|
 |
| Duplicate
locks: When white
locks pop out, all leg sections lock. To
collapse tripod, push in locks. Adorama
Podmatic locks, bottom, have been engineered
to operate with less pressure than Linhof
Monomatic, top. |
The
only thing more unfortunate about the Monomatic-stativ
monopod than its $182.50 price tag was that Linhof
discontinued making it.
Hadn't
I been embarrassed enough—raving about
and recommending a near-$200 monopod in my March
1999 column—without having Linhof pull
the rug out from under my one foot, so to speak?
Alas, I had been searching for years for the
maker of this once-seen, long-remembered, elusive
11-ounce high-precision monopod, that automatically
extends from 14 inches to anywhere between 25
½ and 58 inches in a matter of seconds
and folds as swiftly. Just as I'd found at last
that the maker was Linhof, the monopod was about
to disappear.
Adorama
to my rescue! In Europe, Adorama had found a
mysterious cache of Linhof monopods and put
them on sale here. But the cache was quickly
emptied. Linhof then announced that since no
parts were available to assemble new monopods,
the Mono-matic-stativ was history. "Maybe
we should make our own," someone suggested
at Adorama. They decided to do just that.
"Is
everyone at Adorama crazy or what?" I thought.
I envisioned the Adorama sales staff waiting
on customers while extruding metal tubing and
bending tiny wire springs to just the right
amount of tensile strength. Quality-control
inspection would be done at the cashier's.
Not
quite. While attending an industrial manufacturing
fair in Shanghai, China, Adorama's Director
of Marketing, Jerry Deutsch, shopped around
for a manufacturer who could produce a monopod
similar to the Linhof. "All said 'no problem,'
explains Deutsch, "but one company really
looked long and hard at the Linhof, commenting
on how it was made and what it didn't like about
it. The company also asked for R&D (research
and development) money to build a sample, which
I thought was the right way to do business.
"When
I went to the factory," continued Deutsch,
"most of the products were labeled in Chinese,
but there were a number of items bearing top-quality
U.S. brand labels. The factory executives were
able to show me numerous examples in the brand
catalogues that they had made."
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