We Visit Venom Group (Those LiPo Battery Guys)

 

 

Over the years that I have been involved with the world of aeromodeling there have been increasingly frequent occasions when I was given the opportunity to represent one or another of the manufacturers or distributors that supply us with all those wonderful things that make it not only possible but practical for us to enjoy model aviation as it exists today. It should be no surprise that I won’t recommend any product with which I have not had good personal experience. In fact, if you were to come up to me at the field and ask, “What do you think of Brand Q chargers”, I might answer, “I really don’t know anything about them except what I’ve heard…I’ve never used one and I can’t honestly advise you.” What it comes down to is the personal experience part. On the subject of LiPo batteries and dedicated chargers that personal contact hasn’t been there until now. There is no shortage of battery brands and varieties of chargers on the market. I have used most, if not all, of them on one occasion or another, but I never got the opportunity to establish a personal contact with the people behind them and it seemed as if there was always something missing from the design features or presentation of the products. Then not so long ago all that changed.

Recently I’ve been noticing ads for Venom LiPo’s and related products in the pages of the magazines. In fact, several Venom LiPo packs ended up as part of the support package for various articles I’ve worked on. Based on my experience at the field, those packs appeared to be at least the equal of any of the other brands I’ve flown. In my personal version of doing model airplanes there is no room for anything but the most reliable equipment…I put too much of myself into those scale airplanes to have time for anything that’s not going to perform as advertised. My first experiences with Venom LiPo packs had left me very satisfied on that score.  I realized that I wanted to know more about them, and started to investigate.

Through Fly RC  Magazine, my contact for the Venom product line was Keith Wallace, who provided me with the following background on the company: Vertical Partners West, LLC (VPW) maintains its global headquarters in Rathdrum, Idaho, USA, with offices in Alexandria, Australia and Shenzhen, China. Comprised of three definitive brands, Venom, Atomik and Steerix brands can be found in model hobby shops in over 50 countries and online at http://www.venom-group.com.  Venom has made its mark and is widely known for its batteries, chargers and the universal plug system.  Recently revived, Atomik brand has new life representing VPW’s line of high end quality RC boats, rock crawlers, short course trucks and motorcycles. Adding to the brand trio is the new Steerix logo adorning VPW’s toy level RC models.

 The story of Vertical Partners West, LLC, originally doing business as Venom Group International, starts with two innovative minds in pursuit of a mutual dream.  It was Clint Bower and Andrew Bolton’s shared vision to create a world-class business, which brought the two together in 2001 to create Venom Racing, VPW’s first R/C brand.  From a small office in Sydney and a garage in Southern California, Clint and Andrew started Vertical Partners West, LLC with one product. With the addition of Keith Wallace as VPW’s Director of Sales and Marketing in 2011 has brought new energy, ingenuity and growth propelling Vertical Partners West, LLC’s brand names on the fast track to making a larger distinct mark within the hobby industry.

 Did you notice that part about Rathdrum, Idaho? I sure did. Rathdrum is out on a windswept prairie about 100 miles south of the Canadian border, smack in the middle of the great lonely open spaces of the inland Northwest…not a place most of us would just happen to be passing through. However, part of my wife’s family lives in another town half an hour’s drive away and I’ve been familiar with those parts…even flown with the local clubs out on those prairies…for a long time. I decided to arrange a visit and I’m sure happy that I did. I was prepared for  …three guys in a garage, but what I found was just the opposite. Established in their own dedicated building that dominates its corner of the industrial park, VPW is a class act, and it is a large operation. Director of Sales and Marketing Keith Wallace conducted me on a private tour of the entire facility, explaining that not only does that spacious facility house all their warehousing and shipping operations, but they also do all their own advertising layout work. As we passed the open door of a professionally equipped photo studio, Keith apologized that he couldn’t offer me a closer look at what was being set up in front of the cameras quite yet. Suffice to say that there are some interesting things going on. That’s not all I noticed. The atmosphere at VPW is professional, but relaxed.  Everything is neat, well laid out, and appears to be working smoothly. It’s also friendly…walking through the shop with the manager I saw no hint of uneasiness. Everyone I met knows what they are doing and likes it, and I came away satisfied  that personal involvement with the job is common there.

What I did not see was any hint of manufacturing operations. I’d known going in that would be the case, and it was one of the first things I asked Keith about once we were back in his office. “Everyone is going to ask me the same question…all this stuff comes from, well, outside the country, right?”

“Yes it does,” Keith told me. “All of it does…not just the products Venom Group sells. We’re not aware of any sources of LiPo and related cells “made in USA” that we could offer on the retail market for anything even close to a reasonable retail price. All of our competitors face the same issue. Our LiPo’s come from China, as do the majority of everybody else’s, but we feel that the way we deal with the issues of quality control and, well, unfamiliar business practices, is pretty uncommon.  We have a very strong, committed feet on the ground resident staff in China, and that’s the key to the quality we’re able to ensure, to our success. Our people over there have established personal connections…learned to appreciate the local ways of doing business and so on…and it pays off in cordial, dependable working relationships.”

It would have been difficult not to notice that success rubbing off on everything I saw going on around me. I noticed something else, too, though. There were sample and demo models everywhere I looked…but…nearly all of them were cars, track racers and off-road jobs alike, and a lot of high performance boats too. What I did not see was airplanes, and I had to ask Keith why?

 “It just kinda’ happened that way,” he offered. “We’ve become very big in the e-powered model car world, and a lot of the boat racing business came right along with that. We’ve never not made our products available on the aircraft market.  You’ll find one of our ads in the latest copy of Fly RC. It just seems that we’ve never had a presence, a personality there.”

“From what I’ve seen, Keith”, I told him, “we airplane guys are losing out. As I understand these things, the car and boat people are at least as demanding, as tough on batteries, as the fliers… maybe more so. All you really need is to get the word out there that Venom stuff is good.”

You can see where this was going. A lot of people I know, and a whole lot more who know me through my writing, need to hear about Venom. Keith made me a deal I couldn’t pass up on a charger and several LiPo packs to fit some of the airplanes I fly a lot and I went home to try them out where it counts…at the field, in the air. What happened did not surprise me at all. My new Venom Pro Charger Plus performed exactly as promised on the bench and at the flying field (in fact, it did several things my older chargers could not). A month or so later I arranged to have Keith send me another charger, Venom’s new Medion Dual-Output, audio speaker-equipped model to use with several of my airplanes that are set up for dual battery packs and I began replacing all my older LiPo’s with Venom products of equal or better capacity.

Why would I do that? I’m never going to be the one to push LiPo batteries up to their design limits…I’ll let the race guys do that and report on it. What I want from my LiPo batteries and supporting charging-balancing hardware is day-in, day-out reliability and consistent, predictable performance. That’s just what I’m getting, along with the extra value of a supplier I believe I can count on to provide equipment I can trust right along with the commitment to step up and help should I need that. Take a look at the kind of airplanes I always bring out to the field and you’ll agree that I have a right to insist on only the highest standards when it comes to everything that goes with flying them.

There is more to this story. Recently VPW introduced the SKYANGEL series of electric powered ARF airplanes as part of the Atomik product line and very soon I’ll begin a series of reviews of scale models from that selection.