Starting about a year ago we started encountering de-lamination of the adhesive that seals the hog’s hair in the head. We are finding that plugs of hair are falling out and causing premature brush failure. We use about 200 EB212570 heads a year for over 30 years we notified the company and they seem to not stand behind their product and not offer a solution. I am out about $4000 on the batch of brushes we returned to them and will never purchase anything from this company again. It is not a chemical issue because universal brush or hog daddy does not show similar issues. My advice is anyone who is buying a Erie made product to go inspect their product and make a decision on for themselves whether you should continue to buy their product
Hi Everyone, my name is Jason and I am the owner of Erie Brush. I feel like I should be part of this conversation so it’s known how we are and continuing to handle this specific scenario of the original poster. I will bend over backwards for customers and do pretty much anything to make a situation right especially if it's a manufacturing issue. Below is what transpired on my side.
Kleen-Rite reached out on Aug 29 to tell us a customer is having some issues with around 40 brushes. My office manager asked to have the brushes sent back so we can examine them and determine what any issue is and if needed, figure out how to not let it happen again. We take this very serious and I definitely will and do lose sleep over the slightest customer issue.
About a month later, Sept 25 we received 36 brushes from KR that the customer had sent to them. For each brush, I personally examined them, took a photo of each, and wrote down a description of the condition along with the date each was made. I don’t believe it was known, but we do put a date code on every brush that includes the initials of the person who made it and the month/year. I attached a pdf of all of the brushes sent back.
Here's what my brush examination resulted in:
23 of the 36 brushes are from 2020 (qty11), 2021 (qty 6) or 2022 (qty 6). So again, that’s 23 of the 36 that are 3, 4, and 5 years old.
Of most of those 23, most had perfect u-shaped wear patterns as shown in the pics and pdf attached. To anyone, it was a brush that had a nice full life of cleaning. I think it’s reasonable to say it’s hard for me to consider a brush that’s 3, 4, 5 years old and totally worn down, as we all know customers can really abuse the equipment, especially those brushes that had no life left to them. Of the remaining that were 2 years old or newer, the majority were either in excellent condition or had a pronounced u-shape meaning they were definitely nearing their end of life. But of the ones in excellent condition, I looked closely and on a couple, I did see a chip or two in the glue or slight lifting on the ends. So based on this, 2 brushes qualified for a warranty. In talking with KR, they said they were going to give a case to the customer and wanted me to go in half. I always want to be a good partner, but again, I could only go based on what was sent to me and what was sent was mostly brushes that went through a full lifecycle. I told them I identified 2 but can double it to 4 as a good faith gesture.
So again, from my perspective, I can only go based on what the customer sends me. In this case, I was sent mostly brushes that had a full life of cleaning. Fast forward and I see this post on the forum. I made KR aware and they provided the customers number and I called him. We talked for 47 minutes exactly. My point was that I can only go based on what I was sent. His point was he buys 200 brushes a year from KR and he sees a problem and I should accept his word and give him 40 brushes in return. It’s not that I don’t believe him either, but going based on someone saying something and sending brushes that are mostly old and fully loved, it’s just not something a small business can absorb to just send 40 brushes based on his word, especially hog’s hair which is in short demand, extremely expensive, and all around difficult to get.
But any brush that clearly has a manufacturing defect that’s reasonable in age will absolutely get warrantied. And to note, I’m not brushing this off, I have our epoxy vendors coming in Monday and they’ve already sent samples of our glue to the lab to ensure it still meets the expected performance thresholds plus I asked for ways to get more flexibility in the epoxy to resist cracks. I have several calls, emails and pictures to our plastic block vendor and working through how to get even more adhesion. It should be known though that absolutely nothing has changed here. Same epoxy for the last 20 years, same plastic block provider for at least that long, same process hand gluing every brush, and same employees, most have a 15-25 year tenure in that department. As far as the hog’s hair color, it changes since it comes from a hog. You have brunette hogs, blonde hogs, black-haired hogs. Myself, I like a nice brunette one, but the blonde ones are more fun. If there’s ever anything, compliment or complaint, I am always easy to reach. 773.477.9620. After hours, it rings my cell phone because I never want to miss a call.
Oh and original poster sent me a picture of a brush after our call. I don’t know the age, but I said I want that one back too and just sent a replacement 4.5" brush today with a return label to get the other one back. Oh and I called KR and upped it to 8 brushes. I reexamined the new ones he sent and while it’s not super evident beyond the 2, there's 2 others that have the slightest lifting in one part so 4 qualify and of course I doubled that to 8 since i doubled it originally.
Sorry for all the words, hope this helps. One day, I’ll do a video on what goes into making a hog’s hair brush, it’ll be quite fascinating to most.
Thanks! Jason
