Hello Kydex formers, whether you’re a customer of IFI or another distributor you’ve probably been effected, going to be effected or have heard of the recent quality issues with Kydex. I’m here to help try and shed some light on what the issues have been and what we’ve done to try and combat the issues. To be honest Kydex should be writing this letter but at the end of the day you folks may be purchasing Kydex product but you’re purchasing it through a distributor and we should be your first line of defense and your voice to the manufacturer. Let’s start from the beginning. A few weeks ago distributors started receiving material with a slight sparkle imbedded in the material, depending on the light and the way you looked at the material sometimes it was apparent sometimes it wasn’t. The sparkle started to get progressively worse over time. At this point IFI had noticed along with some of our customers and Kydex was contacted about the issue. Long story short IFI was told this was an issue due to the material being extruded over the rollers and the rollers were causing the issue, it was only an aesthetic issue and would not affect the formability or any other attributes of the material. Well, unfortunately this is a product in which the end users (you folks) need an aesthetically appealing end use product for obvious reasons. As a distributor our first obvious question was “can you fix it”? the answer was not so conclusive and they were looking into it. A couple weeks went by and we were trying to dish out the best of the worst product for our customers that were completely out of stock. At this point we were also processing returns and realized the severity of the issue as now our customers were out of stock and we had put a hold on all our orders and still had no fix, we are now in panic mode. Kydex came to us and recommended a very similar texture to the P1 called PC. Holding samples side by side most of our customers couldn’t tell the difference including many of our sales staff. The peaks and valleys are just a little bit shallower and it looks more refined in our opinion. We were told it would function exactly the same as the P1 but with less to no sparkle issue. Well this sounded like the answer from God we were waiting for and our way out of this mess and so we switched all our orders over to the PC and have been told many other distributors you guys may deal with have done the same thing. As the PC has been shipping we have been getting some feedback on the new texture. Some folks are saying it is more delicate to deal with and doesn’t have the matte finish which the P1 has. When heated customers have had to drop the heat a bit otherwise it will burn. There tends to be more definition from the texture but it’s been a learning curve using it and not everybody is sold. IFI had a face to face meeting with Kydex last Friday (4/26) and Kydex brought samples of the P1 that they have deemed acceptable at this point. It has sparkles but nothing like what we’ve seen at the height of the sparkle problem. The sparkles are more spread evenly throughout the sheet and less bundled up in groups or lines, not sure how they accomplished this but they did. It looked better but not perfect, at least to us. We hate being in the position of having to offer less than perfect product but for the folks that are still stuck on using the P1 this is our only option at this point. I personally dig the texture of the PC but I’m not the one forming it and I can definitely see the matte issues that folks are speaking about, it doesn’t have that dull matte finish. Ultimately I’m not the one making this decision you folks are which is part of the reason I’m writing this letter. I would like to know from folks that have received the PC if they would continue using it or if they would rather have “some” sparkle and go back to the P1. At this point I have authorized our sales team to reorder P1 as I have customers that have said they would rather deal with “some” sparkle than use the PC based on the matte issue. Again, No company wants to be in this position but these are the cards we’re being dealt at this point. We will be stocking both the P1 and PC finish going forward.
Since we have had mixed feedback both positive and negative with the PC finish we wanted to extend a onetime discounted sample order to any customer that isn’t sure about the new texture and wants to try it out. We will ship you one 1’x2’ sheet at a discounted rate so you can try it out with “your” forming techniques as everybody doesn’t heat and form the same way. Call or email our sales department and we’ll get you squared away and help answer any additional questions which I may not have covered above.
Thanks for the patients, understanding and for our customers thanks for sticking with IFI through these issues, look forward to any and all feedback.
