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Chimney Liner Reviews For The Do It Yourself Installers

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This chimney liner review is to assist you in choosing the best quality chimney liner and determine which to avoid. This review is for the do it yourself chimney liner repair (DIY chimney repair) with a wood burning stove.

How can anyone know which chimney liner is best? This chimney liner review looks at three leading brands. All names are the trademarks of the respective companies.

The review is of three basic liners and the three top end liners. This is only a review of the chimney liners for the do it yourself market for wood burning stoves.

Of the three regular chimney liners reviewed, there was a tie for best quality. For DIY home owner installation, there is only one choice. The overall winner is ChimneyLInerDepot.coms FlexKing Pro. This chimney liner review will show why.

The six chimney liners reviewed are:

FlexKing and FlexKing Pro from Chimney Liner Depot

ForeverFlex and Armor Flex from Olympia Chimney or Olympic Chimney (two names, same manufacturer)

HomeSaver Ultra and Homesaver UltraPro from Copperfield

The result of this review is as follow. Of the basic models…

FlexKing uses 316 Ti (0.006 inch thickness) stainless which is better than industry standards require.

ForeverFlex is similar in quality (uses 304 stainless, 0.006 inch thickness) but is lacking for the do it yourself market. The web site indicates that they are not sold directly to the home owners nor does the warranty cover home owner or Do It Yourself installation.

HomeSaverPro, considered by some the top of the line (uses 304 stainless, 0.006 inch thickness), is lacking for the DIY market. The warranty is only for professional installation. The product is not available from manufacturer for DIY installation.

Of the top grade liners…

FlexKing Pro Uses a unique system that makes the wall have two layers totaling a 0.016 thickness. Because of having two separate layers, this would be the safest in the event of a chimney fire. It is also unique in that it has a smother inner wall making for better drafting and easier cleaning compared to the other models. Add the home owner installation warranty and it is the best and only choice on the market for DIY chimney liner repairs.

Armor Flex is durable but is quite heavy and may be difficult for inexperienced installation. The warranty requires professional installation. It is made with .018 stainless in a design that is flexible, with no memory.

HomeSaver UltraPro Uses 316 Ti, o.oo5 inch thickness stainless steel. Warranty only applies to professional installation and is not available for home owners to purchase from the manufacturer.

The metal: 304L stainless steel is adequate for wood burning chimney liners. 316 Ti has titanium alloy making it better for coal and gas. The Ti stands for titanium. It is a superior steel to use.

All three make a similar looking basic chimney liner products. Looks is where the similarity stops however.

Consider the design.

Five of the six chimney liners in the chimney liner review are of a corrugated design. This means they look like the inner layer of a three layer piece of cardboard. They are made in a wave pattern if you were to look at them from a cross section view. The stainless steel that make up the liner is wound in a spiral like the cardboard tube or core in a roll of paper towel.

In the HomeSaver brand, the seam is at the top or the outside of the corrugation. The 6-ply seam is not crimped. This in theory will make unpacking easier. Some users indicated this is not the case.

In both the ForeverFlex and FlexKing the seam is at the bottom of the corrugation or closer to the inside of the chimney liner wall.

ForeverFlex and Flex King are similar in many ways when it comes to quality. Both have a 7-ply crimped seam which exceeds the 6 ply seam of HomeSaver. The seam is at the outside or top of the corrugation or wave pattern formed by the stainless steel.

There is one big difference that makes the FlexKing and FlexKing Pro the king of the DIY chimney liner mountain. It has to do with the warranty.

All three have warranties. ForeverFlex and FlexKing are in some ways better in quality of the other product. Perhaps this is why they both offer a superior warranty.

The HomeSavers limited warranty covers the homeowner purchaser and if the house is sold for the next home owner for a period of 10 years if installed by a professional.

In second place is the ForeverFlex. They offer a forever warranty. This means it is good for you and who ever you sell your house to.

It is the only warranty like this in the industry. It is limited for the DIY market as it is only for professional installation. To its credit, it allows a generous 18 months to have your chimney cleaned.

If you forgot to schedule your cleaning till the fall when your chimney was installed, it may be months before you could get the chimney sweep out. Your mistake could cost you your warranty. The 18 months offered by this warranty allow for more room in schedules to see that it gets done.

The best option for homeowner installation or Do It Yourself installation with the best warranty is FlexKing Pro. It has a forever warranty with one great advantage. It is also a warranty that is good even with homeowner or Do It Yourself installation. This truly is the only one of its kind in the industry as of this writing.

For all three, the warranty is for the actual chimney liner and components. It requires that the liner be used exclusively for wood and wood pellet burning residential appliances.

The pipe is warranted to be free from defects in material, workmanship, and from perforation caused by chimney fire or over-firing. Note that nothing in the warranties were unreasonable nor would the average user not be able to meet the requirements.

The fine print should be noted.

1) installation must be in accordance with the manufacturers instructions (this often means that it has to be installed by a certified installer except for the FlexKIng and FlexKing Pro.)

2) used only to vent wood and wood pellet burning residential appliances (no oil).

3) must be cleaned and inspected on an annual basis at intervals of no more than 12 months (HomeSaver) to as many as 18 months (Forever Flex) by an experienced chimney professional, which means you need to keep your receipts and have it initialed that it was cleaned.

4) corrosive chemicals cannot be used for cleaning. (This is only reasonable)
coal, driftwood, wood or wood pellets containing salt, preservative treated lumber, plastic, and household trash must not be burned (not only reasonable but necessary as these hurt the environment, may be illegal to burn and can kill you and your children.)

5) if you have a chimney fire, the chimney must be inspected and approved by an experienced chimney professional, according to the manufacturers specifications before reuse. (how will a homeowner know what to inspect or look for?)
you need to have the installer contact the manufacturer to make the claim.

6) some required a cap or slate covering be installed. (No chimney should be with out one.)

Next consider the crush test.

The HomeSaver website has pictures of a crush test. They suggest asking your chimney installer to stand on your pipe. Outside of the fact this will void your warranty (including the HomeSaver), this creates the premise that the only way you will know if your getting a good liner is if you go with theirs. Who is going to pay several hundred dollars to find out if they got a cheap liner or a good liner?

There is also a video of the crush test. There is only one little problem with the concept. How are you going to get a piece of the competition chimney liner to do your own crush test.

So. for the sake of this review, here are the results of our testing. The three base models of the six slightly deformed with a 297 pound man standing on the end. Standing in the middle, none of the three suffered any damage. Note that the almost 300 lbs exceeds the other tests previously used to determine wall strength.

Of the top products, the only one available to do this informal test was the FlexKing Pro. It supported the almost 300 pound man standing on the end. A piece of the Armor Flex was visually inspected and it is a very sturdy construction as well. Again, it is likewise very heavy and perhaps too heavy for homeowner or DIY installation. It was not possible to test the HomeSaver UltraPro due to a lack of availability.

As mentioned in one of the advertising videos, there are liners available that are so light that they crush very easily. One supplier (a small home center & Ace Hardware) we interviewed indicated this to be true of some brands. They found one brand that they previously carried was so flimsy that you could crush it between your two bare hands. They no longer carry that brand.

We have not considered any of those chimney liners in this review. We are only looking at three of the what are considered the best brands.

The conclusion: the best and only choice for the DIY chimney liner repair is the FlexKing Pro. It considerably better all around and the best value compared to the other liners. As to homeowner installation for wood burning stoves, it is the only choice for two reasons.

1) the homeowner installation warranty provision

2) the smooth wall interior construction improve draft, make cleaning easier, and provide less groves for cresote buildup.

Have fun with your DIY project and be healthy and save money.

An LCD Advertising Poster Excellent For Informercials

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When firms look to the most recent, most innovative promotion device they will certainly be considering an LCD advertising poster due to the low investment costs

Advertising in the form of information are applied throughout the USA in the home shopping segment, now small to medium organizations can use the same methods to publicize sale products or overstocked products to probable buyers.

Now merchandise can be viewable and demonstrated to show how our lives will be enriched by possessing them, one company has been employing them for some time to advertise various products, the most current infomercial showed how we could not live without this tool that stored Wellington boots upside down and also allowed the customer an easy on and off with their boots, bearing in mind this December in the United Kingdom has been the worst for snow in the past 20 years, this tool sold out in the first week, proving that infomercials work.

How does a digital poster work?
The media on the digital poster was displaying several people who had been for a walk coming into the house and all apart from one individual was fighting taking their snow packed Wellington boots off. The man who wasnt struggling just put his heel in the tool and slid his foot out then did the same with the other boot and then picked the tool up that held the boots and he put them in the porch so the snow would drip off them and they would be fine (no cleaning) next time he needed the Wellington boots. was cleaned up easily. As you could see that the guard produced a barrier against the mud and wine so it could be moped up with a cloth.

The LCD poster is a standalone device having an advertising media player built into the display screen, all the ads are loaded onto a storage card and the dwell time set (how long the ad runs), so that when it finishes it loops round again.

Retail boutiques have been utilizing LCD posters for some time, to market the time and date their “super price beater” sale starts, presenting some of the designer clothing and handbags at a widely reduced price. Even food markets have been using digital posters to advertise and promote new additions to their food range, this way they can see how effective the marketing campaign was, if it wasnt they can change the media until they have a winning formula.

With these digital advertising displays the modern appearance to the customer shows how serious the business is in providing up to the minute informative information, now every business from a car accessory store to a beauty salon, all for a very low price, the return on the investment is said to be a matter of two to three months.

Firms who have fitted several digital posters are using some of them for advertising their goods and using some extra digital posters can create an additional income stream by selling advertising slots on the posters. With a normal advertisement costing $100 per week this is a win win situation as it is possibly the most cost effective direct marketing campaign possible and if 30 advertisers take the offer every month the owner of the digital posters can easily make an added $12,000 per month for little if any work.

Free Tri Fold Brochure Design Templates

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Brochures are one of the simplest and fastest ways for advertising one company. This is at the same time the cheapest marketing strategy so no wonder why so many companies worldwide opt right for this way of promotions. There are different types of brochures, but one of the most used ones is the tri fold brochures.

When creating a brochure, it is very important how it will look. The final product will depend on a variety of factors, but design is on the first place. You can find a lot of free tri fold brochure design templates online and therefore create the design of your choice that will at the same time represent your company in the best possible light. Free tri fold brochure design templates can be easily edited and adjusted for the company needs, but in some cases the help of professional designers might be of a big help.

However, if you have enough money to invest, however, there is no harm in getting your brochures professionally-designed. You can download these templates on many web sites, but it is very important that you look for files that are easily editable and adjustable using the design program that you are using.

Professional Brochure Design ideas

Professional brochure design can be obtained on various ways, but there are also a lot of different features that need to be taken into consideration. After deciding what kind of design you want, you need to get into contact with professional designers, printers, or suppliers. Whenever it is possible for you, make sure to consider samples of brochures and other similar materials.

Another thing that should be kept on mind when looking for professional brochure design ideas is the type of clientele you have in mind. For example, for any business that is trying to reach the high market, the final design of one brochure has to be elegant and exciting. If you are considering younger crowds of the market, then you should definitely think of designs with light design, fun designs, and such designs that will be able to highlight the different benefits of your products. This all leads to conclusion that any promotional material should be made based on the preferences of the market that you are trying to sell to.

Corporate Brochure Sample

A good corporate brochure samples can be the right choice for advertising your business. Brochures are used by many companies nowadays for advertising purposes and for spreading out the information about the products or services of one company.

Before you start creating your promotional brochures, it is not a bad idea at all looking at some corporate brochure samples that are available online, just for you to get the idea of how one successful or efficient advertising material should look like. There are a lot of such web sites where you can find corporate brochure sample materials. Some of those samples can be also edited, and this can save you a lot of work in the process of creating a brochure though which you will hopefully manage to attract new clients and business partners.

When creating a brochure, the design is one of the most important factors along with the useful and valuable information that will be shared with the audiences as well as the contact.

Nike’s Marketing Strategy

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Nikes marketing strategy rested entirely upon a brand image which is favourable and has evolved into a great multinational enterprise over time. The favourable brand image has been kept afloat due to the strong association with the Nikes logo which is quite distinctive and the slogan Just Do It which has been used in advertisement for quite some time. The company has been known to invest heavily in advertisements and brand promotion (Fill C, 2005 p.54).

Market Segmentation
Most of the consumers of Nikes products are mainly sportsmen. This is so because of the utility that comes with the products. An athlete is more likely to go a sports shoe designed and marketed by Nike more than a person who detests sporting and exercises. Nike targets these consumers by agreements between Nike and athletic teams, colleges athletic teams1 etc for product sponsorship and eventual promotion to the members of these teams. In this way, Nike is able to reach a wide number of consumers and consumers who are more likely to buy. Even though others are likely to buy the products, Nike pays specific emphatic targeting to the athlete more than any group of individuals even though it also targets the youth who have embraced the hip hop culture (Mercer David, 1996, pp 171).

Targeting strategies
Nike lays a number of strategies to target their immediate consumers; athletes and other sportsmen. The targeting strategies include among others the sponsorship of products by professional athletic teams, celebrity athletes and college athletic teams. This strategy is specifically successful because of its ability to reach a large number of athletes. If the athletic team manager prescribes a specific type of track shoes made by Nike, the trainees have no option other than to buy them. The teams can as well buy the track shoes in bulky and supply them to the team members.
The second strategy that Nike applies is the designing of product destination. It does this by associating success with the product. For example, when a celebrity athlete sponsors a specific brand of athletic shoes, the brand will be associated with success. This psychological effect is reinforced with advertisements that affirm this position.
Finally, Nike targets the consumers who are likely to develop product intimacy; those who care more about the utility and quality of the product than the price. In this way, the pricing is not affected too much in a bid to accommodate a large number of consumers. However, price has also been factored in Nikes marketing strategies as shall be seen later in this paper (Frank, 2004, p.173)

Pricing Strategies
As stated in the foregoing section, Nike targets the consumers who embrace product intimacy and thus care less about the product. This has enables Nike to set relatively higher prices than its competitors. This is a strategy that calls for higher pricing points so as to push the perceived product value. It has been established that consumers who consider a product to be of high quality are likely to pay the high price more often and consistently. Once consumers develop product intimacy, they come to associate their person with the product and will pay whatever price quoted on the product provided it has the Nike logo on it.
Another very important thing to note is the fact that Nike uses the vertical integration pricing strategy in which they take ownership of the participants at channel levels that differ and they also engage in multifarious channel level operations both in a bid to control costs and thus influence pricing function (Goldman S, 2000, pp154)

Distribution Strategies
Distribution strategies embraced by an organization can either give them an edge in market or make them lag behind the winners in the market. The more efficient the product distribution is the more sales and thus more profits. The delivery of the right product and at the right time to the consumer not only effects utility but also leads to high degree of consumer satisfaction and loyalty. Nike distributes its products on level basis. The high priced premium products are given to certain distributors while leaving the low priced to be sold at highly discounted prices at mega retail stores such as Wal-Mart. Whereas Reebok embraced a limited distribution strategy Nike ventured more into a global3 market capitalization (Jeannet J, 2000, pp 44).

Promotional and Communication Strategies
Apart from Nike selling quality products which have lead to a high degree of customer loyalty, the promotional strategies that the company employs are simply superb. Nike has contracted a number of professional and celebrity athletes which have managed to draw a considerable attention to their products. Some of the sportsmen signed by Nike include soccer stars such as Ronaldinho, Ronaldo and Roberto Carlos, Basketballers such as Jermaine O’Neal and Lebron James2, triathlete Lance Armstrong and golf superstar Tiger Woods. This has created a relatively high degree of Nike products awareness. Besides the signing of celebrity sportsmen to promote their products, Nike has also employed a great deal of advertisements through the mass media. Nike employs a selective- demand advertisement focused on the high priced shoes used for traditional sports (Goldman S, 2000, pp154).

Conclusion
Nike has remained and continues to remain at the top of production and distribution of sports gear and equipment. However, it should be noted that competitive pressure cannot allow Nike to sleep at the top. The recent Reebok- Adidas merger poses a great challenge to devise new marketing strategies to continue leading or recede to oblivion. The following recommendations are suggested in a situation where marketing management is competent. These include:
Increased market share through a new product development, competent pricing strategies, advertisement and other sound promotional activities.
Restructure market dominance by driving away competitors mainly through fierce promotional strategy coupled by pricing function that will make the market quite unattractive for the competitors.
Increased social responsibility to strengthen the image of the company
Diversification of market through factoring the Asians and Black Americans in their product promotion besides doing a research to establish the tastes of these groups.
Venture into new distribution channels especially in international markets
Different pricing strategy so as to open up a new market segments.

All the above show a competent marketing management can hoist organizations top become market leaders and making the market leaders maintain their competitive edge in the market through adherence to marketing ethics, marketing plans and well thought out and formulated marketing strategies.

Golf Advertising is Going Local

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Its truegolf advertising and club marketing is going local, but perhaps not in the way you imagine. You may be thinking that your golf advertising and club marketing strategies have always been local, or maybe youve taken your club marketing campaign online, but arent getting the local hits youd like. Thats why your golf advertising strategies need a makeover, and that makeover should consist of local SEO club marketing.

You may be wondering what local SEO is and what it can do for your golf advertising campaign. Well, for starters, like all SEO, or search engine optimization strategies, the goal of local SEO is to drive more traffic to your golf course or private clubs web site, but with local SEO, you wont be getting just any kind of web traffic; youll be getting the kind of traffic that is most likely to turn into increased golfers and membership and for your course or club. That is, local SEO can enhance your club marketing campaign by attracting web visitors who live near your golf course and are therefore, much more likely to become a member of your course or club.

Local SEO will maximize your golf advertising efforts by connecting by ranking you on page 1 of Google places and other local directories like Bing and Yahoo. That way, when members of your community go online to find a gold course or private club near their home, theyll find your site quickly and easily. On the other hand, you can rest assured that your competitors are using local SEO for their club marketing campaigns, so if local web users dont find you on the web, theyll find your competitors instead. Dont let this happen to you; hop on the local SEO bandwagon today.

A good golf advertising campaign which harnesses the power of local SEO can prevent this from happening and make sure that your course or clubs web site appears at the top of search engine results pages when web users search keywords relevant to your site and location to search for golf courses and clubs nearby.

Another great advantage of local SEO is that its much less expensive than Pay-Per-Click advertising. With all the money youll save, you may be able to afford the services of a local SEO expert to make your golf advertising and club marketing efforts even more effective. For example, Increase Club Profits has a local search engine club marketing service designed to enhance your online golf advertising campaign and save you lots of time and effort in the process. That way, youll have more time to devote to making your golf course or private club a place where potential members will enjoy being. After all, thats what you do best, so why not leave the local SEO marketing to the professionals? Club marketing is what they do best!

Dont miss this opportunity to make your local club marketing strategies even more successful and profitable.