American Vendors: We need you to do better

General Discussion
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Now before I start I want to say that I have no ill from any American Vendors. You guys are great and your services are A one. Please Keep it up what you do.

I’ve been thinking about this for a long time and a recent post made me think about it further. American Vendors, your current stock is trash (please don’t stone me). Hear me out. America is an very large country, large enough that even through the the Northern Hemisphere’s winter Period, a portion of it is still ESK8 Friendly. So there’s always a market somewhere even if for 4-6 months it dwindles.

Now I’m not sure about Europe as a whole , but I bet you guys don’t get the most generous weather or seasonal periods and get far less ride time than say the State of Florida or Texas. Yet, when I look at the Euro ESK8 Shops compared to American ESK8 shops , there’s a stark difference of items and variety.

Arguably, the biggest ESK8 Market Place is DIY Electric Skateboards. They have mounts, kits, motors and all the things you expect to see. But thats it. It’s limited to its brand items and while they do have things on the way, its still not diverse enough.

We got Eskating.eu offering: motor covers, wire grommets, nose guards, lights, fully assembled drivetrains, water proof covers, fully assembled antisparks

Unikboards has diverse variety of wheels, Focbox Cases, and Cable Risers

Hell the EU is even getting Goddamn Gear Drives , Push to Start AntiSparks, better looking motors.

And I’m not saying they’re unavailable to us NA folks cause they obviously are, but it would be nice to have a good diverse market back at home. Yes we have absolute great products here at home (such as psychotiller’s surfrod mounts, marcmt88’s mounts, and Jlab’s upcoming projects), but were a tad behind.

Personally I would like to see more Thingyverse designs being made in good quality and sold. I would like to see the forum used more to get a direct consensus of what product to make, make a poll or something and act based on the marketing potential from there.

American Vendors please broaden your horizon.

TLDR; The EU ESK8 Parts market is more diverse than the American ESK8 Parts market and something needs to change

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Do you realize?

  1. EU is closer to China, so cheaper and faster shipping
  2. EU actually have more manufacturing industry than U.S.
  3. There’s a US China Trade War happening on metal and other goods
  4. U.S. has a smaller population and more spreadout
  5. American are more favor to pre-made board than DIY.
  6. We the America ppl uses imperial measurement which is pissing me off all the time.
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try living in australia lol

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lol I already feel sorry for you. what’s there besides enertion?

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Evolve. lol but they won’t give you shit haha

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That hardly counts since everything they make is from china.

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yeah but almost everything sold around the world is made in china. it’s all about the QC and buying in large quantity.

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Yes but the topic is about local supply. so you could be living next door to him and your focbox still comes from China.

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true lmao waited a month for nanoXs and more for FOCBOX QQ. I’ll just buy from JLabs or longhairboy next time

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Enertion do not cater for diy anymore at all and that’s a shame. Jason being the astute business man that he obviously is must mean there is not a big enough market yet. Nothing would give me more pleasure than to start an esk8 business but we need manufacturers and that just requires too much investment and my wife won’t let me sell the house or any of our 3 children. Unreasonable women are.

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you wouldn’t want it anyways. You’d have to ship it straight to @longhairedboy and that defeats the object lol

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@Moros I paractically do live next door to both enertion and evolve and they still sting you for shipping from china

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I won’t address some of the points since some of them were addressed by other users already but:

It really sucks but this is something that’s been prevalanet since even before the recent trade war activity. Does this war extend to things such as Plastic and Rubber? @Alphamail, has the recent trade war effect the PU industry in any way?

True but only by 200M (well that still is a lot), and some countries Ban EKS8s (looking at you Germany) which dwindles the population even more from the ESK8 worldwide population. And we sure do love our Premade boards , but there’s a still a present population of US builders.

Lol doesn’t matter to me since I can’t measure for shit in either measurement (I kid I kid but I have the inability to visualize a measurement) :joy:

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You guys stop complaining and should come to Aus. We have nothing here that doesn’t really come from here. Enertion used to be good and that’s about it. Our battery guys have a ridiculous pricing and every other bits and pieces either have to come from the US, China or Europe with some higher shipping costs Boone really appreciates.

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We have not been affected yet with the ongoing trade BS and we sell a fair amount into China. The Chinese want American made goodness

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Pfffft…when you guys are done window shopping a bunch of goofy shit like handles and pulley covers, The goods are here. and made here too.

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I swear to God I’m gonna get this tatood on my frikkin forehead, Im so tired if saying it…

This ain’t Walmart or Amazon Prime. This market is miniscule compared to underwear, tampons, Pop Tarts, etc. If you want a 6374 motor for 60 bucks, they can be had…they are crap and even make terrible paper weights, but you can get them in the US. @psychotiller and @JLabs and @torqueboards all have fuckin great motors, all of which are available right here in the US.

Sure @okp makes some badass gear, but it’s specialized. There’s not room for 6 people to make $200 risers or evolve 63mm motor mounts. If the market would support it, that’s what everyone would be selling.

This is an issue with sourcing and market availability, nothing more. Go by Dave a beer and ask him why he doesn’t sell lime green motor covers with LEDs and a bottle opener included. His answer will be that there’s no profit and likely because HE wouldn’t use it.

Go get a steak with Dexter and bring the conversation around to “so when are the frilly lace laser cut grip tape patterns in dung yellow coming out?”. His answer will be " dude, WTF is wring with you?".

He Jared, when am I gonna be able get water melon jolly rancher flavored wheels?

I’ll say it one more time for you slow folks…

  1. This is an issue with sourcing and market availability, nothing more
  2. This ain’t Walmart or Amazon Prime

*** I would buy the hell out of some 97mm 75a water melon jolly rancher flavored wheels :grin:

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Best god damned flavor ever!!!

Even if any of that crap was profitable I wouldn’t sell it. Lame by the pound is still lame.

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No shit :grin:    

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I think it’s very easy to get lost in this forum and begin thinking the market for this stuff is huge. But it’s not if anything demand is limiting the esk8 market not supply, in my opinion at least.

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