When I think of Italian companies whose designs fire up my imagination, the names Lamborghini, Ferrari or Maserati immediately come to mind when I think of cars, or Armani, Zegna or Versace when I think of clothing. In addition to them, there are countless other designers and design firms in Italy that make it the center for design in much of Europe.So when Nick the owner of Elos asked if I would like to see the facilities and see what he was working on I jumped at the chance.
To me Elos has long been one of the European aquarium companies that I considered at the forefront of the hobby. I have been using their products for well over a decade, but to be honest I knew little about them, so when the opportunity to spend a day with Nick at Elos arose during my recent trip to Italy I tried to make the most of my visit.
While I have been able to visit some US manufacturing companies in the past, most of these companies generally focused on one or two things like lighting or pumps or additives or salt.From what I know about Elos, they make everything from amino acids to test kits for our tanks, (yeah I could not come up with a Z word) so I was interested to visit such a diversified company. As a result of their making such a wide variety of products, I was curious as to not only how they did it, but also how the entire process worked from design to final product and then eventually the release of the product to us.
Having met Nick a few times at various shows and chatted with him online it was quickly apparent that he had a vision of where he wants to take Elos, and also that he has the obsessiveness that I have seen in many of my fellow hobbyists. And after hanging out with him in his home town it was obvious that he not only wants to make Elos the premier aquarium company in Italy, but he also is trying to develop products that will not only do it there, but also in all of Europe, and eventually in all of the US as well.培训电子engineer seems to serve him well, in that after spending time with him it was quite clear that he has a fine eye for small details and that he understands that there are still holes in the hobby that he is trying to get his company to fill.
In this regard, he has started with the very foundation of the hobby: the tank and stand, and tried to bring them up to a new level. While to most of us a tank is merely the vessel into which we house our fish and corals and the stand is almost completely forgotten or an afterthought, Nick is trying to make the Elos tanks and their stands something beautiful in their own right that add to the beauty of the homes they are in, so that the whole package is visually appealing, not just the inside of the tank.
I must admit that this was kind of foreign to me as I have always worked under the assumption that if someone even noticed the tank I was not doing my job of making the inside of the tank spectacular. To help explain his vision, Nick brought it to my attention that over 95% of the people that walk into our homes do not have tanks, so to them the tank, stand and the tank’s inhabitants are an entire package that cannot be separated from these viewer’s point of view.
所以当水箱,站不增加一ll aesthetics of the room, at least for these people we have failed. And by failed I mean that despite how nice our tanks may look on the inside, to these individuals if the tank and stand look poorly what is inside the tank really doesn’t matter.
So to work from the simplest part of the hobby, Nick has tried to make his tanks and stands not only be more visually appealing than most of the tanks on the market, but he has also taken steps so that these tanks are also easy to work on and maintain. As with most Europeans, Elos products are designed to work over the long term, and by that I mean ten years or longer.
So for the tanks, Nick has enlisted the help of some of the top glassmakers in Italy to come up with low iron glass, called Diamondline glass, that has the highest clarity approximately 92%, of any glass, I have seen. At the same time, he has also managed to have them make the glass so it is structurally stronger than most of the other glass in tanks out there to reduce the risk of the glass cracking or chipping, unlike other low iron glass out there. Having done this was not enough for Nick however, he recently has taken it one step further and has developed what he calls crystal silicone that is visually clear and that is stronger than conventional silicone.
He is now using this silicone on some of his tanks to that when they are viewed the distracting black or colored line that is present along the seams on most tanks is no longer present. This may seem like a minor detail, but when you look at two tanks side by side and one has been made with this material it is clear, no pun intended, which tank is more appealing to look through.
By the same token, Nick has spent years developing and designing stands that are not only structurally superior but that are also very appealing to look at as well. To this end, Elos stands have evolved significantly in just the relatively short time I have been looking at their products. No longer is cheap compressed wood or particle board used as the major component in their stands, but instead they are made of waterproof melamine panels so that over time they do not lose their visual appeal or warp or mark.
The panels can even be constructed out of carbon fiber if one desires and wants the latest technology. While in Italy, I saw that his stands had been taken one step further in that Nick had recently come up with a design where the tank itself rested on a skeleton of stainless steel tube and then the panels were attached to the tube vie strong magnets.