I've Got A Bone To Pick With Km

[mohinder]

I've got a no-name hose really similar to those (same style as the new maxura), not washable but smokes great, it cost me £5 from Queensway market. Considering we pay £15 for a tub of al fakher I'm happy with that. Same crappy build quality, but it cost next to nothing and smokes great. I wouldn't pay any more for a non-washable hose. And its not KM doing this, as others have said if you're in egypt you'll get a KM for $20-30. Its the importing it and everything that drives the price up. If I ever go back to egypt, which I probably will, I'm definitely going to bring a load of stuff back.

[Vladimir]

You have to consider this. The people making this are relatively poor and cannot afford the best materials all the time. They use whatever they can find and make something of it to make a living. An old member here reported their KM or whatever egyptian was actually made from an old gas line.

Don't blame the makers, blame the vendors and their price gouging

Yea I agree, holding manufacturers responsible for their product quality is a pretty bad idea.

[Canon]

i blame the makers. they know whatever they use for their products will sell. so why not make something out of free shit? you save costs that way. these hoses arent made in someones backyard then sold. i believe until someone proves me wrong that these hoses are made in a factory somewhere.

[NarghileNights]

come on guys... we all know that these hoses are dirt cheap.

when you pick up a KM ultimate, there's no way you can think it is high quality! it's covered in a half assed sewn together hose cover. the candy wrapper on the inside is universal to most hoses. that is usually the inner wrapping just inside of the metal coil. whether it's the candy wrapper material or just simple plastic, it's in 100% of hoses with a metal coil.

we are dealing with products that are produced in countries that don't have the same production quality standards as the U.S. or wherever you are from.

canon - they are probably made with the cheapest stuff that they can find.

you have to remember that the retailers are putting the "ultimate" and "extreme" names on the hoses. it's not some guy sitting over in a "km" factory naming these. they just make something and somewhat market it to the hookah industry. and on that note, have you ever seen the Khalil Mamoon website? oh wait.. have you ever tried ordering directly from km? the only way these are getting in the states is because someone knows someone over seas.

even the new Razan and Grande and Nammor hoses are terrible quality - and they are most likely coming from the same factory over seas.

the problem is that when you manufacture mass quantities of these, you are sacrificing quality. the Nammor(and similiar hoses) are a GREAT start. but when you use them a lot they fall apart.

sorry, i'm almost done.

last but not least. it's a damn 15-30$ hose. luckily, that makes it replaceable and expendable. if it only lasts for 3 months, then plan on buying a new hose every 3 months! that's like getting pissed that your 250grams of nakhla only lasted for 5 bowls.. but wait, you were using a 50gram bowl

[mushrat]

Also keep in mind, I've been informed that in the middle east, they tend to change hoses much more often. I've been told that its not uncommon to change hoses once a week. They don't try to make things that are made to fall apart last any longer. Only here do we expect a 10 or even 15 dollar hose to last years.

My .02

[Giant Ninja Robot]

So perhaps our mistake is expecting that the company makes their stuff for us here overseas and to our standards. Haven't we heard many a timne that KM tends not to send it's best stuff over to us and are somewhat hesitant to ship to the US? I'm almost positive I've heard that a few times.

[mushrat]

So perhaps our mistake is expecting that the company makes their stuff for us here overseas and to our standards. Haven't we heard many a timne that KM tends not to send it's best stuff over to us and are somewhat hesitant to ship to the US? I'm almost positive I've heard that a few times.

I'm not saying they are sending inferior hoses here and keeping the good stuff for themselves, I'm saying that what they send us IS what they use over there. We jsut have higher expectations.

Take the Mya hoses being discussed in another thread. In the Middle east the handles are cardboard because they explained to me that over there, they throw the hoses out after a week or 2. Here in the US they use PVC for the handles because we expect our hoses to last a lot longer. May just be a cultural thing more than a skimping on quality issue.

[Canon]

why not make our own hoses out of our own supplies? if done right we can make hoses that look good, are cheap and last longer then hoses we can buy. Thats what im probably going to do now, i have alot of hoses that i dont use. most of them i dont use because they are not wide enough or long enough for me. i like long thick hoses with good stamina.

[Giant Ninja Robot]

So perhaps our mistake is expecting that the company makes their stuff for us here overseas and to our standards. Haven't we heard many a timne that KM tends not to send it's best stuff over to us and are somewhat hesitant to ship to the US? I'm almost positive I've heard that a few times.

I'm not saying they are sending inferior hoses here and keeping the good stuff for themselves, I'm saying that what they send us IS what they use over there. We jsut have higher expectations.

Take the Mya hoses being discussed in another thread. In the Middle east the handles are cardboard because they explained to me that over there, they throw the hoses out after a week or 2. Here in the US they use PVC for the handles because we expect our hoses to last a lot longer. May just be a cultural thing more than a skimping on quality issue.

Oh I know Mushy, I'm saying that perhaps unlike Mya they aren't catering their products to their US audience, so the stuff we get is up to their cultural uses and standards 'stead of our high expectations, as though we should be looking at it from an egyptian market viewpoint and not a US one.

why not make our own hoses out of our own supplies? if done right we can make hoses that look good, are cheap and last longer then hoses we can buy. Thats what im probably going to do now, i have alot of hoses that i dont use. most of them i dont use because they are not wide enough or long enough for me. i like long thick hoses with good stamina.

Agreed! And you're begging to be quoted on that last sentence Canon

[Codename067]

Lol

I love how people blame the brand of the Hookah when something goes wrong.

[speel]

Lol

I love how people blame the brand of the Hookah when something goes wrong.

Well I mean who made the hose out of old star fish paper?

[theophylaktos]

well wont be buying any of these hoses anytime soon.

[amnite]

I dont know if any of you know, but I have a friend who came back from Egypt and FAKE Khalil Mamoons that are exactly identical to real KMs are everywhere now, I think there may be just about as many fake ones as real ones.

Anyway I just got a KM with the a KM tag on the hose and shisha, so ima b smokin it soon and I got 2 KM hoses for the price of one because one of them was damaged, just gotta tape it. But by the looks of it, they it does look excellent, its one of the new KM hoses. The hose looks sooo much better than the ones sold in America. You can actually feel the quality of the hose!

I was also told there are 2 types of KM's, High quality and Standard. The high quality is made out of 3 layers of metal on the stem, something like that.

Ima post pictures up soon! Edited May 16, 2009 by amnite

[Zinite]

Lol

I love how people blame the brand of the Hookah when something goes wrong.

Maybe blame is the wrong word, but which company/person should we be discussing when someone finds that KM hoses are made from recycled newspaper?

[ilikemyusername]

Lol

I love how people blame the brand of the Hookah when something goes wrong.

no doubt the pipes are solid, but if you're going to put your name on something it might as well be worth its salt.

[Barnaby]

Also keep in mind, I've been informed that in the middle east, they tend to change hoses much more often. I've been told that its not uncommon to change hoses once a week. They don't try to make things that are made to fall apart last any longer. Only here do we expect a 10 or even 15 dollar hose to last years.

My .02

When I was talking to one of the guy's at Mya Saray, that does the trade shows around the world, he was telling me that hoses are disposable in lounges over in other parts of the world. They are a straw, and nothing more. You go to a lounge outside the US, and they'll tell you to keep your hose, as they'll just throw it away after you use it.

So, it makes sense to me to make it out of the cheapest thing you can find (as long as its safe), as you aren't supposed to keep it. However, for the individual, this adds up quickly. Shit, even if the hoses were $2 a pop, if you chucked it after every session, it'd add up quick..

[Sherwood]

FWIW:

None of the lounges I've been to in Turkey, Syria, Dubai, Qatar or Lebanon threw their hoses away. They had color-coding for flavors, and they hung them up, just like ours.

That's not to say that the practice doesn't exist, or isn't common in, say, Egypt, but it's not necessarily universal.

That being said, This in no way changes my opinion of KM. The fact that they're extremely popular in a country with the disposable income of Egypt should tell you about their quality right off.

It is a real shame that the design wears itself out, however. The newspaper doesn't surprise me, but I would have liked to see some sort of wax paper as an outer layer to prevent the hose from falling apart with use. Wax paper is hardly unobtainable or expensive, even in Egypt, and it would be significantly more rigid This oversight, more than the materials used, bodes ill for KM (or for whatever knockoff company made that "KM" bookworm has).

[Sonthert]

Well, lets see. Here's my thoughts on the matter.

#1. What did you want them to be made out of? The alternative is plastic. Hoses have been made this way, the same, in terms of leather hoses for a long, long time. A better question is whats wrong with newspaper?

#2. Its a hell of a lot better than the other crap they could be making hoses out of. If you like the way it smokes, why question it?

#3. I would much rather have a hose made of leather and newspaper than plastic and packing tape like a good number of hoses are nowadays.

As far as price goes, for a leather hose, the price is roughly, wholesale, from Cairo, about $4. $2 is in the hose, $.75 for a decent stem piece and $1.25 for a decent headpiece. This is before shipping. Add $2/unit for shipping. So the overall cost is about $6, give or take. The importer sells the piece to a distributor, the distributor to the retailer, the retailer to you. The distributor buys it from the importer for about $7.20, the the retailer gets it from distributor at about $9. The retailer then sells it to you. Lets take a retail price of $18, markup in the retail industry is frequently 100-200%. So, a $27 price tag wouldn't be unheard of. Each person has to have a markup, thats how they stay in business. If you were to extrapolate a wooden head end, instead of newspaper, based on a nice stem piece at $1.30, the scepter would be approximately 10 times larger. So, assuming its proportional, a wooden scepter would change the price of the hose, about $13, plus the stem and head piece, so now the cost is about $15, plus $2 for shipping, that makes $17, add 20% twice, now you're at $24, the price the retailer gets it at. Now, double it. The more conservative markup...thats $48. Thats why they're made of cardboard...wood would be so fantastically expensive, nobody would buy them.

I agree with you, I hate that model of hose, but the materials they use in the ones I like aren't any different. Its actually unusual for seepage, which is what happened to your hose to cross through the cardboard, it usually attacks the leather at joints or if theres a crease/defect in the hose. Like at the interface of the leather hose and the cardboard scepter...I see hoses die all the time...it sucks, but it happens from time and use. It won't dry out. What that is is glycerine reflux...the glycerine in the tobacco will change a little back from a gas to a liquid. Since glycerine doesn't evaporate, it continues to sit there, swelling the material around it. Your hose might have had a slight crimp in it from when it was made, right where the hose met the scepter...in this case, that little crimp would have been a point from which reflux would happen more strongly because of the larger surface area...soaking that area sooner, making that area fail sooner. Like I said, though, usually this happens to the leather before it does the cardboard.

The question isn't the material in the hose, its the labor involved in making the hose. Its the same for anything. $.25 worth of material, $3 in labor. I've seen older hoses that have a covering layer of butcher paper over the cardboard...its really irrelevant. Anything you buy has substantially less value of materials than the sales price.

I think you're underestimating the price of what is required to make a decent hose. If you wanted to use a standard distribution model, you would be able to sell a hose to a distributor for $9, you'll want to get paid more than an Egyptian, I assume, so, taking the head and stem pieces out of the equation for a moment, costing you about $2 (assuming they are the same price as the ones from Egypt or you are using the ones from Egypt), unless you want to use higher quality ones...which would increase your price. Approximately, you would be able to fork out $7 for material and labor. It takes probably at least 20 minutes to make one hose. If you wanted to pull down $12/Hr, that would be $4 in labor...that would leave you $3 for the leather, the wood, the metal wire, etc. You would have to drill and lathe the headpiece in that amount of time, wrap the leather around the wire, seal and test the hose in that 20 minutes time. 20 minutes is a low estimate, be assured. My guesses are as follows:

Wood (for scepter) $1
Wire $.50
Leather $2
Wood for stem piece $.25
Head Piece materials $.50
Labor (1 hour) $12
that puts your hose at $16.25. The distributor would sell it for $20, the retailer would sell it for $40. Not selling a lot of hoses at that price.

That being said, I have interest in making hoses, if you're really interested, let me know.