Choosing the right Paint Protection Film (PPF) brand is a difficult task these days. With so many brands, all claiming to be better than their competitors. For this blog post, I travelled across 8 USA states and met 45 shop owners to find out what shop owners think about the PPF products they use.
Let’s start with Xpel, a brand considered by most as the global leader in Paint Protection Films. We won’t go into what helped them achieve this position. However, what I found is that shops stick to Xpel for 2 main reasons. First their marketing support, most shops I spoke to were getting 50% of their business from Xpel. Secondly, their cutting software DAP. We all need to appreciate how well Xpel do their marketing and network support.
But what about the product itself? The general feedback about Xpel products is positive too. However, I consistently heard shops refer to Xpel glue variations. “Xpel’s old glue was good, but then they switched to the new glue that I hated. Now they have changed their glue again. It is not the same as the old glue, but better than the new glue. Occasionally I still get variations in glue”, said a high volume shop owner in New Jersey.
So Xpel being a World leader and one of the oldest in the game, has their share of adhesive variations. To look at why this happens, I had to dig deeper.
My prior knowledge that Xpel don’t make their own PPF was confirmed by a shop owner in Los Angeles. Who said he knows who makes the PPF for Xpel, but won’t disclose it. Then in Minnesota I met a shop owner with 2 shops. He shared with me the factory who makes PPF for Xpel, and he was too getting his own PPF from the same factory at about 50% of the price.
In terms of other brands, I heard many stories and also saw personally variations in SunTek Reaction’s adhesive and top coat, delamination issues in Stek Carbon PPF, unimpressive adhesive of 3M Scotchgard, poor edge folding and aging of GSWF to name a few things. These are good brands who together make up a major chunk of the PPF market. But what in their manufacturing process is cauing these variations?
If you ever had a chance to go inside a PPF base film factory or a PPF coating factory, you will understand that PPF manufacturing is a complex process. Some of the challenges faced by manufacturers include keeping contamination away, keeping the production equipment clean, dealing with raw material changes, dealing with an unexpected pause during production and grading the finished product as A,B and C class depending on defects observed. All these variables ultimately define how a roll of PPF in the installers hand will behave.
PPF visual defect spotting and grading is mostly a manual task at the manufacturing facility. Specially trained eyes visually observe master 600 meter rolls of Paint Protection Film while it is unwinding under lights. When any visual defect is spotted, the machine is stopped and the faulty material is cut off.
Going back to the product variations I saw at shops across USA, these are not visual defects that you can spot in the film. These are issues that surface at the time of installation, when you squeegue or stretch the film, or after you have delivered the vehicle.
Brand owners need to strengthen their quality control procedures further. Most factories I have visited don’t take samples for lab testing from every master roll, or very basic lab testing is done for every master roll. A lot of quality control is left to the visual human inspection of the goods. Traders (like Xpel, Flexishield), coating factories (like Eastman, Stek, Hexis, GSWF) and whole chain manufacturers need to further strenghten their quality control procedures.
Being global distributors of PPF, at Wize Brothers USA we have our own in house R&D department, quality control department and an install test department. Amongst the 40+ lab tests we carry out against each master roll, glue and top coat performance play a central role. From testing elongation and tensile strength to ensuring a consistent level of clarity and gloss, we have a very thorough lab testing routine. Peel testing ensures each roll of our product will have the same adhesive response. Anti-stain and aging tests ensure our products will keep looking new after years of use.
If you are looking for a quality PPF range made to the highest standard and the most stable production processes, give the Nanolink PPF range from Wize Brothers USA a try. Our flagship clear gloss PPF is Nanolink Eclipse. Available for distribution at www.nanolinkusa.com
