If anyone cares, i’m beginning the transition away from fully customized boards to building whatever the hell i want and selling it with the usual warranty. It should be pretty straightforward. I build it, list it, sell it, build another one.
The plan is to do some series and progressively improve them, but instead of building one one-off prototype at a time based on a customer’s whims, I will be building 5-10 identical boards using only the shit i know will work and not fail or cause minor problems down the road. they will be elegant, gorgeous, and understated.
Initial builds will be on Witchblade decks, my motors, my mounts, 666 watt hours of samsung or sony cells, focboxes, 16/36 ratio on boa constrictors for the sweet balance of good top end and hill climbing, and possibly USB ports for conveniently voiding your warranty with bad configurations options.
Feel free to try and talk me out of it, but i have a thousand reasons right now.
Full customs may return eventually when i’m in a different place but right now this needs to happen.
Small production runs make a lot of economic sense compared to a continuous stream of one-offs. People will still buy them - your design aesthetic is unique, and you have the artistic depth and personality to continue to make kick-ass completes.
Will you continue to sell parts, or eliminate aspect of the business and focus on completes?
I will continue to make available anything and everything i use to build my own boards. I also want to make it clear that this is in no way an indication of me “suiting up” for corporate. I just want to streamline my processes so that i can quit my day job sooner.
I could go in depth on the complications involved in full customs and the service and support they seem to generate just by being what they are, but this forum doesn’t have the capacity to store that kind of data size.
@Jayx is backing me up on this and it seems to be a family consensus as well. It was either this or raise the price by $1000 and keep putting up with the same crap. Honestly, i don’t think $1000 is worth it while i’m still working two jobs. They need more attention than i can provide, and their owners deserve more attention than i can give at the moment.
Also, its been fucking hard. everything everyone warned me about has happened, its a goddamned miracle I’m even here still. If it wasn’t for the love and support of the community, i probably would have eaten the loss and tossed my hands up a long time ago, so thank you all for being there.
I for one am glad a person like you exists.
From a business standpoint, this makes way more sense. I hope you’re able to transition to doing this full time. Stick with this and grow, you’ll be very successful. You add too much value not to. Its just basic rules of success.
Also, thank you for continuing to sell parts. The diy community needs that.
One question though (for the day my salary becomes high enough to afford your services), will you still accept custom deck choice? I.e. I bring you a deck I want, and you do the magic trick.
What about developing a semi-custom build option. My thought is you could develop a selection program with options you support and have experience utilizing but still give buyers the ability to customized. The user would be able to select from deck options then drive options, battery, ect. Things that do not work together would be grayed out. Maybe give a few extra bling options as well lighting (Front / Rear), deck tape, ect. I would also explore developing a mountain board configuration. This sport is taking off and to be honest riding wider truck /pneumatic wheel board both trail and street can be a lot of fun.
Yes. At least Jerry hasn’t told me otherwise. I’m just waiting on parts. I’m also doing the Evos, which are in the same boat. Part delays from manufacturers are what’s holding everything up.
That simply can’t continue. I’m literally dying faster, i can feel it.
no more deck choices. We build editions of limited quantity and keep building them until we decide to iterate. Then the next iteration becomes the next edition. We’ll build runs of Witchblade GTs, Scarlet GTs, and Velociraptor GTs in RWD configurations only and possibly even run multiple editions at once after we get some things nailed down. We may add more deck shapes in the future but they’ll be dealer’s choice not customer defined.
Ratios will be adjustable after market but default ratios will be determined by wheel size. We’re already eliminated a number of options due to motor mount limitations and belt availability. Currently we’ve decided that the following are fucking awesome at 12S on on my drive system (190KV 6355 sensored dual drive): 16/32 on O’tang Kegel & Ollin Popoca, 16/36 for 97mm Flywheels & Boa Constrictor, and 16/32 on AHMYO Akasha for the mall grabber i’m doing much later which will have enough torque to hit some bowls but will be limited to the “last mile” range class. Those ratios are subject to change of course but for now that’s what we’re building.
Also if the fucking carvon stuff ever arrives (i’m supposed to be retailing that shit at some point) then we’ll also be doing builds with a couple variations of those. Kegel core wheels are the direction i want to go, so there will need to be Carvon Cogs (TM, i just invented that!) for both types or i’m going to have a tantrum.
Thank you, and i totally agree. I just had to learn the hard way what my limitations were. Now that i have the boundaries, its time to work within them.
That’s exactly what i’m doing now and am finding just isn’t feasible. Yet. Look back through my instagram. I’ve literally built every type of board there is. I have built everyone else’s board, but not my own. Street Boards, Off Road Boards, Crossovers, and i’ve even experimented with micro boards like Penny builds.
Its ME time. I’m building GT/Commuters now with some nice fat thane.
So you guys are probably wondering what it will look like. The non-custom board, i mean.
this is the prototype. Forget about colors for now, just BEHOLD! …the rest of it.
Basically, its a commuting monster. I’ve been riding it 12 miles each way to work once a week as an abuse exercise. The path to work is not skate freindly, but with the boas its not a huge deal. Bike lanes full of glass and car parts, construction zones, transitions from bike path to shitty sidewalk to no path to street shoulder to packed grass to construction area dirt to shitty street and back to bike path with all manner of detritus in the way don’t seem to matter much.
This particular one is loaded with stuff that may or may not make it itnto the first round, such as the DieBieMS and external usb ports. Everything else will be “as seen here” but with matching colors.
From one of the other Constrictor riders, those are some killer wheels, aren’t they? If those came in 108mm or 110mm I would never use ABEC11 ever again…
Sounds awesome LHB. I have about 5 blank drop downs if you ever want to collaborate something I could do a design you want ship it to you and then you do your magic. I was going to offer them on here as individual custom decks but after seeing your post figured it could work
Absolutely. As long as evolve keeps putting shitty prismatics in their boards, @jayx and i will continue to replace them with quality 18650s. That’s just money on the table, and right now, we need it. My financially irresponsible warranty… has been… well. financially irresponsible. but then again, i’ve basically been running my customers through a paid beta program for the last three years in order to arrive at the board pictured above, so i can’t just abandon them either.
Oh I’m doing it alright. With your mom!
We will be doing limited editions featuring third party decks on occasion. But we’re being verrry picky. For example, Red Ember is a candidate that has shown a lot of interest. It would be good to have yours as an option down the line as well. I’m trying hard NOT do do anything on the Land Yachtz decks out of respect for Carvon, but having designed the box for the Evo and knowing my drive system will fit just fine is making it very difficult. We may do a special edition of that board later with the maximum lithium it can hold. The EVO is already fucking perfect though, i mean damn.
Mine are not Land Yachtz they are boards I get for my customs from my supplier. Here is the picture of it. It has a curve in at the middle and some concave. They do have some flex though. But later down the road if I have them we can work something out. We follow each other on instagram and that has all the different shit I have done.
