PIFCO; 011

Provincial Incandescent Fittings Company may not be a name that is immediately identifiable to most people, and even with my marginally "techy" background I couldn't place it... but putting on my Alan Turing hat, just looking at the initial letters gives you "PIFC", which I then realised was actually "PIFCO" which I have heard of.

PICFO 1

PIFCO are for me, a budget-priced electronics and electricals manufacturer. The best way to demonstrate that is to use what is commonly known as the "Argos Principle" (well, for me anyway).

I came up with this theorem a long time ago, as a customer of Argos, when I had an Epiphany when looking through the company's catalogue. For those of you that aren't familiar with Argos and can't be bothered to click the link, they are one of the last (or THE last?) catalogue-based shopping retailers I'm aware of in the UK; you walk into their High Street stores, and rather than having everything on sale out and visible, you instead have "stands" or kiosks which house a huge, thick, laminated each page catalogue, along with pens / pencils and order "forms". The idea is that you use the catalogue to find what you want to order, fill in the catalogue number on an order slip, and either take it to the till and pay, or take it to a self-service kiosk and pay by card in the same way. You then get an order number and proceed to the "collection point", and your goods are picked and conveyed to the collection point from the stock area. The idea here is that the tiny "show room" aka catalogue space allows for much more of the store space to be used for warehousing of the stock. 

IKEA springs to mind as another company that does this sort of "fill out an order form and collect it as you leave", but the difference to Argos is that IKEA still has all the items out on display for you to view physically, where as Argos doesn't; you are literally "trusting" the catalogue pictures and text.

Anyway, without going off at a tangent too much, the thing I always find with Argos was that if you shop for any given item, they will have a range of goods covering a range of prices. Let's take a simple filter coffee maker... they will have the cheapest (probably their own "Cookworks"-brand one) for something like £7, right up to a top-of-the-range "Heston Blumenthal" filter coffee maker, for £199.99, and everything in between. 

What I always find myself doing is despite having no money these days, I always subconsciously discount the cheapest item and usually the next two or three "up"... or in other words if there are 10 coffee makers, I'll discount 10, 9, and probably number 8, along with the most expensive 1, 2 and possibly 3, leaving me with a choice of just 4. 

What I didn't realise was that I'm not alone in doing this, and Argos knows it too; although I can't find anything online right now, I remember reading that we all look at lists like this and think "Oh, I don't want the cheapest one... that'll be junk... and I don't want to pay for the most expensive one, as that will just be over-the-top "name brand" no better than something cheaper.... No, I'll get whatever I can afford from the remaining middle 'chunk'."

Argos know this is how people tend to shop from "lists", be it online, in a catalogue or whatever, where groups of similar products are involved. They ensure that in each store they will always have more of the "middle band" goods, and only a limited number of the cheapest and the most expensive items. The same likely goes for their UK supply / buying strategy; don't buy 100,000 of each coffee maker; buy numbers based on where they sit in the price hierarchy; 10,000 of the expensive one, 10,000 of the cheapest one, and 100,000 of the mid-range ones.

Do you find you tend to use this approach, even if you've never considered it before?

PIFCO 2

Where was I? Oh yes, so PIFCO to me is a somewhat "lower" brand-name, along the lines of "Binatone" (another often cheapest option for any electricals in the Argos catalogue), rather than up there with the giants of name-brands like "Apple", "Sony" et al.

What I didn't realise was that the company has been in existence for over 100 years, originally established in Manchester in 1900, Provincial Incandescent Fittings Co or PIFCO as they are now better known, sold a wide range of lighting, stoves & household goods from the first oil filled heaters, to developments in lighting and domestic appliances.

Battery-wise, I don't recall seeing these for sale in any of the stores I visit, and have only encountered them already fitted as OEM batteries in some products (and not PIFCO ones, I mean... I think I bought a garden ultrasonic cat scarer once that came with batteries and they were PIFCO ones, and that was years ago) but I did find you can still buy them here, for example, although PIFCO as a brand was no longer being used by the actual owners, Russell Hobbs for some time, but was then licensed for use by one KB (Import and Export) Ltd in 2007 who went on to market a range of electrical items under the name.

Bit leaky this one, but it does look to be at least 7 years old as of 2019.

Hyundai Heavy Industries; Super Alkaline OEM?; 006

 Another brand-name which I don't immediately think of when it comes to manufacturing or buying domestic AA batteries is that of the Korean car giant "Hyundai", but a quick check online shows me that they aren't just a car manufacturer, but a huge conglomerate that has it's fingers in many different pies... from cars to department stores to the strangely frightening-sounding "heavy industries".

Hyundai Super Alkaline 1

So it's no surprise that they also manufacture and sell batteries, I suppose and,  although I don't necessarily think of Hyundai as a "cheap" brand, they turn up not in mainstream retail shops, but in the bargain "Pound store" places instead.

No main site or page I could find for the batteries in English, but I did strike this Netherlands-based site here; http://hyundaibattery-nl.com/ which is worth a (translated) read.

Hyundai Super Alkaline 2

Not much else to say about this. It's a pretty nondescript design; white body, with a blue "top". Makes me wonder if this is an OEM or an "Original Equipment Manufacturer" battery... one that was supplied with some other companies device where they don't make batteries themselves. Kind of like the electric nose hair trimmer I got for Christmas this year. What a truly thoughtful gift... NOT.

No mercury or cadmium in this one either, which is good.

Oh, and I have yet to check my bottom for a date... I don't remember there being one on there last time I looked... ;-)

Duracell Type 1; Duralock OEM; 004

I think if the question "Name a brand of battery" came up in the quiz "Family Fortunes", "Duracell" would be near the top of the most popular ones, if not THE most popular answer.

Duracell Duralock OEM 1

This example (the first of many different Duracell variants to come I'm sure) is their OEM or "Original Equipment Manufacturer" version, with what they call "Duralock"; essentially, this is technology to prevent the battery "running down" over time, even when not in use and not I should add high performance PVC fencing for use in equestrian applications, as my original research first led me to. ;-)

Duracell offer a 10-year guarantee on the lifespan of these batteries, and are the only manufacturer that I can think of that offers such a long warranty. You can see why anyone selling a product which needs batteries would go for these for inclusion with their item (the "OEM" bit, meaning they aren't sold retail, but will have come with another item as the "included" batteries for it)... that is, if they valued their customers and their customer service.

To quote from their site;

"Ordinary zinc-carbon batteries contain fewer active ingredients inside and lose energy over time as chemical reactions go on constantly. Unlike zinc-carbon batteries, Duracell is filled with 2 times more active ingredients, which are locked inside a unique durable construction. It prevents battery leakage and helps the battery last significantly longer. Duralock is an exclusive power preservation system, which saves energy so effectively that your battery is guaranteed to stay powered for up to 10 years in ambient storage."

I wonder what those "active ingredients" are? Crystal fragments, ground Narwhal tusk powder, or perhaps even marshmallow pieces? Probably heavy elements or metals I guess... more research needed methinks.

I don't think there's anyone who hasn't heard of Duracell and their batteries, and I have fond memories myself of their advertising... be it the "one with the copper-coloured top" slogan (now, sadly "ripped off" by many battery manufacturers), to the "drumming bunny" adverts from all the way back in 1983, and onward to the advent of their "Powercheck" on-board battery tester, built right into the batteries themselves.

I've always felt that if you want a decent battery, and let's say for a good example here that one application I wouldn't be willing to use a pound shop battery for is that of a smoke or carbon monoxide alarm, then I personally feel you can't do better than buy Duracell. They are a trusted brand such as Virgin ("were",  perhaps would be a better word to suffix that after their train fiasco), and well-respected by the consumer.

Duracell Duralock OEM 2

There's now a huge range to choose from, even for the humble AA-size, with their latest offering being tagged as the "Ultra Power" battery, but do have a look at their history here, as some of it is fascinating. I never knew they had the first battery on the moon in the 1960's or that the Duracell "bunny" as it's become known has it's own biography.

At £4 for four (type "Power Plus") at present, that's a not insubstantial £1 per battery, or to put it another way 66 times more per battery than that of Kodak's "Super Heavy Duty" offering... but in the long run, a great many people like me believe them to be the battery to go to for longevity.

Made in China too, which is somewhat predicable these days.