Patrick de Ville
Labor $aving Devices Inc.
Lakewood, CO
In December 1996, you published several Installer Tips compiled by Dennis Mazaris (see "Find those elusive cables with a periscope," "Use a fishing reel to propel cable across a large room," and "Use a hooked pole to install cable in warehouse with high ceilings," pages 44, 46, and 52, respectively). I was very disappointed by the way Mr. Mazaris went out of his way not to refer to the manufacturer of the WallEye, the Sling-A-Line, and the Grabbit (Labor $aving Devices Inc., in this instance). What`s more, he even suggested the devices could be "home-built," such as in the case of the "N" hook, a copycat of our patented--# 4,514,004--"Ztip."
Since yours is a magazine whose purpose is to advise installers on how to do a better, more efficient job, I would think that you would want to tell them that there are manufacturers whose purpose is very much along the same lines. We do not offer the "Honey" you talked about in your February 1997 editorial (see "A honey of a story," page 3), but just about.
Our company was created 15 years ago because alarm installers were asking Roy Bowling to make for them the devices he had built for himself. He often referred to these devices during his "Installation Techniques" training seminars. Today, Roy is still training installers throughout the country, and we are offering more tools, so these installers can do the right job--efficiently.
The editor replies:
Mr. de Ville makes a good point. Many of the labor-saving devices that are most useful to cabling installers have come from the good ideas of people actually working at the job site. Many of our Installer Tips come from people who have hand-built devices that fill a need in their work, and they naturally want to share what they have done with others. It is also quite natural for companies serving our marketplace to turn some of these ideas into manufactured products. Whenever we are aware that the installer has a choice between hand-built and manufactured devices, we try to inform him or her in the Tip. We are not always aware, however, when one installer?s good idea is someone else?s product. We thank Labor $aving Devices Inc. for setting the record straight on some of the devices we?ve written up recently.