/Treehouse(are there more?) is more concerned with the industry than with profit. Profit motive is fine, it's understandable, but it's equally understandable that the users would want to buy from people whose sole concern is the product not their company or profits. It's almost funny in a way because it seems that in many niche industries the companies aren't "one or the other", but in fact tend to just start out "for their hobby/profession" and, once successful in their operations, shift their priorities.
Thanks!!
