John Burton Sour Grapes...Really!!!
- Thread starter Wedge
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Thanks. Yeah I am totally fine with it. I understand that Wedge thinks it's about me somehow but it's not. I am fully comfortable with what we are doing and confident in our quality.
My private comment to him was merely to let him know that I know he "worked" the voting. Not at all to complain about us not winning. The case I submitted had no chance up against the highly carved and tooled masterpieces in a beauty/popularity contest.
Here is just a small sample of some of the "big" cases we have coming up.
We do all this in-house and we spend a lot of time in the planning stages to get the designs just right. Much different than simply shipping blank leather off to someone else. We have done that in the past as well and come up with stunning cases. But to get true custom, really deep and true custom, you have to get in the head of your customer and pull out their desires and bring them to leather in a way no one has ever done before.
We do that. Marc Turcasso does it. Phil Eastwood does it. Rusty Melton does it. Armor does it. And to a lesser degree, IN MY OPINION, Jack does it, Whitten does it and other semi-custom makers. But when all the cases are lined up on the runway then it doesn't matter HOW they came to exist. At that moment it's simply appeal and popularity.
So I know we will never win the popularity vote on AZB. You can't be the kind of person who says what he thinks and who takes the unpopular stance and expect to win votes just because people like you. And frankly, winning the beauty part of the beauty contest is simply TOUGH when you are up against the likes of Rusty Melton and Marc Turcasso and Phil Eastwood and Rex Goulet even Justis/Ross/Goulet collaborations.
That's like being in a six man round robin against Orcullo, Bustamante, Efren, SVB, and Strickland. Just plain tough action. But it's the continued competition and bar raising that makes it interesting. We would probably have never built the Palace Garden if it weren't for Rusty getting so good and pushing the envelope.
And I know for a fact that this case in turn inspired others to push up their game. Result is that everyone wins and that is all I wanted to show with the Case of the Year poll. In the future I will simply put up my own choices for the cases I like best and explain why. Someone else can run the beauty contest. For myself there is just no way to pick the best case in any year or time without having a lot of equally good choices from among today's masters.
I agree there were a lot of cases which should have been in the poll and were not. I think if anyone does this in the future I would do it another way.
I would put up all the nominated cases and make the votes public. Then I would take the top five cases and put them up for a final vote and the winner of that one would be Case of the Year. That way most of the campaigning can be done in the first round and by the second round everyone will be well familiar with the cases. Let the case makers present their work and talk about the motivations and hours of work they put in, let the customers talk about their reactions when they got the cases and so on..... that way the voting public has way more information to go on and can make a better decision among the offered work.
And no one who registered in the same month as the contest gets their vote counted. That way no can game the system with a bunch of new registrations (not that anyone would do that anyway).
But I personally won't be doing such a poll in the future. Too much drama even when I asked that there not be any. I guess I play with magnets too much in our cases and am myself a drama magnet
So,. Were you actively asking (campaigning) others to to vote for the Justis case? Not that there's anything wrong with that, just curious what the voting criteria was.
I have to disagree with your opinion here. Jack Justis does not build the industry standard in custom cases in my opinion.
There is actually no such thing. That is evident by the many different ways to construct a cue case. I am sure Joe Whitten doesn't think that Justis is the "King of the Mountain". Nor should Rusty Melton, Marc Turcasso, Garth Bair and any of the other 60+ active makers out there think that.
Jack Justis builds a very nice case to be sure. He builds clean cases and has developed a wonderful style of his own. Some of his cases are flat out ugly in my opinion and others are done so well that they are breathtaking.
Also if something is a standard then that means that it's possible to exceed the standard. I don't know how you define custom Mr. Van Buren but to me custom means offering practically unlimited choices in construction and design.
Mr. Justis offers a VERY LIMITED set of choices in construction and a fairly consistent range of design choices. JB Cases in contrast offers a huge range of construction choices and practically unlimited design choices. So if it's truly your opinion that Justis cases are the industry standard, then we are well above the industry standard. As well so are most of our colleagues if you agree with the normal definition of "custom".
This is custom to me Mr. Van Buren, can you show me any of Mr. Justis' work that takes the customer's wishes into account like these examples?
State of the Art in Casemaking - Innovations by JB Cases
Custom interiors:
Custom pocket solutions:
Custom lid storage:
I could of course go on with so many more examples, hundreds and hundreds of orders with so many customer chosen features. But I believe the point is made well enough.
However if you would like to see for yourself just how much choice we have start here, www.jbcases.com/orderform.html
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Yeah, and I am not the one to come here crying AND making the threat to rig the next one as you have. You're a spiteful crybaby and this just shows it. Its the only reason why you would even say something to the guy. Man up for once in your life.
The sort of thing I would do says the man of 1000 faces (alias'). Yeah ok, you clueless nutjob.
JV
The sort of thing I would do says the man of 1000 faces (alias'). Yeah ok, you clueless nutjob.
JV
LOL Nits are on the prowl tonight. I didn't have to do anything. The best case won, sorry you're butt hurt over the whole thing. So Wedge garnered a few votes by campaining, its what you do in every post you make. No one cares, get over it. I voted once, not even for Wedges case, but who cares, no one but the guy running it because he didn't win.
Here is a hanky..:crying:
Go make another few alias screen names, it will make you feel better.
JV
I didn't threaten to rig anything Mr. Van Buren. My reference was to Yang and Bonnie's case and the fact that Jack Justis wondered aloud how their great case could only get 2 votes.
My comment was to say that IF they had so wanted then they could easily get lots of votes simply by having people register and vote. And I am sure that if I were to badger/beg my customers and friends then I could get lots of votes as well. I am however above that sort of popularity plea. My customers cast their votes when they hit submit on the order form and that's plenty of recognition for me.
The reason I said something is not out of spite. I merely thought it to be quite humorous that the case he is so in love with and was so happy about owning is now being flipped a week after the contest and the first place finish is being used to market it for a much higher price than it sells for directly from Justis.
I found that to be quite a distasteful thing to know that Wedge campaigned to artificially push his case into the top spot and then uses that "victory" to attempt to goad someone into paying a huge premium to own the case. I made my feeling known in my positive rep comment and Wedge could have left it at that and no one but he and I would have known about it.
Yet, for reasons of his own he chose to let everyone know what he did. So here we are discussing the ethics of it. I do understand that you have no problem with manipulating perception for financial gain so perhaps you and Wedge worked it together. And if so congratulations again on a successful campaign.
Thank you so much though for the opportunity to discuss case making and our work. As I have said to you many times I appreciate it when you go out of your way to provide me a platform to show off our work.
Let me explain in smaller words so you get it. The fact is Jack builds the industry standard in custom cases From across the room, Jacks cases are recognizable. They have been for years. They IMHO are the industries most recognizable case, without question.
Jack has been the king of the mountain for quite sometime. Are you really going to dispute this? Really? In custom cases he has been, there is absolutely no fading that.
I didn't say he offered the most options, did I? Did I say he was the best custom casemaker with 8-10 people in his shop building cases for 5 dollars a day? Nope, didn't say that either. What I said was the truth, don't like, I'll mail you another hanky.
Now if I said who set up an entire shp and taught them to make Chinese knockoffs, who would I be talking about? YOU. You love and respect the craft so much, yet you're the primary person that put Jiasen and their copying in business. And we have pictures of the whole thing.
(_0_) (--- ready for the smoke, so go ahead, start blowing.
JV
Jack has been the king of the mountain for quite sometime. Are you really going to dispute this? Really? In custom cases he has been, there is absolutely no fading that.
I didn't say he offered the most options, did I? Did I say he was the best custom casemaker with 8-10 people in his shop building cases for 5 dollars a day? Nope, didn't say that either. What I said was the truth, don't like, I'll mail you another hanky.
Now if I said who set up an entire shp and taught them to make Chinese knockoffs, who would I be talking about? YOU. You love and respect the craft so much, yet you're the primary person that put Jiasen and their copying in business. And we have pictures of the whole thing.
(_0_) (--- ready for the smoke, so go ahead, start blowing.
JV
Certainly a deserving case won. Best is subjective. But as I said the Justis that won was certainly worthy of the title.
But it wasn't just a "few" votes that were garnered from the campaigning It was twice as many as the next nearest case.
Even Jimmy Carter's foundation would roll their eyes at that result with such a tough group of contenders.
And especially telling was the fact that Mr. Justis himself seemed a bit embarrassed by the result. To the point where he said he will actively encourage his customers NOT to participate in such polls. That's unfortunate.
Without question? Really? You're going to say that to the person who was on the road selling thousands of cases for years? Ok if you honestly believe that a Justis is the industries most recognizable case then you are absolutely entitled to hold that opinion. It's wrong but you can say it all you like. I am certain you would not bet on your opinion but if you ever want to then I am willing to bet against your assertion.
Now, about industry standard and custom. Who gets to decide what the "industry standard" is? Do you even know what that term means? It means that the majority of companies in an industry AGREE on methods of construction in order to ensure compatibility among their products. I don't recall anyone agreeing that the way Justis makes cases is the way we are all going to do it.
Whitten cases are certain way different in construction. So in your opinion are Whittens better than or worse than Jack Justis cases if Justis is the standard?
Regarding custom. Again, custom refers to doing what the customer wants. Justis will NOT do what the customer wants UNLESS the customer agrees to work within a very limited set of choices. So respectfully I think you need to consider looking up the word to understand it's meaning in this application.
Of course I am going to dispute it. What criteria would you possibly use to determine that Jack Justis is the "king" of anything? Choice? No. Sales volume? No. Diversity in design? No. Protection? Absolutely NO. On time delivery? Yes, he is probably the best in that category.
I mean if you would like to list your reasons then we can discuss them but again I disagree and you have my reasons. Just because you repeat your opinion doesn't make it true.
No, what you said is your opinion based on unknown criteria and colored by your anti-Barton/anti-China bias.
If you want to list some OBJECTIVE reasons why Justis deserves the title you bestowed upon him I would love to read them.
Otherwise I rank several other case makers above Justis based on the OBJECTIVE reasons I listed above.
Sorry but Jiasen was in business with a fully function shop long before I got here. In fact the owner worked for Long Chan before venturing off to start his own business.
Who is Long Chan? Well in case you don't know, although I am sure you do, Long Chan is the company built on knockoffs of Porper, Instroke, New Image, Silver Fox, Whitten, Murnak, Fellini, It's George, O'Neil etc.... In short they have been copying every case made for more than 20 years. Oh and they are also Jack Justis' partner in the Justis West line. Former partner now because they have stopped paying him for the name.
Jack has a thread here detailing the lovely visit he had with Long Chan and how he taught them all he knows about case making. His final words were that Long Chan's people build cases as well or better than he does.
So there you have it Mr. Van Buren, the King of the Mountain in your words came to China and taught the largest manufacturer of knockoffs how to make his cases personally. He sat right in Long Chan's showroom surrounded by hundreds of knockoffs representing 20 years of ripping off the designs of others. I guess in your eyes he brought the largest maker of cue cases in the world up to "industry standard".
That's quite a legacy if one uses your logic. I will talk about Jiasen at another time but my involvement with them was to get them to be original and they have put out an impressive array of original designs and firsts in the industry. To the point where Long Chan is actively copying them now.
I stopped reading after pg1...but I don't find JB's posts to be unwarranted at all.
Au contraire! I think he states his case succinctly and clearly: he ovbiously did not like the way the voting was influenced and made both his displeasure and the manipulation known the ay zee bee.
Au contraire! I think he states his case succinctly and clearly: he ovbiously did not like the way the voting was influenced and made both his displeasure and the manipulation known the ay zee bee.
John & Joe,
I have been reading and following your threads for quite some time and think you two just dont like each other. This year before or after SBE you guy's should find a boxing gym,put the gloves on and get all this stuff off your chest. It would due both of you a world of good.
I have been reading and following your threads for quite some time and think you two just dont like each other. This year before or after SBE you guy's should find a boxing gym,put the gloves on and get all this stuff off your chest. It would due both of you a world of good.
I agree.
I also think that the industry standard for a:
- production case is Instroke (founded by JB).
- custom "made to order" case is JB.
- cowboy style case made by an individual is Jack Justis.
- classy, quality leather, luggage style by an individual is Whitten.
- case interior designed for cue protection is JB.
You should reread what you write. Study it, and know that the application is self reflecting.
You're a small, small man, who cannot stand that your case didn't win. That someone you despise, did win. Of course we all know your feelings towards Jack and its eating you up.
Is industry standard to strong a phrase in this case, maybe, but it gets the point across. See his cases are the most recognizable, just like you can spot a Szamboti, Bushka or Haley from across the room and know who made it. The reason you cannot do that with a JB is that it could be mistaken for a Fellini, a Thomas, a Centennial, a JEF Case (Flowers) or one of many other designs that you have lifted. Before you go off on "well Jack took the Flowers design.. bla bla bla bla bla... Yes the construction and general shape of the cases are the same, but no one who knows the cases will contend they are one and the same or even remotely made by the same people even from a distance. I know, you disagree and quite frankly no one cares that you disagree.
Again John, you're a small petty man you prove time and time again that once the spotlight isn't on you, you'll do anything you can to take it away from whomever it is on using any means necessary. Now its Wedge stuffed the ballot box.. lol.. So much to the extent that the guy has to publically come here to get you to stop. Knowing your psychotic tendencies, his PM box is probably full and you've tried to call his boss to get him fired already.
Three words... Let it go.
JV
This seems oddly familiar.
Once again Joe, you've hit the nail squarely on the head! :thumbup:
Let's get together at the SBE so I can buy you a beer!
suc·cinct
[suhk-singkt] Show IPA
adjective
1.
expressed in few words; concise; terse.
2.
characterized by conciseness or verbal brevity.
3.
compressed into a small area, scope, or compass.
me thinks black-balled has succinct-circuited. :grin:
:grin:best,
brian kc
Who made the Armor-Yangand Bonnie case? That might be the best looking case I've seen even though the Jack case is very nice also.
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