ABOUT PULSAR

How We Got Started In This Business

We launched our business in 1988 under the name "DynaArt Designs" in the high-desert of California as graphic art design studio...

In 1992, a new client hired me to create a color magazine ad for some real snooty "fancy living" type magazine. When the job was finished, he invited me to tour his facilities, showing me exactly what's involved in doing what I would otherwise call a very boring business. However, to keep relations good, I looked interested in what he was showing me.

Not to bore you, but an important event happened at that time. This guys operation revolved around silk-screening images onto a special type of paper. He showed me how the image is first printed onto the paper via a silk-screen frame and left to dry. Then the paper was put in water. About 1 minute later, the image floated off. All of a sudden a little light went off in side my little pea-brain and all I could do is ask him if I could have a few sheet of this paper, in that I had an experiment I had to try immediately!

I sped home, grabbed an iron and ran it over the paper. As I was hoping, nothing happened. This was a good test because it meant that the paper could be run through a laser printer without the water-soluble "glue" coating being activated. I proceeded to set up the computer to print a test image, crossed my fingers and ran a sheet of this "mystery paper" through the laser printer. It started to jam, but I was able to grab the leading edge and "help" it through the printer.

The printed image looked like it was printed on regular paper. I laid the image over a piece of cleaned copper circuit board, then placed the hot iron over the back of the paper. I was hoping the heat would make the toner re-fuse to the copper surface. After a few minutes of ironing the back of the paper, I put both the copper laminated "circuit board" and the paper into a tray of water and waited with extreme anticipation for the result.

As I stared at the board for what seemed like an eternity, the paper finally slid away from the board and it worked! The black toner image was "fused" to the copper surface!

We in the hobby electronics arena had known for years that toner would make what we call, a great "etch resist" (meaning you can mask off an area of metal with this black toner and it would protect the copper underneath it.) Well, that realization just came to fruition... this was a marketable product!

I started working on developing some "techniques" to make this trick work all of the time. I worked at night writing and designing a product cover, looking for vendors for this special "magic" paper as well as developing an entirely new business shell. One of the big hurdles to get over was to find a company that would believe in me to experiment with some lighter weight papers to be coated. The entire process to formulate this new business took about three months from start to finish.

How The Business Grew:

We discovered the "power of the pen" and was amazed at how well it works. I'm speaking of freelance magazine articles. There aren't many things in life that are a 4-way "win/win/win/win" situation. The most you ever hear about is "win/win". The 4-way win is simply started by sending your product out to as many magazine editors you can find that would be relevant to the product. I was after free publicity for two reasons: 1) they're free and 2) the reader gets automatic "peace of mind" the product is good since it's not an advertisement. The whole process starts with an enclosed letter to the editor asking him to forward this sample product to one of his freelance writers... that's all you have to do to get the ball rolling! Here's how everybody wins. It's great!

1) The freelance WRITER gets paid for his article about something new.2) The EDITOR wants articles that will make his magazine sell3) The READER is made aware of a new product that must be purchased
4) The MANUFACTURER, well he gets 3 instead of one:

[a] The phone immediately starts ringing [b] Instant "credibility of the product" which attracts dealers[c] Free advertising! You couldn't afford multi-page ads the size of an article!

Another interesting thing we did was to ensure total "customer satisfaction". A trick I learned from Charles Tandy (Radio Shack). He used to say to us young, pimple-faced, store manager kids back in the early 70's, "If a customer knows his money is not at risk, he'll buy with confidence and come back to buy again... always accept refunds and returns!"

Current Business Situation:

Up to just a short time ago, we were strictly an electronics oriented business, catering to hobbyist, the "midnight engineer", prototype PCB professional and higher education. Over the years we've always asked our customers for their ideas for other uses for this paper. We compensated every good idea with free "transfer paper" packs, and we just kept collecting ideas. Finally, in the beginning of 2003, we started a major project to perfect decal making. It's taken almost 2 full years, but we have finally broken the code on how to make white, full color and metallic decals without any "carrier" or overcoat spray... something that has never been done before!

About the Web Address:

Many have asked what the "gs" means in our address: "www.pulsar.gs"

The suffix .gs on our URL is just another of the dozens of "Top Level Domain" (TLD's) out there. Every country is allowed to have three TLD's. Familiar to most is of course, .com, .net and .org, however, every country can have three that will be recognized by the USA-based central controlling agency called VeriSign for the entire "worldwide" web.

Some of these TLD codes at the end of the address string are obvious like .au for Australia or .ca for Canada but others are not easily discernable like our own .gs for example, which originally came from the Russian Canary Islands, (South Georgia and the Sandwich Islands!) After the country of origin has taken your money to join in with one of their 3 possible TLD assigned to that country, the TLD (in this case ".gs") is then handed over to VeriSign to control its use. VeriSign is akin to a master 'lookup' directory for the entire web that re-directs the surfer to the correct computer anywhere in the world where that company has their site up-loaded to... and a few seconds later, voila! you're looking at the site. There are so many of these TLD out there that you could have "FORD" as your company name on the web address... but it won't be ".com".

All TLD's rollover to USA control by one company. So even though .info or .cc or even .tv may sound "American", they aren't. For many who advertise on television, the ".tv" makes the viewer think, "oh, yeah, that's a USA company who advertises specifically on television". In reality, there is really no way to know where the company resides or hails from. This works both ways... a non-USA company with a .com and a USA-based company with a ".com".

We are a USA company located in the panhandle of Florida. The reason for going with a .gs TLD was that we wanted our name PULSAR to be plainly written as the web address and not have it be a long extension (like "Pulsarcompany" or other silly strings) which we would have had to do because all three US designations (.com, .net & .org) were taken years ago.

Some go for a .com name and then add another "dot" for their country code just to stop the constant questions of what the last to letters are. The .com in the URL seems to satisfy the average "surfer" that what they are viewing is a US based company (which of course isn't necessarily the case.)

Here is the listing of all country "Root-Zones". Some are pretty interesting to see where they actually come from. http://www.iana.org/cctld/cctld-whois.htm

Frank Miller
Owner & CBW "Pulsar"