Low[er] cost gobos

[David Ashton]

At risk of alienating some of our patriotic members ,I have found a Chinese company who make a range of gobos including multi-colour glass ones at a price even I can afford, and they are happy to send anywhere in the world unlike some other companies who only service the US.


∷广州市耀星光学仪器有限公司∷

[icewolf08]

Have you actually purchased templates from them? Is it actually cheaper when you include shipping costs? Are the cuts good?

[TimMiller]

Have you talked to Jands over there? I bet they would know a good source for gobos that is "local" though nothing is too local in Austrailia.

[Footer]

Woo Hoo, now I can get replacement gobos for my Mario3000.

Also, I would just like to throw out there that these gobos are a direct rip off of Apollo, though there could be more then just Apollo. If Apollo won't ship to you, then buy these, but if they can you should not be buying this product.



and Apollo's...



and...





I do however like the upside down Texas. I figured Texas would have declared war on them because of it by now.

Comments Keith?

[David Ashton]

Wow, two window gobos the same, you wouldn't find a Rosco or Lee gobo like that.
No I can't get Apollo gobos here except by going through a US dealer and when I tried last year to get a 3 colour glass gobo made the best price I could get was US$500, which was, I thought, ridiculous.
Strangely this Chinese company doesn't show all their designs on their site because they're concerned about their designs being copied.
If you live in the US and you're happy with the products you're getting, that's great, for you, not much value if you live in the rest of the world.
I am not giving a recommendation, yet, of their gear, but I am getting some samples over, with custom gobos $50 each and $3 copy and 3 colour $130 and $20 a copy, I'd be a fool not to try them.

[TimMiller]

Here in tx, i am paying around 90 for the first metal gobo, and around 7 i think for the copies. Over in louisiana, we have been having problems of no dealer close by for lots of things, the closest dealer was here in houston, so over there we became a dealer. There problem fixed. Maybe you could become an apollo or rosco dealer. The company i work with over in louisiana is a rosco, elation, american dj, and trying to become a clay paky dealer.

[Kelite]

Woo Hoo, now I can get replacement gobos for my Mario3000.

Also, I would just like to throw out there that these gobos are a direct rip off of Apollo, though there could be more then just Apollo. If Apollo won't ship to you, then buy these, but if they can you should not be buying this product.



and Apollo's...



and...





I do however like the upside down Texas. I figured Texas would have declared war on them because of it by now.

Comments Keith?

Hi guys, yes another Asian manufacturer with few ideas of their own. This happens to most quality lighting and audio manufacturers, so I guess one could say imitation still continues to remain flattering.

The reason I buy brand name products locally (in the USA) is due to the nature of emergency replacement within a day's notice. In the event my Mario 2000 losses a rotating wheel or encoder, I will be lucky to be up and running within a few weeks. With custom glass gobos, it only takes one time to have the material crack, words mispelled, or other issue (which happen to every manufacturer at one time or another) with no time for a rescue.

There are many gobo makers in the world, and there will become many more I'm sure. Find one you trust and build a relationship with that company. Hopefully if you need them on a Saturday night, they'll be there for you in your moment of crises.

Have a great day gang-

[Footer]

Hi guys, yes another Asian manufacturer with few ideas of their own. This happens to most quality lighting and audio manufacturers, so I guess one could say imitation still continues to remain flattering.

The reason I buy brand name products locally (in the USA) is due to the nature of emergency replacement within a day's notice. In the event my Mario 2000 losses a rotating wheel or encoder, I will be lucky to be up and running within a few weeks. With custom glass gobos, it only takes one time to have the material crack, words mispelled, or other issue (which happen to every manufacturer at one time or another) with no time for a rescue.

There are many gobo makers in the world, and there will become many more I'm sure. Find one you trust and build a relationship with that company. Hopefully if you need them on a Saturday night, they'll be there for you in your moment of crises.

Have a great day gang-

Amazingly we have not been hit here like lightnetwork has with the Mario3000's and such. Its sad to see that they blatantly rip off another company. Yes, all manufactures have similar gobos but come on. They went to the Apollo site, downloaded the art, and blamo, they had gobos. Added to that who knows what they are doing with the waste after the steel is etched. I am not saying that all Chinese stuff is junk, but I am saying if you see copywrite or patent infrengment do not buy stuff from that company. We are seeing more and more of this in our industry, if it takes off I have a feeling it will start hurting the companies that actually inovate to make these products.

[David Ashton]

There is one HUGE difference between Apollo and this Chinese company, [who do have a range of unique and interesting stuff] and the difference is that they want to sell me stuff and Apollo do not want my business, it's great to have the most wonderful product in the world, but if you refuse to sell it, then it's not much use to me.

[Grog12]

How can you be sure Apollo isn't trying to get into the Australian Market?

There are a variety of reasons that companies can't sell across international borders, its not because they don't want your buisness (any company that turns down sales usually doesn't stay a company for very long) but probably has something to do with a lot of buericratic red tape.

[David Ashton]

Fairly straightforward I needed 2 Roman gobos, I found exactly what I needed emailed Apollo, they said they don't supply to Australia, I got contact in US to buy and ship out, fortunately there was no rush.
At least half of US suppliers will only sell in the US.
If you don't believe me go to Ebay and see how few suppliers will export.
Now it's their country and if they don't want my money, that's cool, but do not lecture me on buying inferior gear while at the same time refusing to sell to me.
This is also why I make or buy lots of spare parts for lamps as we're too small a market to bother with.

[TimMiller]

have you talked to jands yet? They are the makers of the jands vista console, but they are also dealers for lots of companies both lighting and audio, and they are based in austrialia.

J A N D S

Also if you feel better, i buy a few grand of custom gobos a year, and i have to go through a dealer to buy Apollo gobos. I have two choices of gobos, order from a friend of mine who is a rosco dealer, in which i usually get a nice deal, or go through several local dealers, 1 being way high on price the other being a small company so they don't have much of a price break, so they are only a little cheaper than the first, or the 3rd in which they are <unacceptable for reasons deleted>. I once called Apollo about becoming a dealer, and they wanted me to buy 50K in inventory to start, i said nope and that was the end of that.

[David Ashton]

Jands don't make gobos and they are not cost competitive at my [lower] end of the market, but their salespeople are awesome.

[church]

the response David received is not unexpected. It is not always possible to deal with a U.S. company for many reasons: exchange rate, government regulations, distance, shipping costs, the U.S. product does not have the required approvals, the U.S. company is not interested etc.

In my day job the industry I work in has become so frustrated with dealing with the U.S. government export controls that the non U.S. part of the industry has largely extracted itself from the U.S. suppliers and the Europeans in particular have heavily invested to develop non U.S. suppliers. It is too hard to deal with the U.S. and U.S. government regulations.

This is sad because there are many excellent U.S. companies who are losing business because of the U.S. bureacracy. By the way the U.S. also has its share of lousy companies. No country in the world is all bad the reverse is also true.

I await the torrent of replies

[Kelite]

The Australian distributors for Apollo products are Bytecraft Entertainment and Clearlight Shows Pty Ltd. in Victoria. Since shipping charges for metal stock gobos is somewhat ridiculous, the sale of SmartColor scrollers, Smart Move rotators and Right Arms have proven to be a better sale for our agents in Oz.
No one is lecturing you David, sorry if you抳e gotten that impression.

Tim, while a stocking order is in line for most equipment/expendable manufacturers to open additional dealerships, $50k is not accurate. I'll PM you with details.

[David Ashton]

So a practical example would be, I contact Bytecraft, send them my artwork,[they are 3000 miles away] some time later they send it to Apollo who make it and send it back to Sydney who then send it to me.
We have 4 x DHL courier trips and 2 mark ups and maybe 2 weeks if I'm lucky.
Same job with artwork sent to China, well under a week and 1/4 of the cost,
what would you do in my situation? and of course I know I live in the most isolated capital city in the world, but in this internet age with secure money transfers it is easy to do business safely, my daughter sells costumes all around the world.
On a typical install I will buy gear from my supplier in Holland and from Sydney, Australia and from the US, [Innovative Systems are seriously competitive]
The gear will arrive from everywhere in 5 days, average, from China, 2 days average.
The point is I can buy US gear much cheaper than some Chinese gear and vice versa, you cannot generalize as there are really nice people in all countries, who do all they can to help get your show together and there are people who don't care about your problems in all these countries too, I get really annoyed at unfair generalization of China in particular as some of their gear is excellent and innovative and generally but not always lower cost.

[icewolf08]

It sounds to me like David has a good thing going. Just as anyone else will stand by the people who give them the price and service that they need. Sure, here in the US, Chinese manufacturers have a bad stigma about them, but hearing that at least one of them is doing well by the end user is a good thing.