Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “About the Backpack Carabiner…”.
We have encountered an issue Dan you’re on the camera. Again, if you don’t mind terribly, we have encountered a user reported issue with the Carabiner zipper pulls on the LTT store, backpack uh, actually I’ll start by giving you a sample of one that is not broken uh. Well, here, actually I’ll hold it up and I’ll I’ll show you the first I’ll show you the first two, then I’ll get your impressions for some of the ideas that we have now. This didn’t come up during testing. Oh right, I guess I’m supposed to not that one gosh darn it there. We go okay, uh! You know what I’m gon na come a little closer to you Dan. This didn’t come up during testing, but what we found is that these custom carabiner ugh these custom Carabiner zipper pulls that are attached to the zippers with these little Loops. Here there you go and they have like a little little Carabiner doodad on them. You guys can see that pretty well, there yep that’s cool uh, they were custom designed for our backpack and they only have a very, very skinny little bit of metal.
Here, that’s really hard to see. Do you think so? Looking at that, I think so. The background is too dark against the well. I got my hand here. Yeah, oh here, uh well hold on idea, foreign, oh yeah, sure, let’s go back to the laptop yeah that works. Okay, yeah: there we go uh, I don’t know you can you can leave your laptop there. I got the uh yeah, that’s pretty! Okay.
There we go yeah, yeah, okay, so it’s got a little a little Wibble wobble thing here. Okay, so unfortunately, um – and this never came up during our testing, because I only ever used these to clip to each other to keep the zipper from coming open and just to kind of look cool. So maybe someone grabbed it funny or maybe they tried to hang something from it which uh not really intended for, but given how much work we put into the durability of other aspects of the bag, we should have caught it. Yeah, there’s only a skinny little skinny chicken piece of metal here, uh that holds this in place. So while the spring is fine and it’ll last for a long time like this, if you put pressure on it from the side, oh, you can break it off pretty easily wow yeah yeah.
That was not a ton of force. No, so it to be clear, past third-party lab tests, so our supplier follows ISO 9001 for Quality, past testing within their system and through our third party lab for expected Force applied during normal use. However, there will always be some part to part variants across 160 000 pieces right, there’s four per bag, so there’s always going to be a failure rate. But it’s clear that this is a core component um that I think just accidentally could have a higher failure rate than we consider to be acceptable, so nope you’re not done yet Dan, I’m so sorry, you got ta have a look at some of our new options.
Okay, so what are we doing from here? We’Re actively working on a solid long-term solution which should include a care package for everyone who bought the backpack? That will include three things: standard regular zipper pulls for people who want to opt out of the Carabiner entirely, and there are reasons people might want to do this. Maybe they want to put a padlock on it for even more security or if they want to check their bag or whatever the case may be. That is some feedback that we got. So I guess this is an opportunity to rectify that. We are also working on. It will also include an updated Carabiner pull and we are working on we’ve actually already prototyped it, but they didn’t give it to me for the show today we’re working on just a a cheap injection molded tool that will help you uh pry up the little retainer For the Carabiner pull that you have on there and then the other end should allow you to clamp it back down and replace it with either a standard zipper pull or a replacement.
Carabiner pull – and this is so. This is to everyone who has currently received backpacks. What are what about the staged orders? I believe actually that’s a good question. I don’t know what will happen with those we’ll figure it out. Okay, um.
It should be a fairly small operation to swap them so either we’ll swap them or we’ll include the swap kit. It seems to make more sense for us to swap them, but I’ll I’ll. I don’t know the answer to that, so we’ll have to figure that out for you uh all right so in the meantime here are some examples of Carabiner pulls that we are looking at. That you might end up getting because uh the original one is not so great anymore uh. You know what no I’ll show you this one after, let’s start with, let’s start with this one and uh Luke, do you want to kind of have a look at these and tell us your thoughts? How does this go on a zipper? Well, it would be a lot smaller, okay, it would be kind of like that yeah.
If you want to hold it just a little more in front of the laptop. It’S still it’s a little odd. You can still get some side to side play, but I’m putting quite a bit of force on that and nothing’s really happy yeah. Well, it locks. That’S the difference, yeah anything that locks is going to be a little bit better. Yeah yeah. I pushed pretty hard in both directions: yeah it’s ugly and looks like crap yeah, pretty much so it’s out, uh We’ve also got this one. It’S also like Dan.
Don’T try to follow us too much, we’ll we’ll we’ll we’ll follow you. We can see you uh this one just has like a little a little wire of a jig here that looks similar, but only one. No, no. I got ta hold this way closer. Okay, let’s, let’s get this boy, let’s get this boy close there you go! So it’s just a little wire thing: uh looks like crap, especially compared to the original Carabiner pull. So I don’t consider this acceptable either.
Both of these are cheap. So that’s a good thing about them. This one is I’d, say the closest to our existing Carabiner pull um. Does that have like basically shields on each side? Holding it in place is that what’s going on it’s a lot thicker metal. We could also re-engineer the original one to have like thicker metal sides. Like this one does, but we found a solution that we like better okay, this one I’ll – let you play with it’s really expensive.
Of course I have. I have no no Dan here here here here I have notoriously expensive taste um, it looks beautiful. Is this how it will look like final products? No it’ll be smaller because yeah, it’s really big, so it’ll, but I it’ll probably look very similar to this.
The camera can’t see it at all, but it looks like it’s like tempered. Is that it’s titanium? Oh okay, I’m really glad uh at one point in the development process. I have structural issues.
Oh and we’ll talk about it in a second okay. At one point in the development process for the backpack we considered having Carabiner pulls on every single zipper and we were like. Ah it’s a bit much given the cost of this. How much is this like? I’M really glad it’s only four per bag, we’ll be okay.
But how much is this? It’S really nice uh here I feel like. If you bought that individually, it would be like double digit dollars. Uh no it’ll run you oh shoot wrong thing: bloody, hell! Okay! There! You go so here’s what it is guys. It’S a one piece uh here, I’ll hold it here. It’S a one piece titanium clip here. You got to show the bottom and the hinge yeah.
The hinge is just like this um. It just been yeah it just yeah. Just like it just it just bends, it’s got like this. I don’t know shape to it that kind of yeah.
Oh okay, oh there you go there, you go there, you go! So it’s got these like slits in it, but because it’s titanium, it’s super strong, and so it bends here side to side here and then yeah well side to side. It doesn’t give any F’s, because it’s titanium right, so you could just I don’t know, do whatever you want to it. So it looks like it moves. It might have a little bit of play, but it’s not gon na break, but it shouldn’t break.
So this is the thanks Dan you’re good. This is the current front. Runner solution, so everyone who gets a bag will get something um and it’ll either be like a pack of something like this and uh standard poles or a re-engineered version of the original Carabiner pull and standard poles, and then we’re going to be working on that tool. One thing that I want to warn you guys about now: don’t feel like oh yeah this weekend, I’m gon na go do this, so I’m gon na change, my no no, no, no! No! No! No! No! No! The way that the YKK zipper is designed is to be permanently installed, so, yes, you can bend it up and you can bend it down like once.
Otherwise, a lot of metal doesn’t like doing that. Yeah it’ll fatigue the metal and it will break so please plus no place. No do that and that’s not the kind of thing that we’re we’re going to be like. Oh this is your third bag yeah.
Well, you know these things happen. Here’S a new one like don’t do that. That’S that’s intentional damage, because it will be very clear in the packaging of the replacement kit that you are intended to do it once a bunch of people saying they like the S Carabiner uh.
That’S like the ugliest one out of all like ass and scaled down to the size of a zipper, pull it’s not going to work very well! It’S it’s! Not a it’s, not a an appropriate design for what we’re doing yeah um as a former Fastener salesman. Please reach out to a smaller Fastener specialist for more and cheaper options. Please please um! I mean it’s not a Fastener, though it’s like it’s kind of just a decorative zipper, pull like it’s not intended to really do anything.
That was another thing. I saw a picture of someone talking about this and they were like this isn’t built like how it should be, and then they had like a climbing Carabiner. I was like these are not yeah, it’s not for climbing they just linked together, they’re, not supposed to be load-bearing. Who knows they are this that uh side to side pressure was unacceptable but um? Why even show the ones you’re not considering to show you guys kind of what we what we looked at to ultimately reach? What we think is going to be our our best option so that you guys can understand the process.
Are you complaining that we’re foreign just being transparent? I don’t get it if we’re at risk. If we use the fancy one. If that was a thing, we wouldn’t use it um. We will find a very good solution.
Yeah people will be very happy with and everything will be. Okay, yeah it’ll be all right, don’t worry guys. We got this yeah um all right, oh and others. It’S not a recall in the sense that people have to send their bags back, no yeah. Okay. No! It’S I mean you can recall a component of something and the solution is just to send people a new that thing: yeah, yeah cool, so that’s the way we’re going to handle it.
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