Sawgrass staff perception

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Found a review site where staff can post reviews of employers. There are 8 reviews of Sawgrass
http://www.glassdoor.co.uk/Reviews/Sawg ... 286219.htm

interesting thing that stood out for me:

The low opinions many sublimators have of Sawgrass and their way of doing business is mirrored by their staff
That the splitting into consumer and industrial caused internal politics problems - we see this as users in Industrial viewing 24" as wide format, but consumer say only 42"
Staff admitting that the '907 sublimation patent was coming to an end/had ended (Sept 2014) and that is what they relied on as a company

[Justin]

Very interesting Tim. I've actually arranged to go and see them next week as I have some major concerns. I have been wondering about the patent and the introduction of the new printer. I was informed by a previous Manager that there were many patents backing this up but believe this may not be the case. Again I will be inviting them on to the forum to help the members that they have had in a strangle hold for so long.

[spongerobinson]

That is interesting reading alright.

Justin, weren't sawgrass members on here before? I seem to remember Barbara posting on one of my threads in the past.

Sent from my GT-I9300 using Tapatalk

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They have lots of patents, but only one that I can see slightly related to the type of sublimation we do, but this is the '907 patent, the one which all the legal battles of the past were fought over between Sawgrass and some big industrial/chemical company and some smaller ones too, and all of them were settled out of court. The '907 patent ended in Sept last year. In reading through the patent documents and court notes etc, the '907 patent was for a formulation of sublimation ink which could be used in bubble jet printers so that the ink was protected from the heat used to boil the ink in the print head. After they developed and patented this, Epson brought out their piezo headed printers, which rendered Sawgrass' innovation pointless. What they developed was innovative and deserved a patent, but it doesn't apply to the type of printers that are mostly used for sublimation today, so in a way the '907 patent coming to an end was a moot point as it didn't apply in scope to the inks we use now anyway. It seems most likely that Sawgrass wanted to monopolise the market so used spin and bully-like/protection racket tactics and behaviour to force everyone into using their ink, and believing that the patent was something that it's not. If this is the case, and they have been lying all these years to protect their market, then they aren't going to change tact now and admit the truth, so they can come on the forum if they want and say what they want, but I'm going to take a LOT of convincing that anything they say is true.
Aside from all this, we've been happily not using Sawgrass inks since 2011 and got better colours and less printing problems when we moved away from their products. (You've had lots of problems with your new wide format printer Justin using their inks, maybe you need to ditch them and move away from their cartel too?!)

[Justin]

That is interesting reading alright.

Justin, weren't sawgrass members on here before? I seem to remember Barbara posting on one of my threads in the past.

Sent from my GT-I9300 using Tapatalk

You're absolutely right. I was promised they'd get more involved and never did. Barbara has since moved on.

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Barbara has since moved on.

The high staff churn mentioned in the review website - it's never a good sign for a company.

[spongerobinson]

You're absolutely right. I was promised they'd get more involved and never did. Barbara has since moved on.

Says it all really. I don't know how many active members there are on this site, but I do know most of them are using Sawgrass products, and you would think it'd be a great place for a company to get involved at a customer level.

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I don't know how many active members there are on this site, but I do know most of them are using Sawgrass products

There's also a good number who say they are using Sawgrass when they in fact aren't

[spongerobinson]

There's also a good number who say they are using Sawgrass when they in fact aren't

Dunno why anyone would bother saying that. Maybe they are afraid they'll get in trouble for saving themselves a fortune! :rolleyes:

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So much fear instilled by Sawgrass' practice - at the very least you mention that you're using non-Sawgrass ink (in a small printer) and your post either gets edited, or the post/thread deleted. Or you're told you will be taken to court by Sawgrass.

Then there's people saying they have wide format printers just so can discuss the type of inks they are using without being told off.

It really is a ridiculous situation that even this forum is made to toe the line and obey whatever Sawgrass says.