Copenhagen, Denmark -- September 28, 2005 -- Icemat, a world renowned manufacturer of gaming accessories owned and operated by Soft Trading, today released a public response to certain rumors and speculation appearing on eSport community sites.
Various news sites within the eSport community have reported misleading facts and speculation regarding the design of Icemat Siberia and Icemat Siberia Black. The reports have generated questions and concerns from the community, and we would like to take a few moments to address the feedback we have been experiencing for the last 24 hours.
The situation we are referring to is the news that Plantronics is releasing a headset named Plantronics .Audio 110 (picture), which design wise appears to be very similar to the Icemat Siberia (picture).
The final design for Icemat Siberia was produced exclusively for Icemat by a valued business partner – an Asian company called Toong In. Toong In is a market leader in headphones and headset manufacturing, having developed headsets for respected companies such as Panasonic, Sennheiser, Plantronics, Philips, Steel Series and others. It is standard business practice for them to develop preliminary designs, which other companies then buy the rights to brand and distribute exclusively, while the manufacturing itself takes place at Toong In's factories in Asia. There is nothing new or secretive about this, some of the biggest headset companies in the world buy various headphone designs and manufacturing from Toong In.
Icemat Siberia and Icemat Siberia Black are based on a visual design mockup from Toong In named "HP-200", which Icemat bought the exclusive visual rights for in 2004. At the time of purchase it was merely a design mockup for a headset, not a finished product. The sound components were developed in joint cooperation between Icemat and Toong In. Icemat owns the worldwide exclusive rights to the design of Icemat Siberia.
Icemat invested in the creation of a headset based on this design, because we felt it was innovative and would cover a new area for quality gaming headsets. Up until the release of Icemat Siberia, gaming headsets were generally created with small ear cups which pressed on the ears. We wanted to create a cool and innovative headset, with big ear cups to cover the ears, and had for several months been searching for partners to help us create such a product. After reviewing a number of possible partners and designs, Toong In was chosen for their enormous professionalism and for their expertise in this field of business.
The original design was then optimized for the design vision behind the Icemat brand. The material of the headset was changed and the speaker units were developed and then upgraded considerably. Both a unidirectional microphone as well as a soundcard was developed from scratch, just to name a few of the changes.
And now, a full 10 months after the release of Icemat Siberia, we are immensely surprised to see a respected company release a headset so similar to the design we own the worldwide production rights to.
We are flattered that Plantronics like the design, and happy that they apparently liked our design for the Icemat Siberia Attachable Microphone (picture), a forthcoming product we released pictures of earlier this year.
We sincerely hope that no end users will be confused about the similarity of the two products. We will of course be discussing this matter further with Plantronics.
About Soft Trading
Soft Trading is a leading independent manufacturer of gaming accessories, best known for its popular brands Icemat and Steel Series. To learn more about the products and brands, please go to
http://www.icemat.com and
http://www.steelseries.com
