Just as an FYI...I asked via email whether the TPC was similar to Tuf Shine in nature, and I received a prompt response from Ronald Doyle. He said that he was not familiar with Tuf Shine, and that they do not test or compare their products with others on the market.
If you don't test or compare your products, against others, how do you know how yours does in comparison to others in the market?
I was thinking the same thing. Pretty sure that response was a lie. Maybe he's not familiar with Tuf Shine but all companies test against other products.
You know, I typed up a big long comment, but the long and short of it is that I believe they don't test other products. There is a video floating around the AG store with a new product intro for one of the OPT products, with Dr. G and Mike Phillips, and in the conversation, Dr. G says "I'm not a detailer Mike, that's why I rely on people like you".
Dr. G is a lab geek, I think the people in his orbit say "Dr. G, you should make a tire coating" and he asks what it should be like, and he goes off and concocts it and gives them something to test and they refine it.
The forum answer-guy, Ron, doesn't work at Optimum, as I understand it he's some sort of retired sales/marketing guy who monitors the forum from home, and he's not a detailer or even close. When he first took over that job after Chris got dumped, he was really pretty clueless, but he's picked up a lot over the last couple of years. There seems to be a lot of funneling questions back and forth by email.
Optimum has never had full-time people on staff like AG has had with Mike Phillips and Nick, the public-facing Optimum people always have had their own detailing businesses, Anthony Orosco, Scottwax, Chris, Dann, Yvan. It may have changed now, I know Dann sold his business, but he doesn't work "at" Optimum, he's the west coast rep. Yvan had two shops up in Canada and AFAIK he still does, even though he may not be running them day-to-day since he is doing so much PR/training now for Optimum, but who knows, obviously he couldn't be in both shops at the same time, so he may be juggling both of them and the OPT gig also, which would be pretty much par for the course from what I have observed over the years.