Several years ago I was sailing with a client on his very gorgeous and expensive yacht. He was a great skipper and host. After he prepared my favorite rum and coke with a lime, he said, “You can put your drink here in this box.” The boat cost over a million dollars and the box, believe it or not, was duct-taped to the beautiful chrome stanchion.

Reflecting on this later, I thought of another client of ours, Stafford Manufacturing who makes shaft collars. And I thought, what a wonderful application for a shaft collar. It will certainly look much better than tape! Obviously though, we’ll call it something different: a Universal Mounting Collar.  Here are a couple of photos depicting how the editor of Sail Magazine chose to feature Stafford’s collar in-print and online. In fact, he named it a “stanchion collar.” [click to enlarge]

Most importantly, he wrote “this is one of those handy little gizmos you never knew you needed before you saw it.” That, my friends, is the essence of product publicity. The result: several significant sales inquiries from major industry players!