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| Photo Courtesy of the National Hardware Show |
My favorite thing about the National Hardware Show is the
display of pure ingenuity. You have to
really comb the aisles to find it sometimes – it’s kind of like a treasure
hunt. My favorite thing about doing the
NHS as press, is that I am free to seek out any and everything. During the decade that I spent as an
exhibitor, I either only saw the products visible from our booth or was limited
to seeking out the booths of our competitors.
I did get to accept a couple of
Popular Mechanics Editors Choice awards during my
tenure – those ceremonies were pretty much the extent of my exposure to
innovative products outside of paint sprayers and air compressors.
Now, our team always checks out the household names –
rekindle those relationships and find out what’s new; but we probably spend
more time looking at what those folks that you’ve never heard of have to
offer. A good example is Stilletto®. They make an absolutely fierce hammer that is
likely outside the budget of the standard Hands On Woman toolbox, but you gotta
hear this
story. This kind of stuff is why I will always love
the tool business. Anyway, here’s a
quick look at a few things that stood out for one reason or another. Believe me, it doesn’t scratch the surface,
but it does provides a taste.
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| Photo Courtesy of Opticwash |
Enter the first thing that really tickled me at the 2012
NHS. It has absolutely nothing to do
with any of the categories that we cover, but in the spirit of things to make
life as nuisance-free as possible, this is the coolest.
Opticwash™
is looking to have the first kiosks hit the streets this fall. The idea is to have kiosks in areas like
airports, shopping centers, etc. and for a buck - get your glasses
cleaned. I’d love to see them pop up in
schools and whatnot. You can go online
and load up an account so that anytime you can avail yourself of this service,
all you have to do is punch in a code. I
personally had perfect vision until I hit 45.
Since then, reading glasses have become such a necessity that I keep a
pair everywhere, there’s like 20 pairs scattered in different locations
throughout Nash Vegas. Since I’m not
used to having to deal with the concept of what it means to need glasses, I do
terrible things to mine. Half the time
they are really so dirty that it’s amazing that I can read anything through
them. Thus, I will definitely be using
this service – the contraption not only gets glasses startlingly clean, but it
sanitizes as well. It could be my
imagination, but I could swear that my glasses actually stayed clean
longer. It’s not like we’re going to get
an opticwash™
installed in the office – so this is really our review of this product – be on
the lookout in the fall of 2012.
The next product that made me stop and go “Oooooh” was some
folding outdoor furniture by Cosco. It’s
nice looking patio furniture with the ability to fold up into small footprint
pieces and really intrigues me. I don’t
know how well it holds up, how practical it is for the price or how comfortable
over a reasonable period of time it is.
Rest assured I’m interested enough that there is an in-depth review from
us in this product’s future. We were
never able to connect with the right marketing person at the show, nor have we
been able to find any press releases on the furniture, so the digging begins –
stay tuned.
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| Photo Courtesy of Mladen Lijesnic |
A slightly comical exchange during lunch provided exposure
to a darned clever product that we would probably have missed altogether. We were sitting outside the convention center
on a bench near an ashtray. I am sorry
to say that I smoke (hope to review a smoking cessation program at some
point). A gentleman with a really nifty
accent asked if we could make room for his butt. Now Brad thought that he meant that he wanted
to use the ashtray, but he corrected this notion by pointing out that he meant
his butt – literally. Well, this
interchange couldn’t help but spark lively conversation, during which we
discovered that our new friend was an inventor from Bosnia, no less, with a
truly nifty little product. Check out the
video. Mladen was sweet enough to give us a handful
of these little buggers, and with me getting ready to tackle a variety of
organizational projects, we should be able to deliver a very comprehensive
review of the 4LTX Bracket.
When we went to check out Mladin’s booth to shoot our little
video, his booth neighbor Efraim Shapiro introduced us to his little gem. In the three weeks since our return from the
NHS, I can honestly say that I have found myself in need of this very gizmo at
least 10 times. The
3D Ruler is one of those tools that
while I couldn’t think of very many uses for it at the time, realized that it
would be wicked helpful for the uses pointed out by the inventor and have come
across a myriad of uses for it now that I know such a thing exists. I’m especially going to try to identify tools
that this could replace, in addition to solving the problem that led to its
creation. This could very well end up
being a recommended starter tool box item.
Re-capping is so hard, because there is just so much to
see. We filmed a few things – the list
of videos is below – and we identified a bunch of products that merit a deeper
look. Since the article would just go on
forever, I want to close this re-cap by mentioning one last company. The
Worx®
product showed us how wonderful cordless yard tools can be. The first season that we used their products
to develop a review, they honestly made yard work a pleasure. Unfortunately, subsequently identifying that
two seasons may be all the satisfactory performance that you can expect,
created the need to find a better mousetrap.
Our resulting skepticism on the category has been made intractable and
no less so with the glut of these products from a variety of brands of
late. We stumbled upon
greenworks™, a company that talks the
right talk, and their V.P. of Marketing, Carol Rice really brought the company
across as very much our kind of manufacturer.
We will be obtaining a variety of their tools for review. Not to be burned again – we’ll likely do
progress reports with a final review in the midst of season 2. Our method may seem odd, but I don’t know
about you – it should be a given for a product to work the first time, it’s how
does it work every time and for how long that matter to me. We all work hard for our money and by golly
we deserve to get what we pay for!
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| Photo Courtesy of the National Hardware Show |
The products that we captured at this year’s show all
presented something unique, but there were many more that we’ll be checking out
over the next year. Our thanks to Reed
Expositions®
for making the
National
Hardware Show such a press friendly event, and all of the exhibitors for
taking the time between meetings with buyers to satisfy our curiosity.
H.O.W. TV 2012 National Hardware Show Spots
* All trademarks referenced in this article are the property of their respective owners.
Now, our team always checks out the household names –
rekindle those relationships and find out what’s new; but we probably spend
more time looking at what those folks that you’ve never heard of have to
offer. A good example is Stilletto®. They make an absolutely fierce hammer that is
likely outside the budget of the standard Hands On Woman toolbox, but you gotta
hear this story. This kind of stuff is why I will always love
the tool business. Anyway, here’s a
quick look at a few things that stood out for one reason or another. Believe me, it doesn’t scratch the surface,
but it does provides a taste. 
