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Ibassfsh,
I certainly don’t want to contradict you as your experience maybe completely different from my own. My experience at the manufacturing level is strictly related to the aquatic part of the pet industry so I feel very comfortable to say this, Central buying Kent and the others is just plain bad for the industry, let me explain. Most smaller companies like Kent did fairly well with quality control if they started it from the get go. Most would never have gotten were they were prior to being purchased without certain checks and balances. The only limiting factor is cost related to have the right people in the right area’s, ex: quality control. I would say that most companies that have survived their first 5 years learned what they needed to do to bring a quality product to market. The ones that didn’t simply faded away, or sold their companies for the value of their patents if they had any.
I won’t assume to know exactly how Central runs all the smaller companies they own, but I can say this, at one time they were a distributor of lawn and garden products and then pet products were added. They were not a manufacturer and in my book are still not manufacturers, even though they own a few. Under this context I don’t believe they have the mindset of what it takes to properly R&D, manufacture, QC, sell and distribute products for the good of our industry. For all we know, they may have kept the same staff that were their prior to purchasing these companies or they may have asked for changes to reduce cost, I don’t and have never worked for these companies, but I did know many of the people that did when I worked in the industry and many left when some of these buyouts were announced, (I remember ESU clearly) every manufacturer knew this was bad for the pet industry. Why? Because they knew that this would lock them out if Central had a line that competed with them and with time would take up more retail spots that many had. Then when they were firmly entrenched in the stores they could turn around and reduce the cost of manufacturing with quality first grade bulk chemicals or labor with much lower grades or overseas labor. This hurts manufacturers and finally consumers because it requires sales to R&D your next product, it costs to QC a good product and it takes years to gain recognition and dedication from consumers.
Of course, like you mentioned it could have been a bad day for someone or they never had good quality control prior to being purchased. But given Kents past I think it’s safe to say the changes had an effect.
I don’t want to seem overly pessimistic and I would rather be wrong than right, because I love my hobby and have for 35 years, but my perspective on the matter tells me that what were seeing with the Kent salt is only going to happen more often. Why? Dare we say profit?
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