Clear replacement Headlight Lens: Gathering interest
11-19-08, 12:43 AM
#76
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Tuesday Update
Things are looking very good. Because of the demand, and because our club lexus renewal starts in december, December 1st these will be for sale. It’s looking like the first wave of Sherlock Society lenses will be: SC hi’s and low’s, fogs for all gen’s, 2nd gen GS headlights and fogs, and fogs for the 97-00 ES300. There may be more added. Since Top Hat and Sherlock Society are very close (we went to the same high school back in the day!) and since I help out on all the projects, and we enjoy exceeding peoples expectations, there’s more then a good chance a few more cars will be added to the first wave list. 1st Gen GS, SC tail lights, and 1st gen JDM LS400 headlights are on the wave 2 list.
Good news:
To everyone who wanted green tint. That option WILL be available. The tint comes from the housing not the lens, but a similar effect can be achieved using a pearl coat on the inner lens. We are going to be offering the lights with a green pearl clear coated inner finish. Blue and diamond clear will also be available. Because we (Top Hat) have to paint them ourselves, it'll be an extra $20. Which, IMHO, is a very fair price to have 4 lenses (low and hi) painted.
Fog light people: Fogs lights/corner lights (as i've heard them called) for ALL generations will be available. We were hoping to have pictures tonight but Bryan from the Sherlock Society got sent inner headlights instead of +97 fogs so we have to get that all taken care of first.... unless the 97+ fogs and the inner headlights are the same thing??
Material: After extensive (and fun!) testing and research these will be made out of CAST ACRYLIC (aka Plexiglass, Lucite, Acrylite, Optix, Plexi). Lexan has issues with longevity and a few other negative aspects. Cast acrylic on the other hand is 17 times stronger then glass and half the weight. Because of how strong they are we can use a thin enough sheet to have a flush fit and be able to have it roll into the housing for a perfect seal. This isn't a piece of acrylic cut with straight edges and shaped. This is a REPLACEMENT LENS. Because of the formed shape of the lens the sealant does an amazing job of making a perfect seal. We will have a youtube video posted of us torture testing the lenses (since entertaining to watch) and compare how they handle abuse compared to the factory lens.
Overall i’m very pleased with how its all looking. This is just the beginning of lighting related products from the Sherlock Society. If all goes well 2009 will be the year of the Sherlock Society. With products specifically for VIP enthusiast as well Sherlock Sport catering to the sport side of japanese tuning. There will be a plethora of products for available for Lexus owners as well as universal items such as air fresheners and interior LED products.
We are investigating how viable producing LED tail lights would be. Usually you need a 5,000 set order from a chinese company BUT depending on what machinery we throw down for with the Sherlock Society it very well could fall in line with tails. No promises though! First we'll see how the headlight lenses do, then the taillights. I know that if I still had my 94, I would straight crapped my pantaloons over LED tails so we'll see what can be done. - Sam
Things are looking very good. Because of the demand, and because our club lexus renewal starts in december, December 1st these will be for sale. It’s looking like the first wave of Sherlock Society lenses will be: SC hi’s and low’s, fogs for all gen’s, 2nd gen GS headlights and fogs, and fogs for the 97-00 ES300. There may be more added. Since Top Hat and Sherlock Society are very close (we went to the same high school back in the day!) and since I help out on all the projects, and we enjoy exceeding peoples expectations, there’s more then a good chance a few more cars will be added to the first wave list. 1st Gen GS, SC tail lights, and 1st gen JDM LS400 headlights are on the wave 2 list.
Good news:
To everyone who wanted green tint. That option WILL be available. The tint comes from the housing not the lens, but a similar effect can be achieved using a pearl coat on the inner lens. We are going to be offering the lights with a green pearl clear coated inner finish. Blue and diamond clear will also be available. Because we (Top Hat) have to paint them ourselves, it'll be an extra $20. Which, IMHO, is a very fair price to have 4 lenses (low and hi) painted.
Fog light people: Fogs lights/corner lights (as i've heard them called) for ALL generations will be available. We were hoping to have pictures tonight but Bryan from the Sherlock Society got sent inner headlights instead of +97 fogs so we have to get that all taken care of first.... unless the 97+ fogs and the inner headlights are the same thing??
Material: After extensive (and fun!) testing and research these will be made out of CAST ACRYLIC (aka Plexiglass, Lucite, Acrylite, Optix, Plexi). Lexan has issues with longevity and a few other negative aspects. Cast acrylic on the other hand is 17 times stronger then glass and half the weight. Because of how strong they are we can use a thin enough sheet to have a flush fit and be able to have it roll into the housing for a perfect seal. This isn't a piece of acrylic cut with straight edges and shaped. This is a REPLACEMENT LENS. Because of the formed shape of the lens the sealant does an amazing job of making a perfect seal. We will have a youtube video posted of us torture testing the lenses (since entertaining to watch) and compare how they handle abuse compared to the factory lens.
Overall i’m very pleased with how its all looking. This is just the beginning of lighting related products from the Sherlock Society. If all goes well 2009 will be the year of the Sherlock Society. With products specifically for VIP enthusiast as well Sherlock Sport catering to the sport side of japanese tuning. There will be a plethora of products for available for Lexus owners as well as universal items such as air fresheners and interior LED products.
We are investigating how viable producing LED tail lights would be. Usually you need a 5,000 set order from a chinese company BUT depending on what machinery we throw down for with the Sherlock Society it very well could fall in line with tails. No promises though! First we'll see how the headlight lenses do, then the taillights. I know that if I still had my 94, I would straight crapped my pantaloons over LED tails so we'll see what can be done. - Sam
11-24-08, 09:49 PM
#83
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Update:
Hey! So we have been extremely busy getting all the molds made and perfecting the technique. I am impressed with how they look. When you compare them to the OEM ones side by side it is NIGHT and DAY difference. We are having problems with internet brands (the people how manage the CL vendors) so we are trying to get it all taken care of so we can extend on our membership past November.
As more and more people get involved with Top Hat (given suggestions, donating stuff like the factory headlights and fogs, ect..) I've been telling the Top Hat story over and over again. I thought I would post it on here so you guys could get to know Top Hat a little better.
I've been a clublexus member since 2003 (BigVipness) which I use for fun or organizing events, and this one for business. Owned 4 in that period of time and club lexus was a wealth of knowledge for me. Years ago I took my video camera and would film old people telling stories from there lives and then i'd turn it into a video biography of sorts. It was fun and worked pretty well till apple came out with a program that basically did it for you! So I was out of high school and out of a job and realized this was the only chance I would probably have to live the dream I'd had since I was 15. Wheel shop.
Well I couldn't exactly afford a shop on my own, through a crazy twist of fate I got paired up with a guy named Andre who was a veteran audio installer from Arizona looking to get out of the over-saturated market there and capitalize on the untapped market here. So he ended up getting a very nice shop in Eden Prairie (MN) and cleaned it up to a ridiculous degree (when I was painting, I accidentally slapped a brush with water on the electrical outlet and it shocked me so hard and long I pissed myself...true story). He let me rent/share some of the space from him. He named his place Streamline Audio because of how clean his installs are. They like they were build from the OEM company, and the design so surpasses the existing design. The name of my shop would be "Top Hat customs". I had gotten into a little VIP too early, there was barely a following and the products were nearly inaccessible, so there wasn’t much I could do for it at the time. I thought if anything, Top Hat was a nice nod to that style. I had always felt like an old man and this style fit my personality so perfectly I wanted to be as involved in it as I could be and help it grow properly however I could. The 'Customs' part, was so people would know what the hell we did.
So for 3 years I sold wheels and accessories out of the shop. We actually hosted a couple CL/My.IS meets there. Well there is a reason that there are no crazy custom shops in minnesota. Winter was always horrible and as where Andre was doing lots of business with the big high end dealers in the area, my focus was on car modifying as a whole and the things I wanted to do most people in MN didn't want to do. They wanted 18" black mesh wheels for their BMW E46.
As I was exposed to more and more products from Japan I couldn't help get the feeling that much of it was not up to the standards of quality I expected for the price that you pay. My friends who were into VIP but didn’t have cash for the car yet (it’s not like I did either!) and we found ourselves sitting around talking about things that we wish you could buy, and things we wish were made better. Waiting months to get stuff from Japan sucked enough to wish things were available here. Which, thanks to the other vendors on CL/VSC, many items now are.
So as our list, and the VIP scene, grew larger I found myself sitting at the counter watching the snow fall outside wondering “why am I here?... I could be making better stuff then is coming out of japan and for much, much cheaper.” Hell, I don’t need to make huge profit off of it if it’s being sold through Top Hat anyway. If its a actual quality product at a good price then people will buy it and there will be nothing to worry about. Streamline was getting bigger and we started competing for space. When he could afford the place on his own I left and moved my operation online.
When I was taking a few weeks off to relax before coming up with a new plan I ran into a friend from high school who was teaching shop class to Jr., High school students. In the first 30 seconds of conversation he said to me “Hey do you know what VIP is?” and after a that it was pretty clear something good was going to happen. His skills with anything involving tools or building something and my fabricating skills synched up beautifully. We decided that over time, we would bring everything WE though was baller to the scene. I had the business/selling end on lock so with an outlet to sell our products, and the countless I made from Top Hat, we were able to offer baller products without the baller price tag. Top Shelf, Bottom Line right? So I kept Top Hat to be the only US distributor for the Sherlock Society (Canada, UK/Aus, and Japan will have their own respective Sherlock Society dealers) and Bryan and I opened up the Sherlock Society.
After our successful group buy, where we offered a imported Lxury Hanes wheel under the Sherlock brand at a ridiculous price, we felt that the market would respond well to all of the other products we could offer. Having added a few more people to the team (like Shonn with the Blue LS400) we had even more excellent input then before. Since all our products are manufactured within the US, costumers didn’t have to wait 3 months for the product to arrive! The other nice thing about making these in the US is we can completely control the quality. Cheap crap is made in other countries, if its made in the USA, its made to a certain standard of quality.
We hold our products to a very high degree. The amount of thought and passion that goes into our VIP products is so strong because it comes naturally. We don’t try fit into a style or trend. We are VIP. We are grateful as **** that there actually IS a reorganized style that fits our lifestyles. We don’t just do this as a hobby, and we definitely don’t do this to make a ridiculous amount of money (we invested in other things for that), we do this because we LOVE it. We do this stuff all day. We think about this stuff (well and *****) all day. We are not trying to be Junction Produce, we are not trying to be Garson.We are the Sherlock Society. These headlights are only the beginning many, many new products. This coming spring especially you will start to see what we are talking about. I’m not talking about neck pillows with some funky stitching, or lip kits that kinda look like this or that. We are on some real ****. And if these headlights are successful enough, we will be able to bring everything to the table. My biggest hope is that by the spring we will be able to offer full vehicle packages for the SC, along with packages for most, if not all, of the VIP platforms. We’ve been getting a lot of question out more wheels, we will be doing wheels again down the road. First its headlight lenses, then its accessories and body kits, then wheels.
So that is us. We are working on getting all the different lenses ready for December 1st. I have the horrible tendency to come up with an idea so good we have no choice but to do it even though we already a ridiculous amount of work ahead of us. It’s the reason why I haven’t driven my GS in 2 months and the interior is in my living room. We will have pics as soon as everything is %100 kosher and sorted out. In this case it was shaved down GS lenses so they are not so bug eyed and puffy and instead are sleek and mean. So everyone sit tight (which will be easy judging everybody's stance in their sigs) and we will have pics when everything is read. Thought i’d share that little story, so you guys would know how serious we take this, and how much fun we have with it.
Before I finally got my GS400 I had a 1994 GS300 for 3 years. I absolutely loved that car and you better believe I we will come out with some serious stuff for it. As we speak we are investigating the viability of using the equipment we have to produce a limited production of LED taillights for the 1st generation GS. If anyone has pics of what the tail lights look like with the over lens and inner lenses taken apart that would help us out greatly. PM me if you do.
Hang in there guys and gals. Good things are coming!
- Sam
Hey! So we have been extremely busy getting all the molds made and perfecting the technique. I am impressed with how they look. When you compare them to the OEM ones side by side it is NIGHT and DAY difference. We are having problems with internet brands (the people how manage the CL vendors) so we are trying to get it all taken care of so we can extend on our membership past November.
As more and more people get involved with Top Hat (given suggestions, donating stuff like the factory headlights and fogs, ect..) I've been telling the Top Hat story over and over again. I thought I would post it on here so you guys could get to know Top Hat a little better.
I've been a clublexus member since 2003 (BigVipness) which I use for fun or organizing events, and this one for business. Owned 4 in that period of time and club lexus was a wealth of knowledge for me. Years ago I took my video camera and would film old people telling stories from there lives and then i'd turn it into a video biography of sorts. It was fun and worked pretty well till apple came out with a program that basically did it for you! So I was out of high school and out of a job and realized this was the only chance I would probably have to live the dream I'd had since I was 15. Wheel shop.
Well I couldn't exactly afford a shop on my own, through a crazy twist of fate I got paired up with a guy named Andre who was a veteran audio installer from Arizona looking to get out of the over-saturated market there and capitalize on the untapped market here. So he ended up getting a very nice shop in Eden Prairie (MN) and cleaned it up to a ridiculous degree (when I was painting, I accidentally slapped a brush with water on the electrical outlet and it shocked me so hard and long I pissed myself...true story). He let me rent/share some of the space from him. He named his place Streamline Audio because of how clean his installs are. They like they were build from the OEM company, and the design so surpasses the existing design. The name of my shop would be "Top Hat customs". I had gotten into a little VIP too early, there was barely a following and the products were nearly inaccessible, so there wasn’t much I could do for it at the time. I thought if anything, Top Hat was a nice nod to that style. I had always felt like an old man and this style fit my personality so perfectly I wanted to be as involved in it as I could be and help it grow properly however I could. The 'Customs' part, was so people would know what the hell we did.
So for 3 years I sold wheels and accessories out of the shop. We actually hosted a couple CL/My.IS meets there. Well there is a reason that there are no crazy custom shops in minnesota. Winter was always horrible and as where Andre was doing lots of business with the big high end dealers in the area, my focus was on car modifying as a whole and the things I wanted to do most people in MN didn't want to do. They wanted 18" black mesh wheels for their BMW E46.
As I was exposed to more and more products from Japan I couldn't help get the feeling that much of it was not up to the standards of quality I expected for the price that you pay. My friends who were into VIP but didn’t have cash for the car yet (it’s not like I did either!) and we found ourselves sitting around talking about things that we wish you could buy, and things we wish were made better. Waiting months to get stuff from Japan sucked enough to wish things were available here. Which, thanks to the other vendors on CL/VSC, many items now are.
So as our list, and the VIP scene, grew larger I found myself sitting at the counter watching the snow fall outside wondering “why am I here?... I could be making better stuff then is coming out of japan and for much, much cheaper.” Hell, I don’t need to make huge profit off of it if it’s being sold through Top Hat anyway. If its a actual quality product at a good price then people will buy it and there will be nothing to worry about. Streamline was getting bigger and we started competing for space. When he could afford the place on his own I left and moved my operation online.
When I was taking a few weeks off to relax before coming up with a new plan I ran into a friend from high school who was teaching shop class to Jr., High school students. In the first 30 seconds of conversation he said to me “Hey do you know what VIP is?” and after a that it was pretty clear something good was going to happen. His skills with anything involving tools or building something and my fabricating skills synched up beautifully. We decided that over time, we would bring everything WE though was baller to the scene. I had the business/selling end on lock so with an outlet to sell our products, and the countless I made from Top Hat, we were able to offer baller products without the baller price tag. Top Shelf, Bottom Line right? So I kept Top Hat to be the only US distributor for the Sherlock Society (Canada, UK/Aus, and Japan will have their own respective Sherlock Society dealers) and Bryan and I opened up the Sherlock Society.
After our successful group buy, where we offered a imported Lxury Hanes wheel under the Sherlock brand at a ridiculous price, we felt that the market would respond well to all of the other products we could offer. Having added a few more people to the team (like Shonn with the Blue LS400) we had even more excellent input then before. Since all our products are manufactured within the US, costumers didn’t have to wait 3 months for the product to arrive! The other nice thing about making these in the US is we can completely control the quality. Cheap crap is made in other countries, if its made in the USA, its made to a certain standard of quality.
We hold our products to a very high degree. The amount of thought and passion that goes into our VIP products is so strong because it comes naturally. We don’t try fit into a style or trend. We are VIP. We are grateful as **** that there actually IS a reorganized style that fits our lifestyles. We don’t just do this as a hobby, and we definitely don’t do this to make a ridiculous amount of money (we invested in other things for that), we do this because we LOVE it. We do this stuff all day. We think about this stuff (well and *****) all day. We are not trying to be Junction Produce, we are not trying to be Garson.We are the Sherlock Society. These headlights are only the beginning many, many new products. This coming spring especially you will start to see what we are talking about. I’m not talking about neck pillows with some funky stitching, or lip kits that kinda look like this or that. We are on some real ****. And if these headlights are successful enough, we will be able to bring everything to the table. My biggest hope is that by the spring we will be able to offer full vehicle packages for the SC, along with packages for most, if not all, of the VIP platforms. We’ve been getting a lot of question out more wheels, we will be doing wheels again down the road. First its headlight lenses, then its accessories and body kits, then wheels.
So that is us. We are working on getting all the different lenses ready for December 1st. I have the horrible tendency to come up with an idea so good we have no choice but to do it even though we already a ridiculous amount of work ahead of us. It’s the reason why I haven’t driven my GS in 2 months and the interior is in my living room. We will have pics as soon as everything is %100 kosher and sorted out. In this case it was shaved down GS lenses so they are not so bug eyed and puffy and instead are sleek and mean. So everyone sit tight (which will be easy judging everybody's stance in their sigs) and we will have pics when everything is read. Thought i’d share that little story, so you guys would know how serious we take this, and how much fun we have with it.
Before I finally got my GS400 I had a 1994 GS300 for 3 years. I absolutely loved that car and you better believe I we will come out with some serious stuff for it. As we speak we are investigating the viability of using the equipment we have to produce a limited production of LED taillights for the 1st generation GS. If anyone has pics of what the tail lights look like with the over lens and inner lenses taken apart that would help us out greatly. PM me if you do.
Hang in there guys and gals. Good things are coming!
- Sam
12-09-08, 06:48 AM
#86
not to sound like a pessimist, but its not going to happen for us until round 2 and I believe thats going to be only for the USDM version as for the JDM version, not till later. Plus if round one doesn't sell very well round 2 might be dead..
I hope this goes through for the JDM version.
I hope this goes through for the JDM version.
12-12-08, 04:46 AM
#89
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Top Hat -
Realize that you said in your post that you had pics on the way. By any chance do you have them now? Even though it won't be for our vehicles (yet), I'm sure that many people would like to see what the product looks like...
...and PLEASE don't forget us in the production of these lenses!!!
Realize that you said in your post that you had pics on the way. By any chance do you have them now? Even though it won't be for our vehicles (yet), I'm sure that many people would like to see what the product looks like...
...and PLEASE don't forget us in the production of these lenses!!!
12-12-08, 05:44 AM
#90
PLEASE PLEASE tell me that when you guys start to make more products, you think about 1gs sway bars!!! 
Those would sell like crazy I guarantee, since NO ONE else makes them.
Those would sell like crazy I guarantee, since NO ONE else makes them.