Unger for success
April 1st 2006

After almost two years in development, Unger's HiFlo CarbonTec unit raises the stakes in the water-fed pole market, according to new company president, Mark Unger. Brendan Coyne reports

Modular, lightweight, robust, innovative, Unger says his company's £1600 offering arrives at the top end of an industry now emerging from its infancy. Although a relative late comer to this area, Unger expects the system to dominate the market.

"We compete from the quality and innovation side, which tends to make us the high end competitor, rather than offer low cost versions of other people's products," he says. "We're a late comer to the market but we saw the market developing in the UK and other European countries such as Holland and felt the time was right for us to make the investment. So for the last two years we have been honing the product - from initial development with end-users to find out what problems they were experiencing with existing systems, through to product research, design and development, tooling, testing and patenting.

That's a substantial investment but it's a capital good: most of our products retail at under £100. This is significantly higher priced so the extra care is necessary because our brand is paramount - particularly to me as its my family name. And we don't want to screw that up. Rushing out a pole that everyone else has was not what we wanted to do. We have tested all the poles on the market and we know that our product is by far and away the best one out there."

According to Unger, (who says UK manager Dave Rogers convinced him to back the product and was largely responsible for driving it forward) the system's key selling point is its modularity: "Therefore you have consistent strength at all heights of the pole - you're not losing strength as you go up - whereas the nature of telescopic poles mean you get smaller as you get higher." He says this also helps in terms of weight - for lower level cleaning less sections are used, reducing the load users bear with a telescopic pole. Another key innovation is that the water is integral to each section - meaning there is no hose to feed in and out of the pole: "As you add sections the water is automatically on the inside of it," Unger explains. "We listened to users: they all disliked the hose going through the middle and didn't like it at their feet because they were tripping over it and had to feed it in and out - it was not a well liked feature. And so we redesigned it because people tend not to buy things they don't like," he says. "Or they'll buy it once but they won't buy it again."

Although lightweight, Unger says the system is remarkably hard wearing: "Its undergone extreme testing to ensure it can't break. A key feature is the way the male and female sections go together: it uses a double bevel and the thread sits in the middle so that, when you put the pole together, it automatically finds itself and you can never cross thread." Explaining what he means by "extreme testing", Unger says the system was tested by an external facility which used a machine "to take the two pieces, jam them together and screw them in and out 5,000 times". He says the point of failure was well beyond the 5,000 figure.

Similarly, he says the poles were clamped in a vice and then forced sideways to determine the breaking point of the tube itself; then 50lbs of pressure were applied once assembled to see if it would crack at any point. "All of those tests were performed and all of the poles before they leave the factory are assembled and tested to make sure they don't leak, to ensure that everything is straight," says Unger. "That's a little bit different from the normal mass produced items that we make."

The extra thought extends to the extras themselves: Included in the price is a bag to keep all pole sections protected in the back of the van. "If you're carrying around a number of tubes you want to ensure they are not loose in the back of the van to get bounced around or nicked and scratched," Unger explains. "The reality is that an owner operator will take very good care of it. But if you have several different crews, it gets treated differently. It's built to take that harsh treatment but the bag helps protect it."

Unger thinks the knock-on effect of the HiFlo launch will be good for the industry: "There's nothing like competition to make a market move - just as we felt the need to do something because of the competition, I am sure our competitors will do the same. And I wish them good luck."

However, Unger says it will be tough for others to compete in terms of scale and believes the company has the resources to fulfil its ambitions in the water-fed pole industry.

"We want to be the market leader in whatever we do and I think we will be for many reasons. But our biggest advantage is that we have a much broader presence: We sell to 80 countries so we can take this product to a much greater level of distribution and introduce it as a new way to clean windows. And there are really very few companies that have the resources and distribution bases to do that. So we have volumes and can continue to apply resources in terms of R&D to develop the pole further. Because we think this is just going to be the first step - there will be continual development. My feeling is that we have patents pending on this product, but within a year, someone is going to copy it one way or the other. So we will certainly be moving forward as the market goes forward."

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