Questions, Suggestions etc
- Topicstarter Funke
- Startdatum
HocusPocus.Pyro
Registered User
Good evening Thermite,
Did you already see this Youtube? A very interesting interview by Heiko Röder with Malte ...
Z@P
Registered User
Don’t know if this calendar is official but i would love to buy a 2024 version if there’s one available?
funke-store.com
Funke Design Kalender A3 für 2022
funke-store.com
Knettermans
Bronzen Member
I think what thermite is referring to is the fact that we see differences in performance over different production batches of the same product from Dutch brands. My vision on this is that there are also differences between batches of Funke products as well (often minor) but the main difference here is that Malte often comments on new batches and differences are therefor often known upfront. This is very much appreciated and it's actually a shame that the Dutch brands don't provide that kind of information.
Yes I mean the Dutch brands who had good years and fantastic products all of a sudden perform low quality fireworks but still demand prices as they where high quality. I am thinking of the Tomahawk of Pangu and some expensive Evolution Fireworks items.
No I did not watch it yet. I will do later, thanks for the video.
I just thought of an other question. Is the Bauhinia effect a type which Fünke wants to try? Evolution did in the past, but they where not introduced because of the quality of the product in the end.
Archief - Twinkling Bauhinia
Meer informatie over de Twinkling Bauhinia: Importeur: Evolution Fireworks Collectie: X-Static Artikelnummer: 2591 Advies verkoopprijs:€ Online Prijs: € Netto kruitgewicht: 380 gram Aantal schoten: 19 Kaliber: 30mm Tijdsduur: 30 sec. Shape: i-shape Karton eenheid: 6/1 Bruto gewicht: 2,330kg...
freakpyromaniacs.com
GMP82
Zilveren Member
And then call it the "bauhinian rhapsody"
GMP82
Zilveren Member
I just thought of another one.
I would really appreciate a "funke interpretation / impression" of the "wicked whistle" cake. A small compound perhaps, i'm thinking of a silent version, with spinners/whirling effect, combibation with the tracers of the argento volta cake, maybe the effect with flute as a finale.
Example video of the original product:
I would really appreciate a "funke interpretation / impression" of the "wicked whistle" cake. A small compound perhaps, i'm thinking of a silent version, with spinners/whirling effect, combibation with the tracers of the argento volta cake, maybe the effect with flute as a finale.
Example video of the original product:
I had asked you once before at the orange neighbors. But are you already familiar with this old school piece of fireworks?
I think these gems are still sold in America, so they still have to be manufactured in China.
An example
I think these gems are still sold in America, so they still have to be manufactured in China.
An example
as according to Pangu and EVO: These labels are now GBV and not independent. Thats the only reason they are lower quality now. Its just GBV with low quality. Not al the Dutch Brands. in my opinion its Lesli, GBV and Vulcan who have a more commercial policy, in which top quality is not the biggest goal. And thats ok and admitted as well.
firewire
Registered User
So Lesli, GBV, Vulcan + Hello, Caferatta WTF is ok and admitted.?
That’s 3 Duch importers left:
?Wolff (China Red) ?
?Broekhoff (Magnum)
?Rubro (Mania, Bonfireworks)
GMP82
Zilveren Member
Yup, i'm excited to hear (read) maltes reactions and opinions about the suggestions above.
firewire
Registered User
If you like silver&gold, BVD is the better option indeed.
Yes I was under the same impression until reading your post about 5 other Dutch brands/importers.
Sorry I got carried away with it.
Funke it is.✌?
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joszie
Zilveren Member
Hi Malte,
great to see you here (again). First of all, what an strong brand did you create with Funke. Too bad it's not fore sale in the Netherlands (which I can understand while having crazy rules). Keep up the good work.
As the years go by, I noticed I like smaller items more and more, especially since having a child.
I would love to see a label with smaller items specially for fathers/children: it's great to set off fireworks together, and it's the best way to learn children to light them in a safe way.
Personally i would love the climbing panda back, but then with modern colors/effects.
great to see you here (again). First of all, what an strong brand did you create with Funke. Too bad it's not fore sale in the Netherlands (which I can understand while having crazy rules). Keep up the good work.
As the years go by, I noticed I like smaller items more and more, especially since having a child.
I would love to see a label with smaller items specially for fathers/children: it's great to set off fireworks together, and it's the best way to learn children to light them in a safe way.
Personally i would love the climbing panda back, but then with modern colors/effects.
Bijlagen
GMP82
Zilveren Member
1Salute
Registered User
I would like a single cake with only the whistle effect of the Peking Opera 2 compound ?
Preferably Z-shape high speed.
Preferably Z-shape high speed.
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Knettermans
Bronzen Member
I was wondering whether you already have an idea of which products will become available this year. Both the German and Belgian market can be interesting for us.
firewire
Registered User
Ik heb via Google alvast ff wat voor je opgezocht:
Firmen & Shops - Funke/Argento Neuheiten 2024/2025
Wann gehts denn endlich los in 363 Tagen ist doch schon Silvester, mein bunker ist halb leer ;D
Bron:
funke | FEUERWERK.net Forum
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Funke
Member
Well, currently the problem is, that the fountain factory we originally cooperated with got famouns (we started the gold effects such as Brocade crown / golden willow in the "Riesenfontäne 4", and "Goldfontänen mit Farbsternen"; now, they get orders with those effects all over the place, like "Brokatmeister" in Holland, one fountain battery for Nico for Aldi in germany, conic fountains for Jorge.. So when I was discussing too much for quality issues, they just canceled all our orders and don´t want to produce for us anymore. So we currently anyways have a problem to make those things.
Furthermore, I was not happy at all with how distribution / pricing was going in NL (although this might be my fault, as I just agreed with Zena that they do it through lesli, and never discussed details with them, or talked to Lesli myself at all).
So while I don´t want to rule out we might bring back some items in the future, I can only say that currently it´s not possible, and we need to build up some reliable own production capacities over time first.
For NL, see above. For Belgium, Zena could order them from us, but they are pretty expensive to make and a pure "Freak"-item, and storage space etc in their stores is limited. So I do not think it matches the assortent.
We will increase the offer of Albert in Thomas Philipps in germany, but last year it was sold out everywhere within minutes, so I do not think this will help.. There will also be new Albert items for normal fireworks stores, and we might add other sales points for Albert, but likely not this year anymore - due to capacity reasons we had to turn down some requests.
Availablility is still tough this year, and I am focusing on Albert / Iskra / Argento, which I have lower request than for our Funke items, so it is easier to get something done and keep everything running. Meanwhile, I am trying to build up a new own factory, and if this works, we will focus to make Funke items there after some practice time, but it might be too late for this year, as we are just starting, need to find workers now, then need to teach everyone etc..
Actually, I found an old factory in Guangxi which can make groundbloom flowers in good quality. Price is quite high, but they are willing to make all in the old style, even labeling carefully with pink flower pattern paper wrapped over the end etc.. A very small factory with an owner over 70 years old, they specialised on small / toy items, like pagoda, rising spinners, tanks etc, quite nice and fun items. Sadly, their license has been over in begin of last year, and since then they try to renew it. But as the factory is so old and small, and the boss is very old and stubborn, since then they could not meet the new standard, and can´t get a new license. So we will see if they will be able to get it during this year, or have to shut down forever... Besides this factory, I tried to find someone willing to make it according my request for years, but was unable to find anyone, so if this won´t be possible, then I do not know if and when we will ever be able to get it done.
Strings might need a factory with proper tooling and license to make such strings.
The fountain has the problem as written on top in another reply already, that we would need an own fountain factory, or at least a factory willing and able to work according technical data which I provide, which we currently not have.
The howlers you saw in the last year may all disappear now first, as they were all made from plastic, which is not allowed from this year anymore.I can only wish for more whistle cakes in burst. Or cakes with a whistle highlight like we see in the Iskra line.
With the wettest of all dreams, a combination of te Scala 100 and the Guangxi whistle, in a 6 or 10 row F-shape
And I'm personally very pleased by the idea of the Guangxi whistle in burst, altered by a burst of those good howlers we see a lot the last few years, in the finale a combination.
However, in Guangxi, we will work on whistle effects like this and others. Although we just had some kind of setback, as the factory we are focusing on had an accident, and the technician left. We tried to hire him back, but one big company who produced a lot there before brought him to another factory and doesn´t allow him to go back. That guy is 60 years old and has all the knowledge of the old style of whistle effects, hummers etc, and it´s a big pity, as they let him make red green peony crackling cakes instead, complete waste.. But yeah, we might have to re-develop all by ourselves now, which will take time.
For fountains, see replies above.
For Fireevent, they copied our blackpowder crackers, same as Pulver now. However Pulver is in general sending our factory codes to china and trying to copy many items such as Luftheuler, rockets etc; as well as whole designs etc. Really annoying to have to deal with such people
As written above, all those items will be gone from the market from this year due to the ban of plastic whistles. However, we are working on whistle effects in paper. I intent to develop a wider range of such special effects, as I think it makes cakes / compounds in general more fun and playful if there are more special effects inside, not always just boring shooting up with crappy tail and maybe some mine, followed by star burst effect. But as written above, development takes time..
I can´t use designs from other companies which still exist, as I already replied.. Also not change a little. I am not familiar with possible copyrights, also do not know anyone there I could talk to.Should be great if you can work together with Vulcan and/or get the rights of their ASTRONAUT brand.
They don’t have the balls and knowledge to get Astonaut and Reuzen Astronaut in 90’s style back for the German and Belgian market.
Will be a absolute bestselling cracker in all Belgian and German shops close to the Dutch borders if you use your grauer lunte/old style Böllers expertise combined with their Astronaut logo/labels.
If they don’t want to cooperate you always can go for Aztronaut or Asstronaut combined with the old Schuurmans logo instead.?
20874A90-CBE4-4BB5-945D-24A4D9CB6AE8.jpeg
freakpyromaniacs.com
A 25sh version of scream shots / Vortex salutes has actually really been considered by me. But, currently, at first I need to get scream shot and vortex salute done again at all. The factory in Guangxi making it had a serious accident in last march, and the technician left, as written above. So we need to get all adjusted again first.While we're talking about flute cakes...
a 16 or 25 shot "scream" cake.
The following will probably not be possible, but I would think it would be something for Funke.
a 100sh compound in which different flute types have been processed, such as.
whistling palms - Funke
devil scream - Abba
3 stage whistle
shout to salute
and to open it with hummers and end with a 3-layer fan with the effect of the vortex salute. so that in the end it sounds a bit like stepping during fallas?
And I was also planning some sound cakes, but this will take time, as effects need to be developed which noone can do currently / anymore. Oh and the whistle of ABAs devil scream is not impossible, but almost impossible to make in china, as the powder has to be pressed very tight in craft paper tubes which are being inserted into a mold, while the chinese usually press in bundles of tubes. But this doesn´t work, as pressure would be too much, and tubes would burst. So the whole system would need to be changed according german style, which I do not consider to be realistic anytime soon.
A real poisonous spider is high on the list since 2020. When I first went to Guangxi, I did weeks of research online for old items made there before, old videos etc, and over time developed a good judgement for old items which effects must have definately been from there. Actually, in 2020, we already had one factory there make almost succesful samples of this effects, but the factories license was over that year, they shut down and never reopened again, as the owner would have to invest millions in order to meet the new standards for renewing the license, and does not seem to be willing to do so..
I try for 3 years now to convince them to sell me the factory but they refuse, so it´s just sitting there and looking more and more like a jungle, huge pity..
Anyways, I still want to get it done; just they made this kind of items / effects by hand before, so the workers rammed the powder for the spinning one by one, which makes it extremely expensive, so new tools have to be created in order to make it affordable; and also, due to the long spinning, it needs a huge amount of powder, in 25mm it´s already 10-12g minimum just for the spinning, so in 25mm you already get close to the max. 25g per shot in F2 if you add lifting charge, stars and burst, making this the maximum caliber possible for this effect in F2. Also price per shot will most likely be higher than most 30mm cakes due to the reasons written above. But anyways, I didn´t give up on that one, during this year we will try to make samples and get it to a stage where we can mass produce it, let´s see if we can be succesful. I think such unique items are really missing on the market today, it´s not just simply shooting up and bursting, but adding a very special and fun effect, which people even still talk about 20 years later. So this is exactly the kind of thing / the direction I want to go to in the coming yeary.
Rockets, we shall see what capacity of the factory will allow us to do..
I do not think this will be possible. This is a very work intense item to make, due to the small size, and also only few factories specialised on this can make it at all, as they need a lot of specialised tools. But, all of this is adjusted for todays crappy quality. It would be a huge effort to get it better again, many things would need to be chaned, and we simply to not have the time and ressources to do so, and also for this item I do not see the order quantities which would be necessary in order to be worth it / convince any factory.
Such items with small roman candles I would like to make, but what makes them special are the inserts. Small tubes pressed with different compositions etc, giving different unique effects. Before I assume this was just done by hand, but today such items would be completely unaffordable. Even if pressed by machine, I assume such item would easily cost 10€+ today. Which would not stop me from making it, but the factories for roman candles usually do not even have any press (maximum one press for cylinder stars), so they are not able to make such inserts. So realistically, it would only be possible to make with an own roman candle factory, which we do not have.
We work on something together with the factory in Guangxi which made our 8 shot roman candles, the new python series etc, but actually they do not even have a roman candle license anymore haha, and is only due to renew their license next year, then we shall see if we can find any way to let them get a roman candle license again, which would be necessary in order to do the necessary investments in tooling in order to produce such items at least somehow affordable / realistically in todays environment. So we shall see.
As most of the times, the difficulty here is not that I do not want to make it, but that it is not readily available in the market / noone has a factory set up by structure, machines etc in a way which would allow them to do it, so it requires a lot of time, work and investment for us to get to the point where something like this can be made. There is a reason that nowadays, there are a huge amount of items on the market, but if you look at it closer, there is not much real variety.. But anyways, that´s what we have to deal with, and development of many items for us may be very time consuming, but we still continue to work on it.
As for the whistle, we have the "luftheuler" which should be the same item, just no bang? With bang, it may be possible I guess, but would need to remain within 8m, and be under 120dB to the testing point. As it moves uncontrolled, and it can move let´s say up to 5m, then it could move 5m towards the measurement devide, so the bang would only be 3m away from the measurement device, making it 120dB max @3m instead of 8m. So what I want to say is, the distance of movement would need to be restricted a lot, and the dB would need to be very little; or it would need to have some instruction to be fixed in the ground somehow.
But also another problem would be to find a factory which has both licenses, which I do not know any. Most banger items nowadays are only allowed to make bangers, even for a color flame they would need a fountain license now, so even bangers with color flames mostly disappeared / have mostly been replaced by shitty color fuses....
Funke
Member
Last year I tried to buy a factory, but got cheated, huge trouble, german embassy involved, spent a lot of time in government offices and of court, wasted months of time..
Anyways, this year we try to buy another one, let´s see how it goes. But anyways, even if it works out, it will take time, as we need to teach workers first etc.
As for the standard, we also have huge struggle with it, and have a lot of trouble with the factories, many of which also do not want to work with us anymore, since others don´t come and check every batch carefully, so for others they can just produce smoothly, while we always try during production to fix possible problems. But even with this, I have to accept a lot of things which I don´t like, as otherwise noone would produce for us anymore.
For this reason, we always upload the video of every batch, so customers can see each batches real quality. If we could always keep the same standard, this would not be necessary
We designed a 2024 calendar, but it was canceled, as my colleague who has been handling it suddently decided that we did not sell enough pieces of the old calendar, and had too many left, so it would not be worth to make another one.. I am not handling merch, as I have no time for it, so I do not know what is planned for the future.Don’t know if this calendar is official but i would love to buy a 2024 version if there’s one available?
Funke Design Kalender A3 für 2022
The "Farfalle"-effect is a very tricky one in 30mm. You can only put 6 tiny tubes, then have almost no space anymore for anything else, etc.. I am not sure if it can even be done well in 30mm. For sure it will be crazy expensive, and most likely always unstable to some extent.
It may be better to do it in F3 in 50mm, and use a little bigger tubes for the Farfalle spinners. But we can´t make cakes on our own now bigger than 30mm in the new factory due to license reasons, so nothing we will do anytime soon.
A similar cake with whistles is being planned to be made in Guangxi. Also I think the wicked whistle anyways should disappear now, as those were all plastic whistles....
A silent version with spinners would also be a nice idea, but it´s not planned currently, and I have so many ideas already, that it will take years to get those done I assume
I am aware of it, and bought those in Valencia the last 2 times. I really like it, and would love to make it. We even cut one in Valencia, made pictures etc to see how it´s built, and sent all to my chinese colleagues, to check with the factories in Liling, which usually always made such items, if anyone is still doing it. 2 or so were making it many years ago, but all refused to produce it now. So, at least in Hunan, we could not find any factory which would still be producing it. So sadly, we can´t make it now, as we have also no factory where we could completely re-develop it ourselves / no factory which would be willing to do it for us.
I also like small and playful items more and more, for me it´s more fun now actually than the huge / heavy items. So for sure I want todo more in this regard. However, it´s increasingly difficult in china. I hope our business will run well enough in the coming years to earn enough money to invest in an own factory just for small items. But that´s just dreaming now. Currently, I am afraid we can´t do it, maybe we could just order the standard, but I saw it a few years back in some factories in Wanzai, and it was really crappy... So I think in the quality which many small items are made now, it´s better not to buy them at all, it would need to be made better again first, but that is almost impossible in the current environment, as all the factories are anyways full of order, even for the crappy quality which is much easier to prodcue.
So we shall see what will be possible over time..
Well, you won´t get it in the Peking Opera anymore anyways, as all has been plastic, so from this year, all those whistle effects have simply been canceled from those cakes..
But I can tell you that this is not plannned. Whistle to color yes, but without the chrys crackling.