J Ritt

iTrader: (4)

Tex,
Ask anyone on this board about the support they receive on our product vs. the other brake manufacturers...you'll understand when I say that we do better than ANYONE.

I'll take a final stab at this, and then I will consider it officially beaten to death.

If you buy our product from an unauthorized source, and something does go wrong during the ordering or ownership process, it is exponentially more difficult for us to track down the problem and fix it.

I've already seen kits sold down a chain through three different sources. I had an incident a couple of weeks ago with a Mazda Protege kit. The customer got the kit, and it didn't fit behind the wheels on his car. The customer called the person they bought it from and told them what happened. The person they bought it from essentially said, "Sorry. We'll take it back with a 25% restocking fee." Guess who the customer called? Me. Now, from the customer's viewpoint, they want to go straight to the source. I can empathize with them. That's why I try to give you guys answers straight from the horse's mouth. But they wanted me to get involved with the person they bought the kit from. They told me that shop's name, and I had never heard of it. Now, is that fair to drag me into their dispute with a reseller that I never even heard of, and try to get my customer his money back? How in the world is that my responsibility? Now where do I go from there...I have to try to trace where the heck this reseller got our kit from. I call them up. I explain who I am and ask where they got our kit from. Great. I call the next shop...same routine. Finally, I get back to the person that we sold the kit directly to. I explain the situation, and ask them to please see if they can't iron things out further. Do you have any idea how much of my day was spent on that ordeal? Do you really think that it's fair that I had to go to bat for that end user? No, but I did it anyway.

Now, if the end user had gotten it directly from one of customers that knows their car and knows our brakes, they probably could have warned them that the kit wouldn't fit their wheels. Or, they would have pointed them to our fitment charts on our website. Or, they would have talked to us before making the sale to verify. Instead, the customer went the cheapest route, and ended up putting the brakes on ebay and losing a little bit of money on them, because they didn't have the extra cash to buy new wheels, and didn't want to run spacers. I had no control over that last person in the chains restocking fee policy, etc. With customers that we are tight with, we can ask them to be a little more forgiving, and work on the customers behalf. We lose money on this type of stuff constantly. But we do it to keep our end users happy.

Another real world example...we had a customer buy from an unauthorized shop. As I talked about in my long tirade earlier, the shop took their money when they took the order. Well, guess what happened...we shipped the brakes out. The customer never saw the brakes, and he never saw his money again. Now, is that our fault? Do we have any way to track down who in the world that person was, or how they were able to convince the end user to fork over a couple grand for brakes? Who gets screwed...the end user. Who feels bad...we do.

Maybe I was a bit harsh in my initial statement that we won't give any support at all to our product. As I've explained, the reality is that we go out of our way to help everyone that calls us for help...even if it's not our product! My purpose was to make sure people are cautious when choosing where they get our brakes from, and to go through the proper channels for the most worry-free experience. If you exercise some good judgement and caution, you can avoid being caught in one of these traps. For the last time, I was trying to help. If you don't believe me, then I'm sorry. Everyone at StopTech jumps through hoops for our customers. We want them to enjoy our product and the experience of buying and owning them.

When I see someone out at the track...and they come up to me and tell me how sick our brakes work on their car...it's even worth the grief you guys put me through.

lowrider

iTrader: (3)

Let me state my first post again:

"Damn, I hate it when a manufacturer imposes this kind of a policy on a reseller. To me, it's nothing but price fixing. Let the reseller and the market determine the price, not the manufacturer. When I see this kind of stuff, I try and boycott the product. JMO."

Now that I reiterated, why not just give your authorized dealers the authority to charge the price they want for a given product, and let the market rule? It's not unheard of to negotiate, and the retailer knows the profit margin he needs to stay in business.

I can understand your position trying to solve a problem by tracing it through 3 or 4 steps in the sale chain. But, IMO, the problem is caused by the enforcement an unfair pricing policy on your authorized retailers. Now I'm done.

Lou

al503

iTrader: (4)

The authorized re-sellers are able to charge whatever they want for the brakes. Stoptech can only dictate how they advertise the kits. Otherwise, there would be violations of certain anti-trust laws.

Road Warrior

iTrader: (16)

ok, its official...beaten to death...now lower your damn prices

Tex Willer

J Ritt, Your examples are marginal cases. Don't think they makeup a significant bulk of your customer base.

I'm in a hurry, hope you understand because I don't have time to reread or corect.

I'll gladly pay a markup for quality products, but won't be played(or called) a fool because I buy something at good price. That is not my responsability to worry about your kit performing or not depending from where I buy it, that is your responsability.

For the love of your product, I can't see this in your first post bitching customers and resellers.

last part sounds better, I understand what your saying, but this thread doesn't make sense.

J Ritt

iTrader: (4)

B I N G O and bingo was his nameO.


Sheesh...all you had to do was ask. Consider it done!

Tex,
The spruce goose has landed. Meet me at the old mill at midnight, because the package is on the run!
A little cryptic, but I understand what you're saying...sorry, couldn't resist messing with you.
My point is...use caution when choosing your reseller. I don't want to see or hear about anyone getting F'd over on our products. Maybe I should have just posted it that way to start with, and saved myself the frustration?

SlamMan

CHA-CHING!

Makes total sense now.

J Ritt-

Not sure if you read any of my posts. You didn't respond to them directly. Is your customer covered by the warrantee if they buy from an authorized dealer but DIY the install?

Do you have a link to your warrantee?

J Ritt

iTrader: (4)

Installs themselves are not covered under the warranty, because we have no control of how the install is performed. If you buy the product from an authorized reseller and perform a DIY install, you are still covered under the warranty against defects, and we give you our full support. The only real warranty is against manufacturing defects. In other words, if you open your caliper box and there is a chunk missing out of the caliper, we'd give you a new caliper. Most of the time, problems arise from improper installs. We obviously can't be responsible for someone that doesn't follow the instructions, misroutes a line and burns the coating off. For the most part, as others have said, the products are pretty straightforward. To give you an idea of the things that can go wrong on install...some of the ones I've seen recently are: 1. misrouting of lines 2. interference of dust shields which mike scraping noises 3. putting brake pads in backwards (so the metal backing plate is against the rotor)...and no, I'm not kidding 4. improper torqueing of various bits 5. failure to bed rotors in properly.

OZ-Z

ALong

iTrader: (12)

You guys need to give J Ritt some slack. All he is trying to do is warn people that they may be buying a product from somone not Authorized to sell it. It has nothing to do with price fixing and if anyone has read all of his post, you will understand this.

I used to work in the aftermarket industry for a wheel manufacture and I completely understand where J Ritt is coming from. Manufactures set up dealer networks for a reason. The reason is to have retailers who are good representatives of your company, they understand the product, they can sell the customer the correct product for their application (see J Ritts example of the Protege brakes that didnt fit), they can install the product, and they can fix any technical problems. "Joe Internet" selling product off his computer cant do this, period.

J Ritt is just trying to protect his Dealers and the End-users. Nothing is worse than some guy whoring out your product , over his computer. This causes 2 problems, first your dealers get pissed off that some un-Authorized reseller is selling your product and undercutting their pricing, now you have dealers that you have spent a lot of time and money training, and building relationships with who are reconsidering handling your product line. Second, if there is a problem with the product or the fitment, you have a customer who is pissed off and is going to blame you the manufacture, not "Joe Internet" who sold him the wrong stuff in the first place.

This has nothing to do with price fixing. Manufactures have their suggested retail price, they sell to their dealers at a discount, and it is up to the dealer to determine what price they want to retail the product at. Most Manufactures require their dealers not to advertise a price below MSRP, this is nothing new or out of the ordinary.

I would suggest that J Ritt try to track down which of his Authorized dealers is selling the product down the line. Most Manufactures will have retailers sign dealer agreements which, among others things, does not allow them to sell to un-Authorized dealers.

Because of these types of problems, the company that I worked for required our dealers to have actual shops with a showroom and installation facilities, we would not sell to "Joe Internet" because we knew the kinds of problems it would cause.

rodH

iTrader: (2)

J Ritt, not that I totally agree with either side here, but in your scenerio, do you realize that many Retailer A's started off as a Retailer B??? Maybe some people have sold the house, used the retirement money and used drug money (joke) to open a HUGE wherehouse to start off and bought expensive tools, hired a bunch of employees, etc.....but sorry to point out the obvious here, but if that is the case, Retailer A better get up to speed with the internet like other companies and industries do and ALSO, maybe if you bought that much stuff that fast, just maybe Retailer A was thinking a little to BIG right off the bat.

I have been involved in retail in the past, and actually worked at a shop, I tried to convince the owner that he NEEDS to start doing mail order and internet sales since he already has the personel, UPS and Fed Ex accounts, and wholesale accounts. He never did, he is now out of business. We always prided ourselves in service, but that doesn't cut it these days.

My family also owns some car dealers, do they sit around and do business the ole fashioned way? NOPE, or they would be gone, they now have to have a website, do quick qoutes over the internet and have an internet and fleet sales department, sell parts over the Net (we sell more orginal Honda parts than any body in the country), sell through Costco, and participate in AAA and other promotions. Sometimes everybody complains that they aren't getting the markup on the cars that they use to, but to be honest, I don't feel too sorry for them, after all, they aren't exactly on welfare, so whats thier to ***** about??

My point is not to say who is right or who is wrong, but there are different ways to do business and neither retailer A or retailer B is the right or wrong way, but just different.

btw, never be so naive to think that retailer A is not in the business for the "Quick buck", of course they are, as everyone is, the guys that do it truly just for the love of it, would sell stuff bearly over wholesale just to get his bodies a good deal so everyone can enjoy the cool products, but we know that that isn't a very good long term business plan either.

My personal opinion. If people think StopTechs cost to much, stay stock or buy the Brembo OEM brakes. When I use to work at a bike shop and a guy only had $700 and he wanted the $1100 bike, I would try and politely suggest that if he has $700, he needs to look at a $700-$900 and stop trying to talk everyone down to wholesale prices, and actually buy what you can afford. Of course that hardly ever works, people want more for thier money.

lowrider

iTrader: (3)

OK

Thought I was done, I lied. You say this is not about price fixing! I say it is! This thread started out with Stoptech warning us about "lowball quotes" from Hopup Racing. They proceeded to tell us about Authorized Dealers and Support and other BS.

So Hopup Racing is obviously able to buy the Stoptech stuff from a dealer somewhere for a price that still alows them to make a profit. Why didn't the "Authorized Dealer" sell it to the public for that price in the first place? I have a theory - Fear. How many times have you tried to buy something, and in the process of the negotiation, the seller tells you "Geez, I wish I could, but if the manufacturer finds out, I'll lose the line." It's happened to me, and it happened here, people started calling Stoptech, and asking them if quoted pricing was too good to be true. Stoptech didn't like it, so they blew their whistle.

And, also in my opinion, it's incumbent upon the buyer to investigate the seller and the product he is buying. If we did that, all of the "it doesn't fit" arguments would go away.

Stoptech makes good stuff, no arguing that, but saving money on a purchase is like getting a raise in pay. You make your money go further. Now, tell me, who doesn't want that?

Lou

ALong

iTrader: (12)

Lou,
Not all buyers take the time to make sure the product is going to work on their car and that the seller is legit. Thats the point. This problem wont go away, your living in a fairytale world if you think it will. And when that customer gets his brakes or wheels or whatever and they dont fit and he calls the un-Authorized seller and says they dont work, the seller refers him back to the manufacture and now its the manufactures problem because someone had to save $100. Then the un-Authorized dealer wont take a return on the product, the end user gets screwd, starts talking s**t on all the BB's about the manufacture and they potentially get a bad rep and possible loss of business because their product was not sold in the manner that they wanted it to be.

This is not about price fixing, if you think it is, obviously you dont understand the situation or have taken the time to read all the post. StopTech is not saying they care about what price the product is sold for, they are just warning people that, hey if you buy our product from this company because they are offering a really low price, you are buying from an un-Authorized dealer so you may not get the warranty, tech support and correct fitment you think you may be getting.

They want people to buy the product from their dealers. Why? You ask. Not because it makes Stoptech any more money, they are making money regardless of if the product is sold through an Authorized or un-Authorized dealer. They want you to buy through their dealers, because their dealers are trained, they understand the product, they can install it, they can fix a problem over the phone or at their shop without refering people to StopTech directly and waisting their time.

As far as profits go, you would have a different attitiude if you had a shop with lifts and all the equipment and technicians to pay and someone with a computer working out of his spare bedroom is selling a product for a 5% markup and you cant sell anything and pay your overhead at that kind of price. You get what you pay for. Yes a tuner shop may cost a little more, but they have the equipment to install the parts, they have technical expertise to solve any problems and they have a storefront and shop you can show up at if you have problems. What happens when your Internet retailer suddently disappears from the web and their phone is disconnected, cant show up at their house, you end up getting screwed...

Nothing

This thread is a joke. We live in a ****ing capitalist society. StopTech wants it's retailers to have a fair shot at selling products? Tell them to cut their ****ing margins and compete... THE WAY ALL BUSINESSES IN A CAPITALISTIC ECONOMY MUST!!! I give FIVE thumbs up to Hopup for using legitamite business practices to get business. Supply. Demand.

N.

Nothing

PS - economic darwinism. I don't care if Shop A was a poor schmuck with a passion for cars and Shop B was a tycoon with a Harvard MBA who couldn't give two ***** about aftermarket car parts. If shop B can offer the same product for less... I buy from Shop B.

N.

ChromeSilver04

Just a quick question, I understand the whole deal about advertised price vs. sale price, but here's my little additon to all of this. Is Hopup advertising the price of your kit to be YOUR selling price for the kit, or theirs? Technically, they can buy the kits from you, or another authorized re-seller, whichever they choose or get the best deal from (kind of like the consumer eh?). Advertising the price that THEY decide to sell the kits at does not represent the MSRP of the product, nor what that particular re-seller (authorized or not, they are a legitimate aftermarket parts business selling your product) paid its supplier for the product. Advertising the lowest price around can be good and bad as stated before, but guess what, that's not you, it's Hopup. Regardless of install (unless performed improperly causing damage to the product) you agree to provide warranty service covering defects caused by the manufacturer. Unless there's a big sign on Hopup's website saying "This is what StopTech told us we could advertise THEIR price at", it should really be of zero concern to you. YOU, the manufacturer, are being paid regardless of who sells, advertises, or purchases the product. Someone bought it from somewhere, and that somewhere was YOU before it was shipped to an authorized, or un-authorized re-seller (both of those still being legitimate re-sellers). The re-seller advertising THEIR sale price and YOUR sale price are two completely different animals. No company is going to sell a mass-produced high-end aftermarket product for a currently manufactured vehicle and not make a profit on it. Which also means, if they DO, they sure as hell aren't going to advertise it as such. I see NOTHING wrong with Hopup's advertising practices unless they are directly stating that that price is StopTech's price. SOrry for the long rant, but that's just how business works.

NismoKid

I understand the non-warranting of your product from an un-authorized retailer to an extent. If the BBK is in its factory sealed package, I would think the warranty stands and that any missing parts would be supplied under warranty (if bought from either authorized or un-authorized retailers). However, if the factory packaging was opened on a kit sold through un-authorized retailers, I would say that no warraty would stand.

As far as the price setting on the racing shop's brake kits, they should sell to anyone at the same price (regular consumers and non-authorized retailers). When that is done, I'm almost 100% positive more people would buy your brake kit (70% of MSRP as you stated earlier) and the un-authorized retailer won't make any profit so he won't sell your product anymore. In the end, the racing shop makes 20% of MSRP (70-50 when bought in large quantities) and Stoptech will be happy since they won't have to deal with consumers with non-warranted new brake kits.

JCat

iTrader: (4)

.....I WAS going to upgrade my brakes......maybe I'll wait....I can certainly spend $4,500 on something else.

rodH

iTrader: (2)

I would be interested to know if HopUp is offering the EXACT SAME kits as the other retailers. Sometimes a dealer take advantage of an uneducated customer by NOT giving the customer all of the hardware and/or parts that normally come with a FULL KIT (in other words, do they leave out the SS brake lines and other such components and make the customer pay for them later, if in fact they are normally included with the kits? etc....)

I would also be interested to know why another authorized Stoptech dealer would sell the kits to HopUp at such a rate that even HopUp could offer that kit at a highly discounted price an EVERYONE down the line ends up making money? If that is the case, these kits have some HUGE mark up. But my guess is that that don't. I am looking at the wholesale price on Brembo Kits right in front of me and it looks like they only make about <$500 for the Front or Rear (~1000 for the whole car), which is <20% markup. That markup is very high when compared to tires, about the same as wheels (roughly) and much lower than many other products.

J Ritt

iTrader: (4)

Along,
Thanks for the support.

I think the funniest part about this whole argument is that none of my critics on this matter seem to think there is a problem with Hopup violating copyright laws and using our logo to unlawfully sell product. You make up conspiracy theories regarding price fixing and anti-trust laws, yet the most blatantly disrespectful business practices are ignored because you like the idea of getting cheaper prices. Selective listening?

RodH,
I never threw any real discounting numbers around. I used some gross numbers like 50% off. I don't know who sold to them, or if they have even gotten their hands on a kit. If they did, I have no idea at what discount they received it. I will never discuss our actual discount structures in public, particularly with regards to a specific reseller...a bad idea all around.

The reality is that our brake kits are quite costly to manufacture by the time everything is factored in, and the profit margin is much lower than most realize. I came from a service industry, and my jaw hit the floor when I actually found out how little margin there really was in the product. It's a tough business, and you have to have your you know what together in order to play and do a good job. Fortunately, our team and product are strong, and we are going to keep making the highest quality products at the most reasonable prices, regardless of who you buy them from.