CLOSER LOOK
STICK IT TO IT WITH SEASUCKER WORDS BY JONE DEVLIN
My brother has a funny story he tells when we all get together. It is about how he and a group of friends were boating, and the seas got a little rough. One gentleman, unaffected by the ocean's turmoil, decided to grab a drink. So he ran down and got his beverage, then painstakingly made his way back to his chair, carefully guarding his drink the whole way. Upon finally sitting down he put his glass in a cup holder, sighed "Made it!" and, just as he was about to take a sip, the boat lurched and his cup holder (cup included) went flying out to sea; causing much amusement among his shipmates.
As funny as that story is, think about it from a different perspective. What if it hadn't been a drink but an iPad or iPhone that ended up sailing over the side of the boat to a watery grave?
The good news is that that doesn't have to happen, as long as you have SeaSucker . To quote from their website "SeaSuckers are vacuum cups, not suction cups. The built-in finger pump will reverse itself as it loses vacuum, and with a couple pumps you're back to full strength." What this means is that whether you're eating, drinking, or using your iPad or iPhone to navigate, you never have to worry about a rough sea (or a bump in the
road) causing anything to be lost.
SeaSucker's first product was a fold-out chair that could be placed on fishing boats to "keep Bubba from falling overboard," noted SeaSucker's Chuck Casagrande. "(We) started in the marine market and that's still one of our main markets. Then I built a bike rack and that's turned into our biggest market right now, we have dealers all over the world and we set up bike shops every day."
The company also manufactures iPad and iPhone mounts, using the same vacuum suction system that allows their bike racks to be tested on race cars going 140 miles an hour.
Casagrande is a dedicated Apple fan (he proudly talks about being "one of those people" that lined up for hours when the first iPhone came out), so it wasn't much of a leap for him to start developing items that would work well with Apple products. "I've been an Apple user since 2001 and I've always had everything Apple…so I decided (Apple products) would work really well with our mounts."
Though the mount SeaSucker offers is an industrial mount, it hasn't stopped iPhone and iPad users from buying it in droves.
While the mount is more solid than what most users are used to, it's still simple enough to carry and can easily bend as needed. Says Casagrande, "Our (mount) is more utilitarian because it's industrial; but many times that …is what appeals. It's not a wimpy, flashy, chrome-y part."
The mount is adjustable, simple to take apart and put back together and extremely travel friendly. It allows users to mount their iPads and iPhones easily on car dashboards, boats, car windows, the tray tables on planes, and even the wall of your home. And no matter how many times you move it, the suction devices never wear out. In fact, if for some reason the power gets low, the devices will show an orange line. When users see that line, they just have to pump it a couple of times and it's automatically reset.
Currently the mounts are only available in white, but the company is working on designing them in black so that dirt and wear do not show up as easily.
So if you're in the market for a sturdy bike rack, a solid food or cup holder, or a mount that will hold your iPhone or iPad in place no matter where you are or what you are doing, give SeaSucker a go. You won't be sorry.
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