Iris Window Films

January 29, 2008

can't get any of their webpages to come up (iris). nothing through here, nothing through Google.

oh well... take it as a sign. no cheap crappy tint for cleancutter I guess.

January 29, 2008

http://www.irisfilm.tw/about.asp

This one worked for me :rollin

January 29, 2008

Wow, danged if you do and danged if you dont. Tough call for us tinters :rollin

January 29, 2008

:rollin Hello everyone! Thanks so much for all of the comments.

About FTI, we are not aware if they were having any quality problems, but they were for sure having some kind of financial problems as we were informed, and a Llumar employee once informed us about the retirement funds at the SEMA show, and that was probably one of the reasons that brought down FTI. Here is the news alert from Window Film Magazine: (Underlined paragraphs)

FTI Closes Its Doors

After more than 30 years in the window film business, Film Technologies International Inc. (FTI) of St. Petersburg, Fla., has ceased manufacturing and shipping film. Company officials have confirmed that Wednesday, January 16, was the manufacturer’s last day of operations.

“I’ve been faced with releasing all of our employees,” a company representative who asked to remain anonymous told Window Film. “This was very unexpected.”

According to the FTI employee, the company had signed a letter of intent to sell to fellow window film manufacturer—HanitaTEK in New Berlin, Wis. An FTI representative says HanitaTEK later pulled out of the deal, prompting the company’s immediate closure.

“… they pulled out at the last minute and we just could not revive anything … or any other options,” FTI’s representative told Window Film. “We’re still kind of reeling from this …”

When asked if his company had entered into negotiations with FTI, Lloyd Brown, president of HanitaTEK refrained from specific comment.

“I mean, I think at the end of the day, every company that’s struggling and getting to the point of going out of business tries to explore every option,” Brown said. “But it wouldn’t be appropriate for me to give any particulars of that.”

“That’s a shame,” Brown added. “SUN-GARD is a brand that’s been out there for a long time and it’s too bad to see it disappear.”

FTI was founded in 1975 as ITD Industries. It was an emotional day as the company notified its employees, many with as much as 25 years in service, of its decision.

Some employees had been released on furlough prior to the recent holiday season and received the unfortunate news by phone.

“It was awful,” the representative said. “It was the worse professional day of my life. Just awful, awful, awful, awful. That’s all I can tell you.”

The representative says it was an emotional farewell as the manufacturer notified its many long-time distributors.

“I mean, SUN-GARD has some very, very long, old-time distributors and, you know, people’s lives have been torn apart,” the representative said. “We had a very, very loyal population … we recently distributed service awards at the Christmas luncheon and … we gave out two awards for 20 years of service, one for 25 and many for 15 … and … so, a lot of, lot of, lot of pain yesterday and a lot of tears.”

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Many people (and I can see that CleanCutter still feels this way) believes that things made in Asia, or low-priced products, must be bad. I can understand and I also agree 100%. However, all I'm asking, is to give us a chance and have a look at our product's quality first, before any judgements are made. It is not our fault that we are able to keep our prices low... I mean, if we start to quote US$ 2,000.00 per roll of 60" x 100', will you start to think that our film is the best quality in the world? I really don't think so...

We do have some customers that are major US film manufacturers. We do OEM projects for them, print logos on the film, and packed the films using their very own boxes. It is funny when the same film is packed in the names of very famous brands, are being judged as good films, while packed as our not-famous-name boxes or even blank boxes are being judged as cheap films... :rollin

We were at the AGS (American Glass Showcase) in May of 2007, Las Vegas, and the window tint champion of 2006 (I think it was a competition held at the SEMA show) came to our booth and asked me if he can have some films and that he wanted to do a tint show in a couple of minutes. Of course I offered a small roll of sample that I had at the moment. I had to stay at the booth while he tint a car, but he came back and told me that our films are "pretty good" as his exact words, and offered that we can always send him new products for him to do tests for us. :lol

I'm not sure if he would want me to mention his name here, but if anyone knows him, you may ask him directly also.

Lastly, we have received this question very often: "If you really have been around for over 20 years, then why haven't we heard about you?"

The name of IRISFILM was established only 4.5 years ago. We sold most of our films within Taiwan, and never really had a lot of experiences to do exports, trading companies do that for us. I have to be honest but in the first couple of years, our product really sucked back then. My boss once told me that the color fades within a week, very scary...

Until 5~6 years ago, we started to receive inquiries from a few major manufacturers from the US, Korea, and Japan. Most of them would buy master rolls of 750~1,000 meters from us, and they will re-pack in their own warehouses. This is when our management team believes that we are ready to do export by ourselves, and thus established the name of IRISFILM. Before IRISFILM was established, we were known as Top Colour Films Ltd., many people knew Top Colour but don't know that we are the same company. Our film really sucked before, and we have improved and hope to start new, by establishing IRISFILM, so that people will be willing to give us a chance and try our products again. :rollin

:shock

TintWizard · January 29, 2008

THanks for your being upfront and honest about the history of your product. :rollin

I guess the best I can say for your company is hopefully you'll get some good feedback in the yrs to come about the longevity of your product in terms of fading , discolouring , adhesive failure for in my opinion..that means almost everything :rollin

January 29, 2008

Hello everyone! Thanks so much for all of the comments.
We do have some customers that are major US film manufacturers. We do OEM projects for them, print logos on the film, and packed the films using their very own boxes. It is funny when the same film is packed in the names of very famous brands, are being judged as good films, while packed as our not-famous-name boxes or even blank boxes are being judged as cheap films...

Oh please....do tell :rollin

January 29, 2008

THanks for your being upfront and honest about the history of your product.
I guess the best I can say for your company is hopefully you'll get some good feedback in the yrs to come about the longevity of your product in terms of fading , discolouring , adhesive failure for in my opinion..that means almost everything

Thank you so much! We are now using some nano tech materials (from Sumitomo, Japan) for some of our product lines, and now we are able to provide color-stable warranties upto 10 years. Our warranty policy is not posted yet in our website because this is still very new to us, and since there is no way for us to control how the films are to be applied for each and every installer, it is hard to judge if the problem is really on the film and not installation mistakes, but color alone, we are now very confident on that!

:rollin

January 29, 2008

Oh please....do tell

I"m so sorry, I know this sounds stupid and hard for many to believe me, but we have confidential contracts for all OEM/ODM projects, I really can't tell... otherwise we would post them on our website, I mean, this is a very good tool for marketing!

:rollin

January 29, 2008

I"m so sorry, I know this sounds stupid and hard for many to believe me, but we have confidential contracts for all OEM/ODM projects, I really can't tell... otherwise we would post them on our website, I mean, this is a very good tool for marketing!

:rollin at you and me

January 29, 2008

Answer to the question if it was up to me to fix it, I would start @ the dealer level working my way up to the mfg.
I think most (if not all) agree you get what you pay for (quality speaking) So there is a reason that a few mfg. are higher priced than others. I am and always have been a firm believer in you have to spend money to make money, so the dealers that are crying about the cost of film, waaaa cry me a river, alot of those same dealers are the same ones buying the "import" films, thus driving the tint market into the ground, QUIT buying from all the "cheapo" mfg. and buy from the ones that have been in the game (since close to the begning), not the new ones popping up over night.

Now onto the mfg. level, Quit giving out corperate cards so that every drunk you've got can go charge whatever you want, I understand that film prices vary with oil prices, but prehaps some of the mfg. could do what the airlines do and "bet" on the oil prices, to buy @ current levels, (similar to how I believe Southwest Airlines did)then if the price goes up, well guess what, we've got a contract good for X amount of years, IMO that would help to level some prices out, then onto how to stop them from selling to everyone and their cousins - brothers - aunts - babys mamas - sister, Set up some sort of pricing structure (buy ins) you want to only sell our cheap 3 yr films OK, you don't get sample sheets, or pricing for the higher end films, a certain mfg, that I know of has something like that on their FG line, I know it's followed CLOSELY out here in AZ, but can't speak for the rest of the country, there is a LIST of things you need to do/be a part of/ have in order to get into the higher end films (FG). IT IS A GREAT SYSTEM, keeps ALOT of hacks from geting into it just because of the initial investment needed to have access to it.

I agree with "you get what you pay for". But, purses for example, Chanel, Louis Vuitton, Christian Dior...etc. are really over charged. I know these are very well known world-class brands, and they do spend a lot of money on the branding and hiring celebraties for commercials, marketing, and etc... But, there are also lots and lots of no-brand but same good quality purses in the market and also loved by many people. These all have to do with "brands". There are many choices in the market, some people don't mind spend some more on good-brand stuffs; but some people, I would say most people, would rather choose less expensive bags yet also lasts quite a long time. Most of these brands also give a good amount of years of warranty, but when you do bring the products back to fix something, the services are not free. So, I think the question should be, is it really worth it?

This is why we are not so insist on selling our products with "IRISFILM" printed every where, instead we help some of our customers on their branding. Our goal is to make a profit, but also to let our customers make money with our products, and this ensures long-term business relationship, and benefits both parties.

Cost-down is also a very important thing for us, in order to be competitive. We buy our polyester base films from Formosa Plastic (also known as Nan Ya Plastic). Yes, the prices of all of the materials we use do go up and down with oil prices, but we CANNOT buy a large amount at current price for the following reasons:

1) Formosa is the only manufacturer we buy polyesters from. Their biggest market for polyesters is food wraping and packing industry. We have to pay them cash, in advance, and hope that they will send us enough films to use. Not that they are hard to do business with, but their monthly production amount is never enough for the market needs.

2) Even if Formosa is able to give us whatever amount we ask for, but the polyesters cannot be stored. We only use freshly made materials. If there is a quality problem, we need to inform them within 30 working days after receipt of goods, unfortunately we need to use them in order to see if there is any problems.

3) Formosa do not sign price contracts for X amount of years. Unfortunately Taiwan do not have oil, we must purchase from other countries, and we will never know what the price will be tomorrow. In the case of Southwest Airlines, in my personal opinion, the fuel price they received must have been very precisely calculated, with all risks added. But when the oil prices drop, do the prices for Southwest also go down? Or does Southwest just had to take that chance and buy at contracted prices while all prices are down?

:shock