Bumpers and beaches...

I'm going to try something new here.

I'm shooting basically a vlog and going to make that into an email as well. Let's do it.

It's about 6:40 p.m. on Wednesday. I'm on a beach in Barcelona called Nova Icaria, a really cool little city beach. I know a lot of people say city beaches aren't great, but the best thing about them is you can walk to them.

The sale for this week at Fringe is bumper plates. I know last I talked to you guys, I was talking about how our packages sale is pretty near and dear to my heart.

One of the secrets about me is that I fall in love easily, so a lot of things are near and dear to my heart.

Our bumper plate sale is pretty big as well. When Fringe first came onto the scene, bumpers, in my opinion, were in a pretty sorry state. Obviously, there were the Hi Temp bumpers, which we carry and we actually have nice, upgraded USA-made Fringe sport bumpers, that I'm really partial to, live on the site.

You should check those out.

Hi Temps have always been decent bumpers. I would consider them essentially the baseline for durability. You have to do at least as well as Hi Temp in order to play in the game.

I have bust quite a few, especially 10 pounders, or bust the inserts out of them on Hi Temps. When Fringe started up, one of the things I really looked at is I said, "We gotta make these bumper plates better." After visiting many, many, many factories .. At one point, I do think I visited just about every bumper plate factory in the US or in Asia. Didn't really check any out in Europe because of cost considerations there, and we worked and worked, and worked to create a bumper plate that we could bring to market at a relatively low price.

Doesn't have to be the cheapest bumper plate in the world, but it does have to be a value price and able to compete down there on the low end, but be incredibly, incredibly durable.

I remember, never going to forget, one day we got a sample of a bumper plate. It wasn't anything special. There was nothing about it, initially, that was causing us to think that it was a great bumper plate. I mean, it was just another sample that came through.

I unwrapped it and I took a look at it, and I was like, "Holy crap. This is it." I, again, remember just looking at that bumper plate and being amazed.

That was really the start of what we're doing now with our OneFitWonder bumper plates, which are so great that the 10 pound plates are warrantied for a full year of commercial use. If you click around you can even see a video of us throwing them off of our roof.

It's crazy, even in today's day and age, that there's still companies that are saying, "Don't drop your bumper plates from above the waist." There's also a YouTube video out there that says, "Save the 10s. If you want to make a lightweight barbell, load up 25s on a aluminum training bar", which in my opinion is (A) outdated, I mean there are great 10 pound plates out there, and (B) you're bordering on dangerous, because aluminum bars stress differently than steel does. Those aluminum training barbells are actually made for teaching, not made for lifting or working out.

Back to the bumper plates. We've got this style now that we continue to upgrade and continue to engineer and make changes, and collect feedback on. What we're doing with it now is we've got an insert that's actually molded into the bumper plate that makes it more durable.

You always get problems with materials when you have different materials, heterogeneous materials, coming together. Now we've got a larger contact area with what we're doing, and we're molding that insert in. Additionally, around the insert, we've got essentially a shock absorber layer of low durometer rubber right around where it meets, that helps those heterogeneous steel and rubber combined. Then we've got a high durometer rubber that comprises the rest of the plate.

Really creates a very, very durable plate.

Oh, and by the way, the 10 and 15 pounds, we do a different durometer than the 25 through 55 pound plates. On top of that, of course, we're doing our USA-made plates, where we've got a little bit of magic in there as well.

Now you can stop reading here if you're not interested anymore-

I just want to talk a little bit about what I'm doing here in Barcelona.

I lived abroad when I was a child. I lived in Cairo when I was a little kid, then I lived in Brazil when I was in college. I really love America.

But I also love living abroad and I wanted to give this experience to my kids. Fringe is almost another child to me, although definitely a very distant third place to my two real flesh and blood, human children. I need to be able to take care of Fringe at the same time of taking care of and giving my kids the worldly experience in Barcelona.

And giving them an experience abroad has been successful so far.

This is Peter signing out. Pick up yourself bumper plates this week only.

Be well!

PK