The next day, I got a returned call from Gary Steinmann, the very nice VP of the company. If you lived in 1986, the conversation Gary and I had would have made sense. But we live in 2006 and so it was a bit surreal.

The gist of it was that I'd called outside work hours, so, of course there was no answer. When I suggested they might put an answering machine on the line, he told me they're a small company. When I suggested they might want to put their products on the Web site with pictures and possibly ecommerce, he told me they're a small company. When I asked where readers could buy his products, he told me they had a dealer (one dealer) in Miami and readers were welcome to go there and look at the bags.

The conversation reminded me that getting customers was much harder back in 1986. Disintermediation was virtually impossible. Sure, you could send a direct mail (real, paper, snail mail) to prospective customers, but beyond that, you were quite literally a captive of the distribution channel. If you didn't have dealers, your product didn't sell.

But this is 2006. Today, if you have a Web site, prospects can see your products. There are huge online distributors like Amazon, and setting up your own ecommerce site can start at less than ten bucks a month! Plus, there's eBay.

And, for the love of megapixels, Bell South's voice mail service costs all of $6.95 per month. It doesn't matter that you're a small company. My buddy's Jeff's slacker brother-in-law, the one who lives at home and mooches all the beer, the one who insists everyone call him "The Rock" and spends every waking hour on MySpace (yeah, it's sad), he shells out $6.95 for voicemail!

The bags are sweet. They use luggage-grade extreme heavy duty nylon fabric, the sort of fabric you'd find in good luggage. They're coated with Polyurethane on the inside for water resistance and are made of a material that's pretty much identical to ballistic nylon, but with a heavier weave. The hardware and buckles seem rock solid. Handles and straps are stitched with an "X-Box" (not that XBox!) stitching pattern that'll help the straps stay attached, most likely for the life of the bag.

The bags' pricing is good. The bags shown run from $7.95 to $96.95. The really nice, large gadget bag, the one Connected Photographer readers would most likely want to buy is less than $100.

So, what's a reviewer to do? We have a certain, fixed criteria for product reviews that helps all our ratings be consistent across all the ZATZ magazines. Based on our published review guidelines, these bags rate a 4-star review. They're really nice bags.

If you want one, call (305) 256-9591. Make sure you're calling between 9am and 5pm Miami time. Or, if you happen to be in Miami, stop on over at Pitman Photo Supply. Pitman, it turns out, has a nice little Web site. Sadly, Werner Hollingworth's bags aren't on it.

Denise summarized it best. "'We're a small company.' Never has such a statement been less relevant than in 2006."

OUR RATING: 4 of 5

David Gewirtz is the author of How To Save Jobs and Where Have All The Emails Gone? For more than 20 years, he has analyzed current, historical, and emerging issues relating to technology, competitiveness, and policy. David is the Editor-in-Chief of the ZATZ magazines, is the Cyberterrorism Advisor for the International Association for Counterterrorism and Security Professionals, and is a member of the instructional faculty at the University of California, Berkeley extension. He can be reached at david@zatz.com and you can follow him at http://www.twitter.com/DavidGewirtz.