Thought you all might like to watch a little video which was done by Tinny at Minibull Design. After Backpackinglight.com did a review on the stove, Tinny thought it wasn't a fair review so he did his own. Mind you now this is one of my competitors doing an unsolicited review of my stove.
http://youtube.com/watch?v=BYjn8Urk7YA
Thanks for looking at the review and be sure to support Bob whenever you can. By the way Bob is going to use this stove on a trek across Scotland in a couple of weeks. He will have his podcast online for the trip.
Support your own countrymen. Bob has the dealership for the UK and we feel it will be a very good product and will sell quite well as the word spreads. In fact he has sold more White Box Stoves in the UK market in the first 3 weeks than I have sold since last October.
It just wasn't feasible to keep hoping the market would improve from this side of the ocean. The key to improved sales is having a good marketing program and Bob is able to do a lot better job at it than I.
I am sure if he could lower the price he would but no one is in business long if they loose money.
Bob is probably about 30% business and 70% hobby. Lightweight backpacking is in his blood! Most people who have used BPL will do so for a long long time as he treats them well and he's one of us. He along with other sites like Winwoods and Hike Lite are making it possible for us to use the latest lightweight gear and not only do they sell it to us they actively meet us and let us try it out, in what other business in this country do you get a service as good as Bobs!
Makes me laugh how we are moaning about paying under £20 for a unique and advanced piece of kit like the white box stove when we still being ripped of by the likes of sleeping bag makers and rediculous tent prices surely people should turn there moans that way instead and towards the mass producers who rip us off!
Some of these alcohol stoves are easy to fill, since they have a big hole in the middle and you can just up-end your meths bottle and glug it all into the hole. Others are more fiddly, like the one I just got, which has a tiny hole for feeding meths into the stove. I've been wandering round town looking for some kind of bottle or appliance that would do it. Chemists have tiny, heavy glass dropper bottles. They are too small and too heavy and I don't like glass. I've seen someone using a plastic syringe to measure meths and fill their stove, but to me that's another piece of kit that has to be carried, and I want to avoid that.
The solution was staring me in the face at home - the 'Baby Bio' plant feed bottle. I decanted the remaining plant feed into another bottle, rinsed it out and filled it with 175ml of meths. (You have to prise out the plastic cap with the little hole in the top to fill the bottle, then replace it.) It's meths-tight, so no leakage. I found that the 175ml size will fill the stove five times. The 'Baby Bio' bottle gives a very fine and controllable 'squirt' with no spillage. Each stove fill gives enough burn time to bring an MSR Titan Kettle to a rolling boil, then will also bring an MSR mug to the boil afterwards. That's going to give plenty of boiling water over the course of a weekend. Total weight of a full bottle is 180g.
What's more... the 'Baby Bio' bottle full of purple meths looks remarkably attractive and would grace any wild camp!
I think you are right about the marketing Bill. I think Bob C's site has forseen that internet shopping needs to be a more interactive experience with good product descriptions (like chatting to a person in a local store used to be like), big non-manufacturer photos (and I suspect more videos in the future) provided alongside general backpacking information (podcasts).
The problem with this kind of site is people can look at the product, think 'wow, that looks cool' and then go and buy it cheap from the states. Of course, he gets a lot of loyal customers who won't do this because they feel they get more than just products with very personal customer service (and free sweets!).
I like the look of Winwood's stoves but I think they should do a package 'Caldera cone' kit (stove, pan,pot holder like a trangia) and provide better photos. You get no idea of scale of the windshield.
I've got the caldera with 3 cup pan, lid & cozy from Winwood. Great stove! The only problem I had with high winds was the lid blowing of the pan. I've also put foil underneath to stop scorching the ground. I thought packing it may be awkward but I've found it rolls in to a large empty pot-noodle pot that I use as my cup nicely with about an inch protruding. I can also get my fuel bottle, grip, spoon & syringe inside the rolled up cone.
Re the syringe - it was a tip I overheard at the BPC agm. I think the syringe I have is for refilling printer ink cartridges, weighs 6gm. Used for emptying any unused fuel from the burner which is otherwise awkward with the caldera burner. I was going to use an easy to empty burner but apparently the caldera burners designed specifically to work well inside the cone. I will try some other burners eventually for the hell of it.
One type of syringe I have found to be useful in filling those closed top stoves is found at a veterinary supply. They come in a 20cc size and are used for giving vacinations to farm animals.
