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On March 8, 2005, Independent Auto News reporter,
JW Coons, interviewed Mr. Robert Hannan, President and founder of LensRenew.
The text of this interview, below, is interesting and quite revealing.
In the interview Mr. Hannan describes how LensRenew came to be, his development
efforts, and some of his secrets of success with plastic headlight lens
restoration products. This is rewarding reading for those with a new
product idea or an interest in automotive maintenance and restoration.
THE INTERVIEW:
We have been talking for awhile.
Let’s go on the record, so to speak. Why don’t
you tell us how LensRenew began?
Some years ago I bought a second car,
a 740 Volvo, which was in excellent condition except for
the taillights; they were literally white not red !
After digging around the Internet and making a few calls,
I found that new ones were very expensive. I did not want
to spend the money on that car.
I can understand that. This was a
second car, right ?
Yes. That led me to remembering my
days, in the 70s, at Bush Aviation on the Ft Lauderdale
International Airport when I traded my labor for flying
lessons. Those folks owned a Beech Bonanza which had a windshield
which was slightly crazed and opaque. One day a local mechanic
on the field showed up and proceeded to lay out numerous
pieces of abrasive mesh on a towel next to the Bonanza.
That mesh looked like cheesecloth to me. I watched fascinated
as he began to literally sand the windshield with finer
and finer mesh. After a lot of sanding, the windshield became
clear and glossy. I was amazed !
He explained the process to me, and it made perfect sense.
He simply sanded off the opaque and crazed plastic and
then removed the swirls he created with finer and finer
mesh. The last mesh he used was so fine you could barely
feel the roughness. It was like a polish.
So these memories put you on track
to solve your tail light problem?
Well not immediately, but I’ve
spent over 30 years flying and hanging around airports.
I saw this process performed many times and actually restored
many myself. So, to answer your question, I remembered this
process after I priced new Volvo lenses and wanted
another solution. Someone once said, necessity is the mother
of invention and that’s the way it was with me and
that old Volvo.
Ok, but I doubt you kept that special
mesh around that you described. What did you do to those
tail light lenses?
I used what was readily available to
me. I sanded those lenses with black, wet dry sandpaper,
and a palm sander until all of that white was gone! I kept
everything wet as I worked. It was a long process because
the sandpaper kept "loading up" with plastic and
it seemed to create even more scratches as I worked. I went
to finer grits of wet dry sandpaper working by hand and
dried the lenses. There were numerous spots which looked
good when they were wet, but were still white when dry.
So I started again with the palm sander. After another 45
minutes, and after compounding the lens with regular automotive
compound I had a lens which looked almost new.
That sounds like a lot of work, but
you were successful in recovering the tail light
lenses. I understand that and how you got to that point,
but that was hardly a marketable process. What happened
next ?
At this point you probably know how
it is. Did you ever notice how if you have a little red
Ford, you see other little red Fords? You never noticed
red Fords before...? Well over the next few months I saw
opaque headlights and tail lights everywhere I went! And,
that got me to thinking.... I could probably put together
a practical process, a system, that could be used to restore
opaque plastic headlight lenses which I discovered were
abundant, and of course, taillights too.
I began by scouring junk yards for bad lenses. After I
had a pretty good supply I started experimenting with
countless abrasives, compounds and polishes. After several
months of this I managed to put together a sequence of
abrasives from the most aggressive right down to the final
compounding and polish. At this point I lacked a desirable
delivery technique, a good flexible way to apply what
I had selected. I finally decided on a 3 inch disc with
the hook and loop attachment method. This combination
was small enough to work well with endless lens shapes
and at the same time was easily driven with a 1/4 inch
drill found in almost all tool boxes.
Next I assembled a fresh collection of bad lenses, a quantity
of my abrasives and a some discs and worked to not only
verify what I thought I knew about all this but to sort
of, standardize it. I found that I could quickly restore
opaqued headlight lenses in less than 30 minutes start
to finish. There was no doubt I had developed a practical,
inexpensive alternative to buying new lenses. I’d
restored enough of them to know my process worked, and
worked well ...
When did you actually get LensRenew
off the ground, so to speak..?
Get it started ?
I did the work I previously described
during 2000. Because of family and "day job" obligations
I did not begin selling until 2001. After I had the process,
it still remained to package it, select a name, handle trademark
issues, set up a website, and source the necessary materials.
LensRenew is only on the Internet.
Tell us about that.
Somewhere in those early days, a marketing
plan was fitted in too. At first I thought this would be
a good item to offer in auto stores but it turned out access
to those retail outlets was daunting and the markups were
endless. I discovered that not only would it cost a small
fortune to set up, but the sale price to the consumer would
be pretty high!
You might remember that Internet sales were coming on
really strong about this same time. I decided to direct
market my product on the Internet. Our first site was
launched in late 2001and we have been there selling ever
since.
This has worked well for us. After sticker shock prices
for new headlight lens covers, folks head for the Internet
to see if they can find alternatives. There we are. We
get lots of traffic from search as well as affinity sites,
club sites and general automotive forum sites where questions
and problems are posted.
I know you started marketing to the "do
it your self", handyman individual. I believe you are
still selling the same LensRenew kit, with a few modifications,
that you started with in 2001. Have you expanded beyond
that?
End users, or "do it your self" as
you call them, purchase our regular kit. Right now our revenues
are about equally divided between those end-users and commercial
users. The commercial side of our business developed as
detailers, dealerships, dent repair companies, oil change
companies, automotive upholstery repair companies, etc.
discovered that not only does our product work well, but
they can make good money providing this valuable service.
We now provide industrial quantity kits that will restore
many lenses.
If I might change direction a bit..
I looked around on the Internet before this Interview. I
think I have discovered that your product is, shall we say, "on
the expensive side" of what’s offered out there.
Please don’t get all excited, but perhaps you have
heard this before ? Am I right ?
Yes indeed, this is not the first time this has been said.
Most fundamentally, the reason is that the individual
components used are of excellent quality and expensive.
For instance, our polish costs over $140 per gallon. As
our final step it must perform flawlessly. We’ve
now experimented with no less than 25 polishes from USA,
Japan, and Europe. Our polish is superb. It has no waxes,
fillers, or silicone. The grit itself is actually finely
milled! In polishes, "you get what you pay for",
as they say.
Our backing pads are custom-made so they can follow the
contour of any lens. The USA made, hand sewn sheepskin
buffing and foam polishing pads are top-quality and correctly
matched with the compound and polish they are used to
apply.
Our three-inch sanding disc(s) is manufactured by one
of the largest and most respected industrial abrasive
companies in the world, Mirka..
The custom LensRenew compound is produced by the leading
compound supplier to the yacht building industry, and
believe me when I say, they focus on finish quality!
You will not find any of our specific abrasives or components
in a builders store, or local industrial hardware supplier.
Competitors, generally offer a few bottles of deoxidizer,
filler/sealer, protectant, along with a small piece of
wet dry sandpaper, paper towels, and rubber gloves. I
suggest that the cost of our backing pad exceeds our competitors
entire kit. In a nutshell... Our competitors retail price,
approaches our cost.
You state on your web site that people
need only know how to use an electric drill to use your
product? Is that really true ?
Yes we think so! An individual with good mechanical aptitude
will find it easier to accomplish the process and restore
the lenses. Still, the fact remains, that only the electric
drill is needed. I think the overwhelming majority of
people, after they read the instructions, and understand
the process well enough to put the LensRenew system into
action, will succeed, even possessing little mechanical
aptitude. Our process is almost intuitive.
Another question from my Internet
tour.. Why don’t you use a sealer to protect the lenses
after the lens is restored.
Good one! The simple answer: We have not found a protectant
that stands up to the elements and car washes. They all
fade away at uneven rates leaving blotches on the lens
and creating more problems in the long run than they solve.
The LensRenew approach is to restore the lens so that
the resurfaced lens face is the same as new. It becomes "virgin" plastic, all
over again. What we suggest is at the first hint of
oxidation use any auto compound to remove the oxidation.
The car compound will work as good as, or better than,
any "protectant" we have tried.
I think that’s about it. Can
you comment on future LensRenew activities?
We are always exploring ways to make LensRenew more visible
to the end user. As our commercial business continues
to grow, we will undoubtedly expand there. We have been
approached to place LensRenew in a traditional retail
environment. At this time we are looking at several complementary
products to broaden our offerings.
Thank you. I appreciate this opportunity, and have enjoyed
our chat.
You are quite welcome. I have enjoyed
this look into restoring foggy automotive headlights.
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