OK BOYS I THOUGHT WE WERE ALL GOING TO GET ALONG NOW AND ALL AGREED NOT TO WRITE ANYTHING ELSE ABOUT ANY OF THIS.THIS IS VERY CHILDISH TO ALL INVOLVED THAT MEANS ALL THE CASE MAKERS AND ALL WHO RESPOND TO THESE POST.:frown:
I don't know that
we all agreed to anything. I told you and Jack in private email what I would do if Jack didn't stay away from threads about my cases.
Now, I may or may not follow through on it.
But for everyone else here is what I said I would do.
I told Jack that if he insists on saying I copied him and spreading other falsehoods as well as sniping at me in threads where people are showing off my cases then I would give him something to gripe about. Namely, I would make a Justis "Tribute" line where I replicate every Justis case I can.
You see Justis seems to have this idea that every case with two pockets and a side opening lid with a little tooling is a copy of his cases.
Never mind that he himself has done endless configurations of these BASIC elements. So by his reasoning just about every case made is a copy of his in some way.
Never mind the fact that Jay Flowers was doing the same type of pockets and lid before Justis got into it.
In fact if only Jay had been a little quicker about delivery then according to Jack there might not even be a Justis cases today.
Well anyway, Jack opened Pandora's box with me and it won't be closed until I am well satisfied that I have said everything I want to say on these subjects.
It's not childish when you are enroaching on a man's livelihood.
I am 41 years old. Case making has been my profession since I was 23. I currenly employ seven people and have an 8 month baby girl.
Jack Justis is 70. He draws retirement pay and works out of his laundry room building cases. His house is probably paid for and the money he makes from cases is probably just extra income.
This man has no right to say one single word about me or my cases that attempts to smear my reputation.
Do you want to see a small example of what I have done for Jack Justis in the past? Of course you do.
This is an email dated 6/16/08 to Jack. (Note: Irving is Irving Lin, the owner's son of the Long Chan case factory)
Jack,
I had a chance to look at two examples of the Justis West cases at the J&J booth, which was right next to our booth at the show.
Irving told me that beside the one they made for your inspection that these were #2 and 3.
Frankly I wasn't impressed and neither were several others who are very familiar with your work.
The cases looked like decent Justis knockoffs. The tooling was pretty light and the scroll tooling looked like it had been just lightly impressed with a large press stamp. In fact the scroll tooling was so light that it looked like vinyl. The leather was not in the same league as yours.
I am giving you the heads up on this only because you have lent them your name and I guess given them permission to use the pro players names in ads. I haven't seen the ads but I heard that they are really crowing about the pros having Justis cases.
I don't think that these cases are going to get much love on the forums. I told Irving the same thing I told you about my observations in comparing your work with theirs.
I just thought you would want to know since your name is on these. It might be wise to have them send you several examples of current production in order to get a better look at what your name is on and associated with.
This is Jack's answer:
Hi John,
Thanks for the information. I will talking to Irving shortly.
Jack
This is only one example of the many times in the past that I have helped Jack out.
So forgive me if I tell you that your opinion of whether I should be addressing these topics or not means nothing to me.
I am really sorry that you have invested so much money into Justis cases only to see him and them knocked by me here. You know that I warned Jack though and gave him every opportunity to let it die. I already know that I will never get the apology he owes me.
I did however get a little present today. I bought a 2006 Jack Justis case complete with one of the pockets stuffed with newspaper from South Florida.
I will be posting pix of my new case shortly. Detailed ones showing how it's made and how well the high class hardware Jack uses is holding up.
You know that old saying that goes if you want to know how your wife will look in twenty years then look at her mother? Well for those of you contemplating a Justis today you will get to see what a three year old one looks like. And this one has not even been used for the past two years.
