Hi everybody,
I will tell you a little about why we abandoned the bottles as a form of packaging for our tests.
We have been selling our tests since 1996 and we were the first ones ever to make these available to the public. The bottles worked fine until about 5 years ago, when anti-terrorist laws became more stringent, especially the rules about sending chemicals cross-border... This caused massive delays and sometimes the kits wouldn't even make it at all!
Another drawback of the bottles is the fact that they will go off after a certain period. It is our experience that the quality of the results can't be guaranteed for more than 5-6 months and then the bottle (and the chemicals in it) has to be discarded. This period can even get shorter if the bottle isn't stored under proper conditions. For this reason, we had to have really short distribution lines, we produced more or less on demand and the tests needed to be sold quickly to ensure its quality. Otherwise they would go off on the shelves and this caused a tremendous amount of hassle for us...
We did some research among our customers (N=450) and found that on average people used the test for about 6-20 times. Most people use them to look for a reliable source from whom they purchase in larger quantities. What they deemed most important was user-friendliness and shelf life.
We tried to work the results from our research into the new packaging design and ended up with the ampoules. These are filled with a minute amount of reagent, enough for 1 test, which is buffered in granules which form a gel-like substance. This way the liquid can't leak and exempts our tests from hazmat concerns, so no issues at the border! Also, after opening or testing, the liquid will neutralize itself so there are no real environmental concerns either. The ampoules are filled and closed under a nitrogen atmosphere, which eleminates shelf life issues. We say they stay good for a minimum of 3 years but that is only because we have to put something on the package. In reality, they don't go off at all...
The new packaging in ampoules also prevents user-contact with the toxic and aggressive reagents. You just open the ampoule, drop in the sample, watch the reaction, put the cap on it and throw it away. Much better than having to sit down with a plate and mess with the chems... You can take the small box anywhere and perform the test right when you need it, preferably just before buying your sample. You can do the test anywhere, in the car, on the dancefloor, in the bathroom of the club. Try that with a bottle of sulphuric acid in your pocket...
The drawbacks of the single use tests seem to be the higher costs per test, when compared with the bottles. However, there's hardly anyone that uses all that liquid. The test costs 1.87/pce for the smallest package. When you order 20 tests the price drops to 1.50 per test and when you order more than that tests we ship for free so the test is about 1.25/each. Compared to the value of the stuff people want to buy we hope the price of a test is reasonable enough. It's less than a beer in a club... And when you think about this the cost of a test from a bottle is more or less the same when people only seem to use the bottle 6-20 times, so in practice there's no real difference between the 2 systems...
Instead of spending our time on just-in-time production we rather work on new reagents and facilitating campaigns. Did we mention we can do private labeling for campaigns at wholesale prices at virtually no extra cost? Our aim with EZ Test has never changed: we strive to get the idea of drug testing more widely accepted and want our tests to be available to the public in more places. gas stations, walmart, headshops... That's why we needed to change packaging...
Hoping to have clarified things for you,
Ewoud
EZ Test
ps: As for TLC: we never intended out tests for this purpose as it's almost impossible to ship the solvents you need for this. and without proper reference materials you're not going to get anywhere with tlc...btw: shouldn't you spray the reagents on the plate?
ps2: our mcpp reagent does not react with mdma, that is, it does not show the canary yellow that mcpp does. It does show a reddish orange color, but that doesn't count as a false positive?
