I didn’t know that…. Do tell…
Before you do can I ask what an auto cob is? Google only tells me Coordination Of Benefits
Years back COB (chip-on-board) lights hit a small surge/rage in grow lights, which uses a single, large chip to house multiple diodes. Way more efficient lighting in a more compact package (at the time it was a pretty rad thing.)
BigSm0 (for those not in the know) was the name of the forum member on here that was producing these small, single-source COB lights (55 watts total power.)
Sm0 was a huge fanboy of Victor with Amare Lighting at the time, in fact I want to say he is the one that INTRODUCED us to Amare (they were a vendor on here for awhile and donated a few lights to the forum, their flagship lights were called like SolarFlare or SolarStorm or something with Solar in the name.) Amare lighting used COB technology, which I believe was a big inspiration for Sm0's lights.
His lights were banging! Everyone that tried them
loved them at the time. Back in 2016, I approached Sm0 about a potential AFN-partnership where we could brand his lights with the AFN logo. Dude was a good dude, had some solid lights, we clearly knew he made them, and he SUPER PASSIONATE about grow lights. Even selling them, he would go out of his way to help growers in our (at the time) DIY grow light section, helping growers figure out their wiring, voltage, what they needed, how to not kill themselves with electricity or start home fires, etc, even if they didn't buy HIS lights.
So I hit him up.
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He didn't have a name for them at the time. Here was my first mockup and name I suggested to him. As you can tell, I am
pretty amazing when it comes to naming things.
lol. 16 by 16 inch coverage. woo baby!
And then one fateful day, I said "we should call them AutoCobs."
And. He hated it. But we already started branding them with it and everyone started calling them that. Dudes, we (AFN) were selling these on Amazon for a minute.
But things didn't work out. We weren't selling enough for his liking and he was sitting on a ridiculous shitload of money worth of inventory (that was purchased before we even pitched him the idea,) which turned into his problem into becoming our problem. We ultimately parted ways on the cooperation, but I would never say a bad word about the guy today. He was really good dude. I tried reaching out here a year or two ago to the known e-mail and phone numbers I had for him but no response.
