Thread: Ripa Grip Clamps.............Any Good????

Lou
I did see that episode on "The new inventors" and thought that they were a great idea, from what I saw the Rip-A-Grip Clamps seemed to work well at holding all different shapes together.

Does it really matter? The price is ridiculous. $300 for a small clamp? You wonder who did their market research. Lee Valley have similar cantilever clamps for a tenth of that price.

Those prices are bad

Wouldn't even pick them up to have a look - at that price they might charge you just for looking.

Originally Posted by LineLefty

Does it really matter? The price is ridiculous. $300 for a small clamp? You wonder who did their market research. Lee Valley have similar cantilever clamps for a tenth of that price.

"Yeah" I agree with you, I thought the same thing when I saw the price.

Ripa Grip


Thats the noise it makes on your wallet...

Al

Whew they are a bit expensive. They had want to have a consecutive life warranty as well.

Cheers

Kris

Gidday!

Looks like the Price is going to be a big factor................You'd think that they'd want to keep the price competitive So that unit wise this product would take OFF!!!

......................Seems the Rip a Grips are well and truely beyond the budget of the average Woodworker.................................pity really!!!!!!

Um ............wondering if anyone here has had the opportunity to try em out............Maybe at a woodshow or something like that?????

REgards Lou :eek:

I saw 'em at an agricultural field day and they are well built, but they have to be jokin' on a bang/buck basis! Actually, they sell at wholesale price at ag shows(aparently) certainly somewhat cheaper that retail. Seemed to me that they were actually designed for welders and metal fabricators or for a cocky needing a make do vice when fixing his windmill...they were big on clamping stuff to the 4WD bumper and such.Won't make it to my workshop,sorry.

Hi Guys

Being one of the Directors of Grey Dog Designs the designers and manufacturers of the Ripa-Grip Clamp, I have will try and answer your couple of questions.

Is it Any Good, well we have now sold over 4000 of these products (mainly the mid sized one) all over Australia and New Zealand, we have entered it in 6 inventors awards and won all 6 the most recent being the Mystery Creek Field Days in New Zealand (biggest in the southern hemisphere). We have had many customers come back to us after purchasing one or two to buy more. It is extremely versitile and powerful, also extremely easy to use.

The Price, yes it is expensive the RRP for them is $129 small, $199 mid and $329 large, but please remember that the product is made right here in Australia by Australian companies employing Australian workers. They don't work for $2 per day like they do in India or China. We will be reducing the price as soon as we can start producing them in larger numbers. Remember how much a DVD player was a couple or years ago or the price of a CD-RW in a computer. We may very well have to have them made overseas so that they can be purchased by home handyman and not just tradesman. It is also made entirely out of steel and because of this fact and the engineering it is able to apply 1000kg of force in its jaws, sure you may not need that much pressure but it's there if you do.

The Ripa-Grip Clamp is protected by World Wide Patents, this as you can imagine isn't cheap.

We also did do market research and while it's not aimed at the home handman or wood worker we hope that one day it will be availabe in stores like Bunnings for a fraction of the cost that it is now. We have only been selling the clamps for 18 months now.

Please check out our website at www.greydog.com.au for more information
and remember they are sold at wholesale prices when we attended shows to promote the product.

Thanks

Simon Lyne
Director
Grey Dog Designs

Couldn't even look at them at that price, no matter how good they were.

Thank you very much for contributing to our forum Ripa-Grip I for one really appreciate your reply................................and hopefully will own a few Rippa-Grip clamps down the track!!!

Good luck!!! I for one hope your product takes off!!!..............so that it becomes more accessable to the average Woodworker!!!!

Aussie!! Aussie!!! Aussie!!!!...............................Oy!......Oy!!!!!!Oy!!!!!!

Regards Lou

Yeah, I'm not sure Lou,

I mean it's about comparative advantage. If the chinese can produce metal objects cheaper than we can then good luck to them. If we can produce the intellectual property better then them then we should stick to that. This whole idea that we should buy something because it's made in Australia is a bit contrite to me, where do those profits end up? In a private persons pocket to be spent on imported goods.

We cant be expected to pay top dollar for things just because it's made in Australia. Simon, I appreciate your reply, and read it with a great deal of interest. If you manage to make the RipaGrip a success then thats fantastic. It's just that that price it doesnt even come into the realm of the non-pro user.

For the woodwork market, You'd do well not to confuse your potential customers with Handymen. These blokes have no problems spending $120 on a Bessey or Jorgenson Clamp or someother high priced tool. There are proffessionals/Trade markets, Handyman markets and serious Hobby markets, all three are different. The Handyman market I think is by far the most lucrative. Even if you only make $5 per clamp at Bunnings it'd still be a big earner.

I admire the product, it's a great clamp. Good luck with your business, you've obviously got some serious market positioning decisions to make. Btw the Ripa Grip is amazingly well known, most people I know have seen one.

Hi all,

think we may have been a bit hard on Ripa Grip here. Nothing on the website seems to indicate that the product has been designed with woodworking in mind and the design seems to be more for heavy industry/farming.

The product definately seems to be aimed at metal fabrication, emergency repair and welding. Having worked on dozers and graders and having travelled many hours to repair them the one thing that you needed was tools that you can rely on not to break even if used outside the tools design brief. (Ten foot bars on sockets etc)

Every hour a D9 was down cost something like $250 an hour in lost earnings so $300 for a tool to repair it is nothing. Particularly if you have driven for 3 hours to the site the last thing you want is a cheap tool to let you down!.

For years the Stahwihle tool people were the leaders in hand tools for industry. Cost was way past the others but very rarely did they let you down and had a no question replacement policy if you broke one even using it inappropriately.

If Ripa can achive this degree of trust life looks rosy.

Good luck Ripa Gripa people.
Dazzler

Ripa-Grip

You are going to have to convince the potential customers that your product is better than the other clamps of the same type that are on the market already, and have been so for some time - and these clamps are made for welding with anti-spatter coatings, shaped multi-faceted jaw blocks etc.

I don't know what your patents cover, but if the features were already in use by other clamp manufacturers, you may need to give your patent experts a 'clip under the ear' at least. I also can't speak for the depth of knowledge of the prize judges, or what the specifications of those awards were - as has been shown recently in the wine field, show awards are hardly worth the paper they are written on these days.

At the risk of 'contaminating' your mind from a patenting point-of-view, here are a couple of examples:

http://www.leevalley.com/wood/page.a...12&cat=51&ap=1
and
http://www.leevalley.com/wood/page.a...838,47843&ap=1