We talk with Ivan all about the awesome products they make over at Vosentech. They create the very popular Micro Fogger as well as a host of other useful products. Check em out over at vosentech.com
Panelists
Transcript from Talk
Sarah Marince:
Hi, everybody. Welcome to Crew Talk brought to you by shoots.video. And today I have Ivan from Vosentech and Ivan, how are you doing today?
Ivan Avanesov:
Good. Thank you. Well thank you for having us on.
Sarah Marince:
Of course, I’m very excited to dive into our list of questions and get to know you and everything that you do. Where are you chatting with us from today?
Ivan Avanesov:
So we’re here in Philadelphia right now. That’s where our manufacturing facility is located as well as the office. so yeah, beautiful in Philadelphia.
Sarah Marince:
Wonderful. Yeah, I’ve been to Philly many times. I’m from Pittsburgh, so opposite side rivals for sure. But
Ivan Avanesov:
Still not too far away.
Sarah Marince:
No, not at all. Well, I’m just into my questions, if you’re good with that.
Ivan Avanesov:
Of course. Let’s go. Can
Sarah Marince:
Can you just, first of all, tell us a little bit about Vosentech.
Ivan Avanesov:
So here at Vosentech we specialize in the design, the manufacturer and the distribution of specialty smoke machines. so the micro fogger, which I have one right here is our main offering. Essentially. It is a range of mini smoke machines for various different use cases, branching from special effects to airflow testing, as I’m sure we’ll go on to discuss later on we started Vosentech around four years ago, and back then we were based in the United Kingdom, not far away from London but as the business started growing we did ultimately move to Philadelphia here in Pennsylvania. so that is where we’re based right now. And so far things have been good. So we’re delighted to share. <laugh> more information about our products right here.
Sarah Marince:
I can imagine that your products are used a lot in movies and commercials and things like that, correct?
Ivan Avanesov:
Yep. So about we would say about half of the sales that we have go towards the special effects industry. so that includes quite a broad range of specialties because of course there is the prop makers who use the micro foggers for different sort of props for example, in theaters or shows they are used in universal studios, Orlando and other larger theme parks as well, especially when you need to get some smaller smoke effects and you really do need it to be portable. the micro fogger is fully battery powered. There is no need to connect it up to wall sockets, which really frees up your opportunities apart from that in terms of special effects and film there are a number of photographers both professional and amateur that use micro fogger as it can create some really nice effects, especially with back lighting. additionally food photography and toy photography have really seen well, the micro has seen some popularity there as for food photography. It’s great to create simulated steam effects. As of course you wouldn’t wanna have hard food or boiling liquids on set.
Sarah Marince:
Right. I know we had smoke for our wedding, like our first dance. We were dancing around and had like the smoke on the floor created a really nice effect and the pictures look incredible, but I noticed the little, the micro Bo machine that you have, it’s, it’s very small. And when I think of like smoke machines, I think, you know, like big, like bigger machines. So can you get the same effect from the little the micro that you have there versus the big machine? Oh
Ivan Avanesov:
Yeah, sure. yep. So it’s it’s small, but it is actually quite powerful. all it doesn’t look like it’ll be able to fill up a room. However, if we were to go for around a minute continuously, we would be able to fill up small to medium rooms with a nice haze that is usually what people want to get for their lighting effects at this that really accentuates the lighting bloom sometimes. but here we have the micro fogger with the upgrade kit available. and that is the one that uses the greatest amount of smoke size. As you can see, it’s it’s, it’s not designed to replace the traditional smoke machines that you have, for example, this is not gonna fog up a warehouse, of course. however, for many purposes you don’t really need that much smoke, so that’s really where it shines.
Sarah Marince:
So depending on the attachment you have on there, you can have a bigger effect or versus, you know, what it would regularly do.
Ivan Avanesov:
yep. So all of our micro fogs come. So ultimately the part that decides how much smoke is coming out is just this heater element here. So all of our micro fogs do come with a standard heater element. here, I’m just showing you the one with the upgraded tank. usually the metric we give is that the upgraded tank will give you around two times more smoke density, as opposed to the normal one. However, for most purposes, even the normal micro fogger tanks are perfectly fine. This is just the specialty one for really, if you wanna fog up a room quite seriously.
Sarah Marince:
Wow. And so what is the battery life on that? How long will that last?
Ivan Avanesov:
sure. So that ultimately depends because on the micro four or three pro we do have fully adjustable power levels. So here we have it at a much lower haze setting. Not sure if you can see that on the screen but you can increase it all the way up. So if you were to be running it at a haze setting, you would be getting an over an hour of continuous use equivalent continuous use. So usually people use it in bursts. So quite a long time with the haze settings at full power with the standard microphone, you’d be getting around 15 to 20 minutes of continuous equivalent use. So still quite a good amount of time. And you, you would certainly be able to fog up most residential apartments or rooms and houses. so definitely enough. most of our customers don’t don’t find any issues with the battery life. so it does last them for a full day of shooting. And whenever you need to recharge, it’s just got a little USB port on the bottom. So it’s just a matter of plugging into a power bank or a computer and it’ll just recharge,
Sarah Marince:
Like charging your phone
Ivan Avanesov:
Exactly as simple as that
Sarah Marince:
Easy peasy. and so what differentiates your products from other smoke machines on the market?
Ivan Avanesov:
sure. So of course the differences between the micro fogger and the other traditional smoke machines that would be getting plugged into the walls are pretty big, of course, it’s much smaller. It’s much lighter, it’s less bulky. it’s easier to use because it doesn’t have any sort of heat up time. So with traditional smoke machines, you you would have to wait maybe a meter or two as the temperature increases. here we are using a different technology to make the smoke. So as you can see, we just turned it on and it works right away. ultimately this advantage is there because we use a different technology, which we were the first ones to use in the smoke machine space. so the traditional smoke machines that we would consider that a different product, which we’re not competing against. However, there are a few other companies that have started using the same technology that we are using here for that instantaneous fog production which can be variable as well as I should.
the main difference between us and them are our smoke machines are by far the most affordable, the micro fogger three light starts at $140. The nearest competitors are over $600 with most other ones, well, over a thousand. so really the price difference is pretty big. And in terms of features that that doesn’t mean we’re lacking in any sort of features. In fact, we have got more features on board than any of the other competitors as well, with the micro fogger three pro you do have a little screen right here on which you are able to adjust the power levels as well as do some other functionality. So we do have timer settings. So if you want to use it on a repetitive loop, say, you want to have it run for four repetitions for three seconds, every 10 seconds.
That is certainly possible. That’s not possible on any other competitors as there, you would need to buy external adapters. so all of this is built in to the micro fogger. we do also have a built in remote control. so one interesting point of note is that one of the other competitors, it’s this company called look solutions. they do offer small smoke machines. They use a slightly different technology, and those are the ones that are well over a thousand dollars their remote control dongle, which is just a little attachment that gives you the functionality the remote control functionality for their smoke machines. it is actually way more expensive than our micro three pro with the remote control included. so just their dongle is more expensive than our entire set
Sarah Marince:
With everything that the micro fogger can do. And all the extra features like the timer and remote and where you have it priced. I don’t know why anyone would go anywhere else to, you know, for their fog needs.
Ivan Avanesov:
<laugh> yes, yes. We, we often get the comment from some of where distributors that are products are priced too low. In fact however, we, the reason why we do have a very friendly pricing is because we really do wanna appeal towards the amateur photographers prop makers. we do have a lot of people cost players who use our devices, so ultimately pricing it at $600, a thousand dollars that would completely cut out that market. And not allow people to get, say, smoke effects for, for example, their school project where they’re building a Diora of volcano. so we try to keep it as friendly in terms of pricing as possible. Our tagline is innovative and affordable tech, and we do try to keep to that.
Sarah Marince:
That’s wonderful. No, that’s, that’s great. have these supply chain issues affected you guys at all?
Ivan Avanesov:
yeah. so at the beginning of COVID some of these supply chain issues have manifested themselves in delayed shipping times, but as 2021 sort are coming around, we saw the well now very present chip shortage. so the chips we were using in the micro fogger were very similar to that of many other companies that are using it in anything from smart home gadgets to, as you can see cars do use similar chips. so the way we tackled that is we actually introduced the micro fogger three light which was our bare bones, micro fogger, where you would just press a button and it would make smoke mm-hmm <affirmative>. so it didn’t use any advanced chips. That’s what allowed us to keep that in stock for the vast majority of those supply chain issues, as that started getting a little bit better, we were able to introduce the micrography pro, which is the one with the screen here that uses a far more advanced computer ship, which thankfully we do have good stock of nowadays.
however, these supply chain issues are continuing and many, many other companies are having difficult as a smaller company. We do have some advantages and disadvantages in terms of dealing with this, the disadvantages of course, that we don’t have the purchasing power of larger companies. We aren’t able to really negotiate directly with the producers as the quantities we buy are not that high. However, the advantages, since we are smaller, we are able to redesign and move a lot quicker, which is why we were able to introduce a new product in a matter, in a matter of months rather than years as it would be the case with other companies. So there are really advantages and disadvantages to being a smaller company.
Sarah Marince:
So off the top of my head after just 10 minutes of talking all of the uses for this, I mean, you have production Coplay weddings, I guess if I that’s, how we the ours for and what are, I know I’m missing stuff. What are some other uses for your micro fogger?
Ivan Avanesov:
Sure. So when we were getting into this, tho those are the exact uses we were thinking of, however, in these years of doing it, we’ve really discovered a very interesting range of uses that our clients have been getting the micro fogs for one really large aspect of our business is the airflow testing industry. so the microphones are, have become pretty much an industry standard at this point in that industry. And essentially what it is, it is the industrial testing of how air moves and this can relate to HVAC systems to air conditionings air conditioning systems in cars checking for leaks, AR air leaks around windows and doors. There are many requirements in different countries for the testing of that, as it does impact the environmental environmental ratings of buildings. So we do see these being used in many, many larger companies that you would even know about. most, most customers would’ve probably mostly your listeners. Would’ve probably heard of them. so it isn’t something that is very public. We don’t talk about it too much. However, larger companies do use it pretty much whenever you’re designing a car, a air flow fan in a computer case or even military or aeronautic applications, microphones have probably been used in some capacity there,
Sarah Marince:
They can be used for everything <laugh>
Ivan Avanesov:
Yeah. Yeah. We, we do have another area we’re looking into the, the hospitality industry. So bars, restaurants have been occasionally using these for smoke cocktails. Yeah. so either for creating a smoke effect around a glass. So I do have a glass of bar here. that, that is so cool. Yeah. Serving it with a glass filled with smoke. Alternatively we are gonna be soon debuting a attachment for the micro fogger, which will allow you to create smoke bubbles. So essentially the same sort of bubble that you would be blowing with some soap solution except it’s filled with smoke. So once it does pop, it does create a very cool effect and that can certainly be served on top of drinks and cocktails.
Sarah Marince:
I’ve been seeing those smoke drinks everywhere. And I was actually just on vacation and I saw the circle, the bubble smoking thing, and it just like lands on the drink. It just kind of goes, it’s such a cool effect.
Ivan Avanesov:
It’s it’s certainly very photogenic. Yes. <laugh>
Sarah Marince:
Oh, I was filming that the whole time. I was like, I’ve never seen,
Ivan Avanesov:
Of course, of course <laugh>
Sarah Marince:
All for the gram. my next question, DIY can be a big help on set with different camera accessories. Do your products offer a lot of DIY capabilities?
Ivan Avanesov:
sure. So our philosophy here at Vosentech is that we do try to be as DIY as right to repair friendly as possible with our customers. So ultimately we do provide a lot of documentation on how the micro fogger can be implemented into your own projects. so the charging port here, the micro USB port it’s used for charging, but it also doubles as a control cable input. So we do offer a adapter for that a little breakout board that will allow you to connect it to any sort of interface that you would wanna connect it to. So for example, you can connect to a push button of your choice. you can connect to many commonly available microcontroller such as the Arno. so that’s an easy to program micro controller. So you are essentially able to tie that into pretty much any existing system, which is super useful when you’re building it into props or installations.
For example, we had what we have a few museums who are using the micro fogger to visualize airflow in different scenarios. And ultimately for them, they want to have a customer or well visitor facing button that is connected to the micro fogger, which is tied in through that control cable. Additionally, as I mentioned, we are very right repair friendly. So we do offer many tutorials on how to service the micro fogger. it is designed in such a way that it’s possible to open it up and clean out the insides or replace any components if that is necessary. So rather than having the approach of send it back to us and we’ll, we’ll take your money for repair, we would rather give you that knowledge. And we do also offer the ability to send it back, but we do really believe in the ability for the consumer to purchase spare parts, if that is what they want.
Sarah Marince:
That’s wonderful. That’s great. Much easier than having to send it back.
Ivan Avanesov:
Of course, of course it’s most of the time if there are, and I do apologize about the sirens we do live on a <laugh> pretty busy street here. yeah, ultimately it’s usually faster, cheaper and better for the consumer. and of course ultimately if it is an issue with the micro fogger, we’re always happy to replace them free of charge under warranty. So yeah.
Sarah Marince:
Oh, wonderful. Well, as we wrap, is there anything else you want all of our viewers to know about the micro fogger or your company?
Ivan Avanesov:
I think we’ve covered most of the more interesting topics about the micro fogger as well as our company. we will have newer products coming out soon. we do hope to have large upgrades for the micro fogger. ultimately as we get gain experience from while getting customer feedback and responses from people using it we will be introducing new attachments for the micro fog, and we do always try to make them as backwards compatible with existing units as well. so certainly your, your viewers can check us [email protected] to see any of the, any of the newer products that we will hopefully soon be releasing
Sarah Marince:
Well. That’s wonderful. Well, thank you so, so much for being here and sharing all of your knowledge with us today.
Ivan Avanesov:
Of course. Well, thank you so much for having us
Sarah Marince:
And for everyone else watching. Thank you for joining us, and you can check out all of our crew talk videos on YouTube. Bye.
