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05 Jun 2009The King of all Tales.One of the more unrewarding jobs in this business is putting together complete bikes for customers. It takes an extraordinary amount of time, pays very little, and you’re constantly struggling to add any value for the customer. This is all exacerbated by two factors, one being that mail order is so cheap that often we can’t give our customers any better deals than they can get themselves, and secondly, very few manufacturers will give you any deals. More often than not, when we approach a parts manufacturer to get some sort of OE deal, we just get referred to the local distributor whose wholesale prices are more often than not more expensive than mailorder anyway. And to make matters worse, there’s a double standard - many US based companies will sell to US based custom frame companies at OE prices, but force us to buy AU wholesale. I understand that there must be some margin there so that the AU distro can cover and service the forks in case of a warranty return, but a 30-100% margin? And then what about our US customers which at any time make up 50-90% of our builds? Pretty stupid for me to offer them AU wholesale prices when they can get a frame/fork/headset deal from a US custom builder for half the price. Anyway, so where am I going with all this sooky-la-la, ‘woe is me’ drivel? Well, when I first started Thylacine, I saw an opportunity to sell frame/fork/headset packages to customers because many of them wanted new ones anyway, and if I could get them at good prices it would help lessen the sticker shock of the custom frame, which the locals especially weren’t used to. When it came to headsets, there was only one option really - Chris King. For some reason everyone wanted them, but also for some reason when I contacted them, all I got was the “we don’t have the resourses to sell overseas yet, please try as again later”. I’m sure it would’ve been different if I’d said “Please send me 200 headsets”, but that’s a lot of money to have tied up sitting there on the shelf and clearly 10 headsets wasn’t enough for them to get off their arse and hook us up. So it never happened. This went on for nearly four years. Now I don’t know about you, but I loathe being treated like a second class citizen. I don’t ignore customers because they live in Uzbekistan, and nor do I ignore customers who are trying to build the bike of their dreams but only have a small amount to spend - I try to make it happen. Clearly I’m a commo pinko sympahiser that is probably being servailled by ASIO as we speak, but I’m egalitarian like that. I also hold a grudge so I sold off every bit of Chris King I owned and refused to sell them. I’m sure I could’ve sold 50 headsets in the interim but that’s their loss (or it probably equates to a day’s sales for Supergo and they don’t give a shit.) Anyway, fast forward to 2009, and here I’m sitting still constantly getting asked for CK headsets so I send them another frikken email, fill out some forms and lo-and-behold *shazam*, I now have a CK OEM account. I have no idea what changed but something must’ve, so now I can take their name out of the “Companies that don’t give a shit about the little guy and have lost their roots” to “Companies that remember where they came from and give love to the little guy”. In case you were wondering which P&A companies support grassroots cycling and the art and passion that is custom bicycle frames, here they are :
Sure there are more than that - obviously we’ve never dealt with every bike company ever made - but those are the ones that support us the most and they deserve our (and your) business, so if you’re in the market for a new custom bike, please do support them. If I’ve left anyone out, please send me an abusive email and I’ll rectify things immediately. Posted by warwick @ 6:28 am Leave a Reply |