no but it can’t be! obviously theirs is 16.3" and we have 16.2"!
#NotTheSame
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Totally agrees with this.
I think the hardest part isn’t about how cheap a board is, but what services are associated with a board’s price tag. If I payed $1200 for a bamboo meepo hurricane, I sure as heck would be happy with little to no support since it’s such a good deal. I’ll never be able to make a board that performs as well and have as decent of a design as that board with only $1200 USD. However, if someone was going to offer me excellent service and support and sell that board to me for $2000, I’ll still gladly take that.
Imo the greatest trait of boutique brands are their service and support, as well as their dedication to the craft. Almost all boutique brands are consisted of employees who are seriously passionate about pushing the performance of the boards hard enough and turn their wishlist into a product. And it is precisely these specs that we look for in a boutique, that makes us buy the boutiques.
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I think the hardest part is how to make it cheap with a battery you trust to sell? It takes almost 1 day to build a battery if its not a small one to pay a worker in US to do it. That is atleast 400USD in cost just for the battery building not included the cells. Sure you could order premade ones from China, but most builders would not trust to sell a board with that. And then pay somone in US to assembly it, thats atleast 4 hours, probebly more. I dont see how its possible, even with the price tag of 2500-6000 some companies sell for they are struggeling to make any profit.
I think what Lacroix did with barell is the closest you can get.
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I would argue with the correctly engineered structures, battery pack assembly shouldn’t take a full day. Maybe a 18s12p monster-sized pack would, but the price tag associated with that pack is justified.
I think the best middle ground is to have them made in China but built to order and inspected properly. I doubt there will be a lack of truly skilled workers in China; the real issue is how to find them and convey your desired specifications with them properly. Wouldn’t you agree that a worker who possesses an equal level of competency is paid more in the West than in China? So just hire the better Chinamen instead of the cheap ones.
There are also arguments to be made with boutique brands, such as proper UL or CE certifications on the battery packs made for a vehicle carrying a live person. AFAIK, in order to score that certificate, you need a certified factory using certified cells building packs that are certified running a certified BMS system, which survives all the torture tests. I understand that people have grown to trust boutique packs since the makers of those packs are very respected members of the DIY community and as such possesses the necessary skill and work ethic to complete our packs, but how might you win an argument with government officials whom only cares about paperwork? But when it comes to China made packs, most of them passed the certifications required to be imported, transported, and sold.
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The risk, investment of money, energy and time vs potential profit is simply not worth it to sell a cheap high quality and performance skateboard made from mostly Chines parts.
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I’m not denying about the lowest quality Chinese made products could turn out to be, I’m saying with correct oversight and correct connections and suppliers with high morals and ethics, Chinese made products could be as good, if not better than purely Western hand made products. There’s a reason why Chinese made Model 3s and Model Ys are better than their German made and American made counterparts, in terms of quality; or even why Apple chooses China for their iPhone, iPad, and Mac production.
The harsh reality is, most of the brands in our industry from the West are simply not bothered to even attempt to navigate through the language barrier, or setting up relations with Chinese suppliers, and the few whom attempted didn’t get results they wanted, either because they didn’t look long enough, or in some cases, unfortunate supply chain related issue happened that caused them to toss bad words towards the Chinese suppliers. Are there western brands that made it work? Totally. Look at Onsra, Evolve, Boosted, or even MBS and Loaded… Do they make the best boards out there in terms of sheer performance? Absolutely not. But do they make the best boards out there for the majority of the people? Now that’s an open debate that I’m personally leaning towards yes.
I think it would go a long way if people started throwing their prejudice away for good and start treating people as people. Ignore what you’ve been told that associates with them, and go see for yourself.
But if all you are about is to just make fun of and throw shades at people whom are literally several or even a dozen time zone away, then by all means ignore everything I’ve said and carry on. You wouldn’t be the first ones I’ve met, and certainly you won’t be the last.
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Besides all this there really isnt a market big enough for 5000€ boards or even 3000€ to go and order 5000 of them from China
At least that seems to me
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Its not really the parts, most parts are made in China for many companies that makes high performance boards, cnc parts, pcb for esc etc and they are fine. I order from Chines factorys parts for medical devices every month and they do it fine.
But for sutch a small nich as eskate are I have hard time see anyone manage to sell a high performance board assembled in US with a great Chines assembled battery for a low price with good warranty/support.
What you are refering to with those companys is Chines assembled boards, not US assembled boards.
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ITT: A bunch of folks who have never made a production board talking about how great their $2000 high performance US built production board will be.
Cannot be done and also be built in the US. It would either be worse than a meepo hurricane, or you’d be giving it away at cost while working for free.
Mboards, Superbeast, Defiant, and Zoobomb meet this aspiration minus the price that you want. I can’t help but feel like you’re making a statement by excluding these brands. I promise you none of these brands are raking in bags of cash. We’re all just a bunch of dudes trying to make a living doing what we love. So it kind of feels like you’re saying that we’re making too much money when in reality a lot of us aren’t even profitable, zoobomb definitely is not. I would never say that you’re overcharging for your wheels that were already designed and ready to manufacture when you started. I think you deserve to make all the dollars you’re charging for those wheels considering your fantastic support and great quality control.
But I really do think that price you want is unachievable while also delivering a competitive product. These brands do their own engineering, they have engineers (that actually esk8) on staff that could be making significantly more money at a different firm. Unlike other brands that can just deliver a bullet point list of specs to Elofty or some other OEM and receive a fully designed board back.
Consider the possibility that the brands I just listed above are already trying what you’re saying, and the price that reality has come up with is the price that they and we are charging now.
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This is true. Unless you only care about bringing in more people into the sport using VenCap money to pay your employees and company expansion while making little to no money on sales. But then again, this normally only works with tech companies whom actually possesses advanced tech, such as bambu lab or nothing
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I am definitively not trying to make a statement by not mentioning companies like Mboards, Superbeast Defiant and Zoobomb.
When it comes to bags of cash, I would agree ESK8 is not the industry for that. At least not in the US.
I am not implying that people in the ESK8 industry are making too much money but I can see how trying to make a less expensive domestically made board could be interpreted as stepping on peoples toes.
I think you are probably right about this. There has to be a descent profit to offset the risk.
Wow they aren’t even trying to make it look different.
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0 effort lol
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“it’s not an octagon! we have a hexagon for god’s sake! absolutely didn’t copy anything! the stripes nor the four streaks of cutout were all original ideas! They just happened to look the same!”
-NXBoards, probably
Interestingly enough around that time we were getting weird hate mail in the support inbox about us ripping off other companies. I think we decided to save them for future Tik Tok response videos. Maybe they’re related, maybe not. I was too busy wallowing in the soft glow of being someone that people want to copy to find out.
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correction——it’s not shilling if you own the business amirite