Put some designs on there that have to do with Taiwan. That would be cool. Think it was mentioned earlier.
But also, simple, plain tends to sell better.
Saw some people wearing cool Vogmasks in Seoul. Have to admit the fun designs only look good in younger people. Saw a few older folks wearing together with their work suit and some older ladies ā¦uhhhh not appealing at all
Unfortunately, we have no say in whatever designs get made for each season. There are no regional designs anymore, every design is global. Custom designs are possible, but they are not intended for general sales. Maybe if we gathered enough people interested, we could get a purely Taiwanese design made for Forumosans only.
Either way, there is something for everyone in the current lineup (if we ignore the current shortage). The problem is most people in Taiwan still have never heard about Vogmask. The way things work here, people donāt pay attention unless there is some popular actor/actress endorsing your product on TV.
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Well thatās a bummer.
but read the new bit I added about custom designs. Personally, I would like a design by one of these talented young Taiwanese artists
If the masks lasted longer or the filter could be replaced, like an insert, Iād be willing to pay more for a custom design. But not so much if I have to toss it out after a few months of use.
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They would not be more expensive than the regular designs. Only there is a minimum quantity involved in making a custom design.
I would like to work with some Taiwanese companies like Gogoro who share the same values, but they are too busy to pay attention to us. Vogmask is the ideal complement for an electric motorbike.
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Iāve received my order of Vogmasks. Hereās my review.
The masks were mailed on the morning of Thursday January 30th. The package arrived on Friday January 31st at 13:00, via postal delivery to my home.
I ordered two Noir - M size and one Trees - L size. The L was for me and the two M sizes were for my wife and my assistant. Each mask came packaged within individual boxes and also within a sealed plastic bag inside.
The thing I noticed immediately upon opening my mask is the quality construction. Itās thick and sturdily made to be durable and long lasting. Nothing on this thing is flimsy. Well, for $1,000+ NTD it had better be!
I put mine on immediately to see how it fit. Like Ace Ventura might say, it fit āLike a glove!ā The fit was perfect in every respect. It sealed around my nose and cheekbones and also along my jaw and chin. As I breathed in and out in an exaggerated manner, I checked to see if any air was escaping above my nose or to the sides of my nose on my cheeks. Nope. Nothing. All exhaled air was exiting out the plastic filter valve thingy. When I breathed in, the air was being filtered through the fabric and then would exit the filter valve. I looked at myself in the mirror and I didnāt like what I saw, but thatās another topic for another time. As I looked at the mask in the mirror as I breathed in and out, it looked like it was pulsing. As I inhaled, the mask contracted slightly against my face and sucked up or sealed nicely against all the contact points and then puffed slightly out as I exhaled and the air escaped out the valve. So, basically all air I was inhaling was being filtered through the fabric and all the air I was exhaling was going out through the filter valve. Great sealing mask and for a mask novice like myself, was kind of interesting.
But, putting the mask on in your house and looking at your mug in the mirror and inhaling and exhaling aināt real life conditions.
On Friday evening, my assistant who is a childrenās English teacher went off to work. From the moment she walked into the bushiban, she wore her Vogmask and she kept it on the entire time she was in the building to include during all teaching. Upon her return home, she reported that the mask part was comfortable, fit perfectly and sealed up against her face like mine. She was able to breath comfortably for the 6 hours she was there which consisted of 4 hours of teaching and 2 hours of post teaching administrative duties. I asked her if it ever got really hot and sweaty or felt too confining and she said that it didnāt. The exit valve was really good at disbursing sweat and heat and didnāt collect inside the mask like most other surgical type masks. The only complaint she had was about her ears being sore from the straps feeling too tight on her ears. I told her to gently stretch out the straps and that as she wore it that it would relax on her and become more comfortable. She also wore it the entire time she taught on Saturday morning. Same comments. Mask is great and worked wonderfully, but her ears hurt from the straps. I told her to STFU, gently stretch the ear straps and keep wearing it! I told her it just needs to break in.
On Saturday afternoon, it was a beautiful, warm, sunny day. I decided to test mine out by taking a brisk 10k hike through the farmlands around my home. I put the mask on and kept it on for the entire journey. The mask worked perfectly and also didnāt feel too hot and didnāt have a bunch of sweat build up inside. Another interesting thing is that as I exhaled, it didnāt allow any of my warm breath to escape up through the top of the mask and fog up my glasses. Thatās a big one for me. For the record, I fucking hate wearing surgical masks. Iāve never done it unless itās been required. They are too confining, too hot, to sweaty. I totally understand when I see a rube wearing a surgical mask, but their nose isnāt covered. They are just trying to survive the damned thing! The Vogmask doesnāt have this issue for me. Very comfortable and breathable.
Yeah, yeahā¦flag waver, right? Where are the negatives?
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The straps hurt my assistantās ears her first two days. My ears were sore too. But, Iām willing to accept that there is a break in period and the mask needs time to adjust to my face and head shape. Kind of in the same way a new pair of leather shoes or combat boots need to ābreak your feet inā before they break in and be comfortable for the wearer. Weāll see. Only time will tell.
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The Taiwan Vogmask website and online shopping store sucks. It looks really good, colorful and nice in design, but it is not very user friendly or practical to say the least. This needs to be fixed immediately. Like whatās wrong? Well, the filter function doesnāt work. I wanted to first select the option to see all products and then further sort by size. It doesnāt work. So, in order to find a proper L sized mask for myself, I had to look at a mask style that I thought I could live with, click on view, then change the size menu to L only to have the button change to āSold Outā. For my purchases, I actually had to do this action for every single mask style and then hit the back button and move onto the next style, rinse and repeat. It was very time consuming and I actually timed it at 45 minutes in order to look at every single mask style, select the size only to see that it was sold out and then hit the back button and start all over again. I should be able to first choose the size L and then view all mask styles currently available for purchase in real time. That way, I could have seen all the masks available in L and then selected and purchased a style I could live with in 30 seconds vs 45 minutes! I sent @gustavoqueipo a few bitch PMs about this and he surprisingly answered me in a most professional manner, probably better than I deserved. He agreed that the website was messed up for reasons he didnāt know and that it was an online webstore hosting company that put everything together for him and that he was going to either demand they fix the webstoreās issues and make it work right, or he was going to go with a more competent webstore hosting company. After all, heās their customer and they arenāt providing him with a product to sufficiently sell his wares. @gustavoqueipo Sorry I was being a little bitch about it!
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Another problem with the webstore is the selection for delivery to a convenience store. If you opt for delivery to a 7-11, for example, you are required to input the specific store number of the 7-11 you want it delivered. Firstly, my wife doesnāt know the store number of our 7-11 and when you get to this part and if youāre using a mobile device like her iphone, you can click a link on the bottom of the form to take you to find your specific 7-11ās store number. But, when you click the back button, the order page has been completed and a receipt is generated, but the time to input the store number is gone! This problem was remedied by my wife calling the main office and speaking to the customer service agent and telling him the specific store that she wanted the package sent. That was good customer service. My wife is an expert PC Home online shopper. She suggests that their way of selecting a 7-11 store for delivery is superior as you donāt need to know or input the store number yourself. It has a series of drop down menus which slowly take you until you choose your store. Example, first choose the city, then the district and it will give you all the 7-11s in your district and you simply click the one you want. Super easy. Wife does it all the time. Seems like I make daily trips to our local 7-11 to pick up a box of her latest online purchases (crap).
Thatās about it. Iām pleased with my purchases. Good value for the money. Excellent customer service. Iāll rate the entire experience 8/10. Minus one for the crap webstore page and minus one for our ears are sore.
p.s. I highly recommend that you take a look at the main US Vogmask website. Itās got a lot more detailed information about he main company, how Vogmask came to be and also has more selection of styles, too.
So, if you see a slightly *pudgy guy wearing a green trees Vogmask and a T-shirt with an extremely inappropriate slogan somewhere in the Tanshui area, thatāll most likely be me!
- @Dr_Milker 's word
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Great review! You really put it to the test and recorded all the important details.
Thanks for sharing!
My favorite part was:
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Does it rest flat from nose to chin like a surgical mask or toes it tent out in an inverted v shape?
__ Flat
U Curved
V Tent
Get in touch with Gogoro people. If Gogoro users get a mask with cool scooters, soon everyone will want one, even people who cannot afford a Gogoro. Scooters are also popular in Europe, Iād be a hit in Italy.
I am thinking like the Buff scarves, they had one Taiwan design of Mazu on a scooter. They are a Spanish company, so they have stuff inspired by El Camino de Santiago, landscapes, etc. No pandas.
US stuff would be cool. Route 66. Beaches. For Korea, and Asia how about fried chicken.
Heaven help us, you need Hello Kitty.
My ugly, unshaven face? Iām not sure I understand the question.
It most definitely does not rest flat from the bridge of he nose to the chin. Thereās definitely space where the mask doesnāt touch the mouth which is very nice. Whether thatās a V or a Uā¦I would say I think itās a V.
As for the mask and how it fits on my face? It looks exactly like it does in all the pictures of the models from the website.
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I want to follow up about the sizing.
I have an L now and like I said the ear loops pull on my ears a bit (still after owning the mask for several years and even manually stretching out the loops to be longer)
I just checked and it appears there is also a bit of a gap in the side section of the mask (the small bit between where the top and bottom part of the ear loop connect with the mask).
So even though one canāt expect to get an actual āsealā from this kind of mask, seems there is a place where air is circumventing the intended design.
Does this mean I should get an M next time? And what about the ear loops? I donāt want to get that behind the head thing as itās just extra accessories I have to deal with.
I will try answering everything thrown here since yesterday. Let me know if I missed anything:
If there is ever a Hello Kitty Vogmask, I will try my best to prevent such thing from entering Taiwan officially. Donāt worry.
We tried, but they ignored us. They do love us, it is just they donāt know it yet (Anyone here has friends inside?)
The way Vogmask is built, it doesnāt really touch your mouth. Can you notice the seam running vertically through the center of the mask, from nose to chin? That part is harder than the rest and stands at a short distance away from your face. From there, the mask goes to the sides of your face, meeting near the seal around the edges.
This design was introduced some 3 or 4 years ago. It is more comfortable to wear and also helps keeping the mask dry.
There should be no gap there when properly fitted if the size is correct. This can happen if:
- The mask is too big for you. The only way around this is getting the next smaller size (in your case, M+ would be the correct one, rather than M).
- The mask is not properly fitted. Can be fixed by removing the mask, completely straightening and centering the metal nose piece, then wearing the mask as if it was out of the box.
- The mask is damaged in some way that affects itās shape and seal, preventing a proper seal.
You mentioned the mask is several years old. Which model is it, out of curiosity?
Wow, that was better than some reviews we got from āprofessional bloggersā (is there such thing?). Thank you for taking the time to write such honest take on our products.
The review is mostly spot on. I will add a few bits of insider knowledge!
The green Vogmask you see in the review by Malcolm is the new VM model. It looks deceptively similar to our older N99 masks, which is what most of you who used Vogmask before will be used to. However, our new masks are using a completely different filtering layer inside. With the new VM masks, it is much, much easier to breath (less than half the breathing resistance). The tradeoff is about 2% loss of filtering efficiency, so these are rated N95 (there isnāt something like N96 or N97). Overall, this is a much better balanced mask, especially for Taiwan. There are some other minor tweaks from the previous versions, but the filtering layer is the main one.
This is so essential for anyone who needs to wear glasses the whole time like me. If the mask is fitted properly it wonāt fog your glasses at all. If you find your glasses are fogging, please readjust your mask. You might be placing the mask too high or too low on the bridge of your nose.
The negative points Malcolm marked as 2 and 3, about the online store, they are spot on. This is essential stuff for an ecommerce software solution, but somehow donāt work in our ecommerce software solution. These have nothing to do with our actual products (at least thatās something), but I must get them fixed.
We use one of the top ecommerce open software solutions for our online store, yet it has many shortcomings. I customized it for our needs and set up the whole hosting myself. The problem comes from some bad software design within the ecommerce software. It is not something that can be fixed with a minor patch. It would take a complete redesign of the affected components.
The inability to filter out unavailable masks has not been a big issue until now, because we usually kept most items and sizes in stock. It has only been a real bother now that we are almost out of stock on everything.
I have already started working on a totally new website based on Magento, the leading ecommerce software solution. This should remove all the issues with the current website (and probably introduce some others, hopefully smaller). I also want to have more information and maybe regular interesting articles. It is going to take months of work though, as it is only me working on it.
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How often should a Vogmask be washed and dried out? Would it be advisable to have several in use in a rotation scheme?
I usually keep 2 masks and alternate between the two. Look at this short article about shoes. The very same principle applies to masks:
You shouldnāt wear the same pair of shoes every day
If you are a regular user of Vogmask, you will be buying 2 masks eventually anyway. By alternating between the two, you will extend their combined life. As a bonus, you will always have a mask to wear while the other one is drying after washing.
So, my ultimate advice is this: First time users, buy a single mask. Get used to it (new masks take a couple of weeks until they feel totally comfortable), make sure you got the right size. Once you use it for a couple of months and feel good with it, if you decide you are going to be using Vogmask regularly, buy a second mask straight away and start alternating them.
Regarding the washing frequency, do it anytime you feel the mask is dirty, smelly, or not fresh enough. In this regard, itās not different from other pieces of clothing. Actual frequency will vary with environment and weather.
In my own experience, I wash them more often during summer and when cycling, because I sweat a lot. During winter, not so much. On average, if using only 1 mask daily, maybe wash once every 1~2 weeks.
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On my mask it says N99C2V Organic L 0086 in addition to those ratings (ffp2r Etc)
Youāre probably right that itās just a little too big. Although it often does get bigger as I breathe out and flatten as I breathe in so I always assumed it was more or less the right size.
If i understand correctly, there is no chance of you stocking an N99 mask with at least 1 vent in black, size M+?
This whole gogoro thing seems like a great idea to me. You are clearly serious about vogmask so why not put in serious effort?
Show up to corporate with samples and insist to speak with somebody. Keep doing it. If it fails, go to the retail level. Do the same thing with them, starting with the trendier locations. Even offer them like 20-30 free ones to start out with to either distribute to first customer of the day or all on a single day to whoever buys.
If they are truly aligned (which seems likely) somebody will say yes then you build from there. Make your own way.
You may even be able to sign them up as distributors if it catches on - look at all those custom āskinsā people strap onto the back of their scooters with whatever designs. I donāt know who sells those but they would make great distributorsā¦ Especially if they could make ones that matched their face maskā¦ (Or got close enough to not infringe on design)
Maybe tell Vogmask about your intentions and see if they are willing to send some at no cost to you besides shipping (or further discounted from your wholesale rate) for the initiative, that you will pay for after 30 days if not distributed to gogororers.
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If I remember correctly, the older N99 masks were never made in M+ size. This size was introduced at the same time as the newer VM masks. N99 are no longer produced, and all older stock is now sold out. Even newer stock is now globally sold out.
I went through ideas like the ones you mentioned, without being that agressive. Actually, if we managed to reach a corporate deal, we could make an exclusive Gogoro branded Vogmask only for them. This needs to get done at some point. They even post about air pollution and masks in their blog. We are totally aligned.