Where do you draw the line between the two types of esk8 brands? What do you feel the definition should be?
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A higher bar in a boutique company, and a performance level unmatched by production.
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When does a small business get too big to be considered small?
If they can afford to have someone come in and take the trash out for them 
But yeah definitions in the US doesn’t help. Cause anything over 100 employees is still small business.
I personally think most of the vesc based boards are small businesses still with under 10 employees or even just 1-2 guys.
Having a face of the business helps associate that for me. Vs faceless big businesses who can take losses and not affect them. Like chargebacks and etc.
If a few charge backs are gonna hurt them definite small business.
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best definition so far
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Why cant a production board become boutique?
How much alteration does it take to cross the line into a custom? Is a GTR with different mounts, upgraded battery, controller and updated/upsized motors still a production board? If a deck is the only thing not modified is it still a production board?
Maybe boutique implies that they are still put together by hand in a shop and not a factory, is mass production the line?
The premise of the conversation is that these words are mutually exclusive.
But what is mass production?
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I think of it more by production numbers. A boutique brand typically would be more hands on with the build, leading to naturally fewer boards created as each one takes time. Meanwhile production would be more scaled up and hands off.
In other words a boutique board could be individually customizable by the customer before leaving the factory (even if it isn’t offered), while production would be impossible to offer such flexibility. Is the brand trying to make as many units as it can, or making the best units it can?
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I guess its kinda subjective, a “production run” of 10 boards id consider boutique, a run of 1000 not so much.
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I feel like if it’s assembled by hand by workers who would probably love to take it out for a rip themselves, versus random assembly line workers just grabbing assigned parts out of bins and slapping them together is what differentiates them for me. Boutique doesn’t always have to mean big bucks
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If your cranking out 50 completes a day thats 350 boards a week.
If the asssembly process has a single person to do one thing only per complete and it takes 5-8 pairs of hands . I would consider that mass produced.
Pretty sure most folks who are doing this have bins and a somewhat organized assembly setup. But yeah if it’s done by 1-2 people you have less room for error especially if you can talk to each other. Vs in a large work environment where stuff gets moved between different benches and there’s no communication
Wat since when lmao that’s not small business to me
Under 15 employees is “small” to me
As for the original section I think often boutique you pay for style rather than performance. I would consider the XLR a boutique board.
Low numbers are also often associated with being boutique, as is “hand assembled”
E.G. Hoyt is boutique, Lacroix is barely edging on boutique because of their volume, and others like Meepo or Evolve are definitely not boutique.
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you know their volume?
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I do not but based on the number of boards in the wild I surmised it is quite high
In other words, I don’t really consider Lacroix special anymore
I would say boutique is any builder/brand offering limited edition or bespoke runs of products.
To me boutique implies something special, exclusive, limited in numbers created and or possibly customized for the buyer.
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Lol thats what i thought.
My thoughts are that if you wanna call your board boutique, go ahead and call it boutique.
I don’t like the word boutique so I’d rather not associate with it.
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Should be something like what sports cars do. 25-50 identical boards produced within a 12-month period and available for sale to the general public.
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Yes true I guess I meant more like a vehicle assembly line where worker #3’s job is to put on the screws holding the trucks to the deck and then it gets handed off to someone else. Boutique is a more intimate assembly process (see: @glyphiks hand-drawn dongers)
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