Hiya Spliff! How's it hanging ol buddy? How're the gurlz?
This whole Full Spectrum Solutions/IGrow thing is what will be the tip of a marketing iceberg blitz. FSS is extremely well capitalized and my guess the marketing of IGrow will know no bounds.
I know the lighting industry wants to continue to perpetuate the two lamps being necessary to get us through a cycle. It's marketing for selling more lamps. Such utter bullshit. Listen if I felt the need to add a bit more red to the 420 I would do so with a targeted LED that would ADD to the baseline emissions of the 420 not replace it. But even doing that would come at a cost so everyone is watching things like your Bloom Booster grow to see the results. For now I've been happy with my results based on ROI, quality, yields and cost per meter sq basis.
So FSS/IGrow and others are continuously pushing that another lamp be purchased for bloom. With FSS/IGrow that comes at an extra 375 bones instead of offering a mixture of broad blend phosphors that allow the entire grow to be done utilizing just a single lamp. So even if it were proven to not be detrimental to our plants to bombard it with new spectrum's from a different lamp while switching to a new flowering photoperiod you still deny the plants the UV levels that are creating the defenses, increased trichome production, that makes such beautiful buds as seen by the results many of us have experienced from using the IG 420's.
Putting aside the negative effects on plant photobiology for a minute let us consider the FSS/IGrow economics of using their products. The gardener will have to march down to the 'exclusive' hydro shop and drop $1,200 for the veg light and another $375 for the flowering lamp before you can embark on your merry EFDL journey. Of course this assuming that the FSS/IGrow is all stocked by that dealer at the time you're there to buy it. God help you if you are not in an area where there is not an 'exclusive' dealer and decide to deal directly with FSS/IGrow though their on line store where your purchase would be shipped direct. This mammoth of package would require an added shipping cost in the USA of between 150-200 bucks on top of everything else (sorry overseas orders you don't even want to know what that freight cost would be). This puts a single lamp deal at around $1,750.00. And even that would not stop some people from taking the plunge if the economics made sense and the results were proven vastly better than anything else their competition was offering.
So why does such an esteemed group like FSS/IGrow, with all their talent and resources, take the time to put up a list of 20 reasons (19 of which are factually inaccurate) to lay claim as to why they're product is better than the competitions? Why would that same report go on to put a picture of the little Inda-Gro shop in San Diego on their site and compare it the glistening manufacturing facility that FSS put up with the Michigan taxpayers money? Why would FSS/IGrow not welcome the competition and let the market decide?
Because it really does come down to their perception of market dominance and the ability to maintain a two lamp solution to the indoor garden market. These guys should be spending their time, energy and resources on propelling the use of EFDL as an energy efficient alternative to HID. Instead they focus on claims of intellectual property rights on phosphors, have their lawyers sending cease and desists letters to anyone who makes an EFDL lamp for plants, threaten to sue dealers who decide FSS/IGrow is not right for them and decide to carry another induction line (wonder who?) instead, and finally to claim that only their products are Made in the USA with the implication being that their competitors, specifically Inda-Gro, employs long lines of underpaid, unhappy Chinese workers toiling away on their behalf which they know to be untrue. Me thinks FSS/IGrow may be suffering from a little known medical condition known as 'sand in the vag'.
