(All characters, companies mentioned in this conspiracy theory are real. Any resemblance with actual brand names are completely intentional. The theory however is my personal imaginative explanation of joining the dots, and correlating the data points, in a vague attempt to construct a logical model to my observations.)
I can't think of equipment manufacturers beyond real world business. And ESN Elastomers Gmbh, the german rubber company that makes all tensor and tensor Bios rubbers sold by Andro, Tibhar, Xiom, Donic (without tensor logo), Joola, Gewo, Palio etc.; are no different than profit motivated, shareholder-focussed, board-managed, B-School Mgmt run, corporate entity.
We know there had been generations of tensors staring from earlier generations of 729 Highpoint, desto etc to today's roxons, Xplode, Nimbus, Vega, Hexer, Macro and whatever.
I am increasingly feeling that in a bid to marketing success ESN compromised good products with "mee-too" products, looking at customer psyche.
ESN products are a decent technology by themselves, and up to roxon/xpress/zeta/macro era/big slam we had seen constant improvement in topsheet quality, playability, durability and speed glue effect.
They never really cared much to create very grippy/tacky rubber, which could be because:
1. Lack of large market: Asian markets which support bulk of tacky products would not afford ESN products with european manufacturing cost.
2. Technology: Time and again it seems the topsheet is more important in Tensor technology, which restricts too much variation of topsheet composition, but adding different sponge hardness and changing pip structures for a little assortment.
And then, in came Tenergy from butterfly, with so called spring sponge (with billions of nano springs implanted as some gullible users were made to believe
ha ha), on a completely contrasting, but quite effective, technology than ESN. This is more like sponge-focused technology, so while they could change the topsheet pip structure for variations, they pretty much stuck to the same sponge for first 3 products. (now after about 1.5 years are about come up with a harder (spinart) and softer (tenergy fx) sponge versions.
Tenergy swept the market like Yasaka Mark V did 30 years back; and definitely created new benchmark for Spin and Durability of Glue Effect; which none of ESN rubbers could match. Added to that, butterfly’s marketing and sponsorship engine resulted in pro’s adoption of tenergy, followed by club players.
Tenergy wave seriously threatened ESN’s market share, and the market share of all other companies selling ESN rubbers under their own brand names. Let me add a bit of corporate fantasy here.
ESN’s marketing presentations are flooded with nose-diving sales charts. ESN’s lab is flooded with samples of Tenergy sent by Andro Donic Tibhar, xiom… and desperately asking to come up with something in this line.
But unlike blades, rubbers cannot be reverse-engineered as quickly. So it would probably take significant time and research to come up with competitive technology.
What’s to be noted here is, before the tenergy wave, ESN was kinda leading glue effect rubber manufacturer, and had fairly good products like Roxon, palio macro era in its kitty already.
But market pressure made ESN deviate from the 'product improvement' route to, ….. guess what… 'product mimicry' route.
"IF YOU CAN’T MAKE TENERGY, MAKE SOMETHING THAT LOOKS LIKE TENERGY"… said ESN chief.....!!
[The conspiracy theory will continue after a break. To see what ended up screwing years of research, and compromising quality of product in a bid to product positioning and gaining market share …stick on to this channel]....
[after the break]
Okay I took a while to get back after the commercial break. And also enjoyed your opinions on first part. But this is just tip of the iceberg. The story begins here.
"IF YOU CAN’T MAKE TENERGY, MAKE SOMETHING THAT LOOKS LIKE TENERGY"… said ESN chief.....!!
ESN engineers followed the directive from ESN chief, and dedicated their efforts in making something that mimics tenergy, and makes consumers believe that the Tenergy code is broken.
Now even though I have a little background of material science, these technologies are so much in cutting edge of innovation, no material science engineer can predict for sure except for the guys in ESN lab. But even then, using some very crude overall idea (and some guesstimates) I can try to construct a vague model to explain my observations. The truth may be far from this, or may not be.
A ‘sponge’ is a substrate that solidified with interconnected capillaries and pores with entrapped air. It’s not exactly like your car tire, that doesn’t lose the air under pressure, but deforms to accommodate the stress. In case of sponge the air is purged out under pressure and sucked in again as the material recoils to original shape … in this case elastomers; which are known for their ability of taking high amount of elastic deformation (‘elastic’ deformation is a deformation which retracts to original shape when the stress is relieved, contrary to ‘plastic’ deformation).
So sponge is more like an air-elastomer composite.
Now, how fast this material snaps back to original shape, from deformed state, and hence provides resultant thrust on the ball; depends on 2 factors:
1. the material stiffness (loosely used… not stiffness in technical term)
2. the dense-ness (loosely ‘body’) of the material (I didn’t use the word density to differentiate from weight or mas per unit volume)
While having more volume of air in the sponge would allow for higher amount of deformation, allowing more dwell of the ball, it will also produce less thrust on recoil due to factor 2. So the best option would be if Factor 1 is very high, i.e. get elastomers that are stiff enough that even with lower denseness, they can snap back faster with more resultant pressure. I guess Tenergy sponge material does that very well. The walls of these capillaries has such higher stiffness that even with lot of larger pores, they recoil fairly well.
[Someone may wonder why is then Tenergy heavier? The intrinsic weight of the elastomer used in tenergy is higher, even though they occupy less volume with more pores.]
The ESN sponges were not fit for that. The material being less stiff, they have finer dispersion of pores and capillaries. Changing that distribution and pushing bigger visible pores, means slacker response of the sponge.
Let’s leave it there and look at certain observations:
- I have found, and checked with many others, that the speed of newer ESN rubbers is lower on average for similar hardness ESN sponges used in Roxon generation.
- I have also found and validated from some, that the newer ESN sponges lose their speed response noticeably after 1-3 weeks. There will of course be some difference in opinion, because of individuals and other factors. Older ESN sponges did suffer from surface deterioration lowering spin, but speed deterioration was not so prompt.
- Did you notice the Hexer+ sponge? They have made it with smaller pores than Hexer.
Now lets guess what happened?
Dr. Ulbrecht Schmidt, (say ..ESN rubber scientist comes to ESN chief presents him the new Tenergy textured sponge. And ESN chief is overjoyed.
“Wow!! This is what we want… look, its even wobbly to hold …just like that Jap whazzizname!” (He prefers not to mention Tenergy even if he remembers the name.) “How does it play?”
After next 20 minutes of constant looping and changing paddle, their tester decides to retire. “I don't get paid for as much." He said "Its too much effort, too slow for speed-glue ban era. Not gonna work, chief. And i am gonna take with the Lufthansa employee route, if you ask me to do that again!”
After some more samples lots and test batches… ESN figures its not possible to replicate Tenergy in this short time.
ESN is in major trouble. Tenergy keeps gaining its market share, and to add to their worries… Chinese brands are coming up with low-tech tuned rubbers every other day, taking a “now significant chunk of their market pie”. These tuned products are making inroads even in EU and US market, which is the sweet spot of ESN. If something is not done soon enough, ESN may very soon be known as specialized "manufacturers of best chopping rubbers".
After many closed-door, closed-window, round tables, and Lunch-Meetings, ESN chief passes the proposal ….
- ESN will sell the new porous sponge rubbers with strong marketing support from their brand owners,
- ESN will sell them slightly cheaper to undercut Tenergy
- To avoid the out-of-packet disappointment, ESN will FACTORY-TUNE these rubbers, carefully avoiding any smelly tuner or tuners that leave long term residue on the sponge.
- This would help ESN to buy time for R&D to come up with a truly competitive product, and keep the revenue rolling in the meantime to fund their operations
And so they did. And successfully managed to recover some market share.
And now eventually when it is creating some real issue in 'pro' players' adoption of these new generation rubbers, ESN is trying to strike a balance by reducing the size of pores to something between Hexer and Roxon in its 'newer new generation' line which is to start with, I guess, Hexer+. Someone posted a sponge structure comparison between Hexer and Hexer+ which makes it pretty apparent.
But IMO, the pre-tenergy tensor bios rubbers, like Palio Macro Era or Roxon or Joola Xpress was really the peak offering so far from ESN. r
[And ESN should consider my resume for their product positioning ]
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Beauty is only pimple deep! Beauty is in the eye of the pipholder!
) it would surely qualify!
