Has Orca Coatings changed?

[smitch6]

my mugs arrived yesterday from Listawood
they are the orca ones but there's NO stamp on the mug anywhere
but there is a sticker on the box saying orca coatings TM with a cute lil dolphin lol

very well packed and can't see any broken ones which is a bonus, 1st box of mugs i've ever had that weren't broken so hopefully they'll all be ok
am yet to print one though hopefully they'll be top notch

[JSR]

Hmm, unstamped and with just a sticker on the box? How sure are we that these really *are* Orca mugs?

Maybe Listawood describe them as "hand wash only" because they're just cheap Chinese imports with some unknown coating that Listawood purports is Orca to get us to buy them?

I'll be staying with mugs that I know for sure are Orca-coated (i.e. stamped ones).

Re: packing. When I buy them from Revolution, they're in boxes of two layers of 18 mugs - rather than the usual 3x12. The boxes are extra thick and the separations inside are extra thick. Never had a problem with them being damaged (unlike non-Orca mugs in the 3x12 packing that's often quite flimsy).

[AdamB]

Ummmmmmmmmmmm - this is interesting......

Is there any way of making sure that the mugs Steve had 'are' Orca mugs?

[Andrew]

I guess there is no way of being 100% but no one questions RN or any other coating. I don't see the benefit in claiming something is Orca when the name is not that well established. Having the sticker on the box has been the standard thing for a couple of years. The mugs were also originally stickered on the bottom rather than printed but blanks are now and then about due to preference.

[JSR]

I don't see the benefit in claiming something is Orca when the name is not that well established.

Well, let me postulate a theory.

Let's say company A sees competition for their own-brand product by an up and coming popular alternative from company B. Let's say they want to improve the standing of their own product by dismissing company B's product as inferior. Let's say that they then buy in company C's inferior product and slap company B's label on the box in order to support their claim that "Company B's product is inferior, so buy our product instead". Now everyone who buys company C's product from company A (believing it to be company B's product) will conclude that all products marked "company B" must be inferior - and so they all buy company A's product instead. Job done - reputation of company B killed, sales of all resellers of company B's product plummet, and company A sees sales of their own product sky-rocket.

Purely and utterly hypothetical, of course, as I'm sure no one would even dream of doing that - but it does answer the question of what the benefit of doing this.

I don't believe that anyone would even contemplate doing this, of course. It's not what nice, normal, civilised people do in the civilised and sensible world...

...but I'm still sticking with mugs that are stamped.

[Matt Quinn]

Who said the business world was sensible??? :rolleyes: I'll have been in business 25 years come October and could write a book on the stunts people try to pull!

It would be pretty serious for them though if Trading Standards were alerted to a possible scam of this type and looked into it. :biggrin:

A TSO from one part of the country could place an order in their own name... Pass the goods on to their colleague in another area... They check with the original manufacturer/importer... You'd be ASTONISHED at the lab facilities TSOs have access to... And how well they network... :biggrin:

[Andrew]

I think I'll have to read that a few times to get my head around it

Listawood have annoyed you doing that I take it. I thought it was a slick move myself.

[smitch6]

ok so anyway lol
is there a way to check that i have defo got orca mugs?
are they slightly straighter than RN or the same?

i've looked all over a couple and can see NO blemishes like you get with the RN that i hated

[Andrew]

You can have the Orca coating on a different mug from what someone else has an Orca coating on. That's generally down to the importers choice. Some might try to save extra cost by insisting on a cheaper mug. One thing you should notice with the Orca coating on and which will be a good indicator is that they will be whiter than RN/Rhino coatings. This should be noticeable depending on which previous mugs you had. A whitener is added to the sublimation coating during the spraying process.

[smitch6]

i've got 1 coralgraph and 1 lovecut mug here and they don't look alot dif in colour tbh