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AT HOME Tech Texts by Bryan A. Hollerbach, Managing Editor
The Shopper's Desk includes a pencil holder―basically two holes and two intervening notches for stability. That fact, alas, speaks volumes about this organizational product. A No. 2 HB in a world of light pens, it will likely enjoy limited cachet, especially given competition from more gadget-glamorous offerings like the SmartShopper.
Selling for $10.99 plus shipping and tax through the website of its manufacturer, Collinsville's G&M Industries, the Shopper's Desk comprises a hard-plastic rectangular frame in gray, red, or white. Its back sports two 5-inch magnetic strips; its front, a small steel clip. The magnets hold it to one's refrigerator, say, and the clip holds a 3- by 6.25-inch decorated notepad containing 50 sheets. (The manufacturer offers three refill pads for $6.75. That seems exorbitant. The pad's decoration―some fruit and leaves in blue silhouette―looks lovely but falls far short of Renoir.)
According to the advertising for the Shopper's Desk, its user jots wants and needs ("Doritos," "MD 20/20," "Teflon-tipped rounds") on it in spare moments, likewise secures coupons beneath its clip, and then transports the whole to the supermarket, where it mounts on a standard metal shopping cart for easy reference.
Unfortunately, various problems with that scenario present themselves:
- At 3.25 inches wide by 7 inches tall by 1.5 inches deep, the Shopper's Desk does not agreeably fit a jacket pocket, let alone a shirt pocket―and not everyone's ensemble abounds with cargo pockets.
- Carrying a sharpened pencil in the frame seems inadvisable if not downright hazardous, and that frame accommodates neither a mechanical pencil nor a pen even as slender as a Paper Mate Write Bros. Grip.
- Attaching the product to the cart defies at-a-glance execution. Indeed, till faxed instructions for doing so arrived, that process buffaloed two AT HOME editors (not the brightest stars in the firmament, to be sure, but still).
In a post-fax field test, as the accompanying photos show, the Shopper's Desk did indeed ride the left side of a cart at the Mackenzie Pointe Dierbergs (7233 Watson Road, 314.752.7771). It did not, however, prompt envious glances from fellow shoppers, who were instead focused on bemoaning a shortage of kiwi-jalapeño Mad Dog. Neither did it contribute overmuch to the tour of the aisles at Dierbergs.
To be blunt, the Shopper's Desk may have a signally circumscribed potential audience. In a world where the average potato masher incorporates a satellite uplink and 24/7/365 help-desk support, the product feels more than a bit anachronistic, even atavistic. That may delight some consumers, of course; one needn't be a card-carrying Luddite to loathe domino-sized cellphones with manuals only slightly less opaque than the Dead Sea Scrolls. Certainly, too, the Shopper's Desk costs much less than some of its high-tech competitors―the SmartShopper, to which this critique referred earlier, carries a price tag of $69.99, for example―but a Mead spiral-bound notebook would serve roughly as well for just 97 cents. In sum, sad to say, the Shopper's Desk recalls nothing so much as a clipboard with delusions of grandeur―and not even one of those cool, streamlined aluminum models.
G&M Industries, Inc., P.O. Box 561, Collinsville, IL 62234 • 618.344.6655, 800.332.9836
