sunvista wrote:
My new local dealer also carries no stock. I would have to drive six miles to his "store", place the order, drive six miles home, wait two weeks and then one more round trip to pick up the part. Without Murray's I'd still be jetskiing.
Why don't you communicate with him and tell him what you need? All Hobie parts that Murays sells come from a Hobie dealer, they don't buy factory direct, so we do ship too, all day long. I would talk to your local guy, tell him what you need and see if he can match it. The marine industry is brutal here in the U.S. as is indicated by your statement that the last guy 'chaptered out'. Why do you think that was?
Quote:
Can't understand why Hobie doesn't join the 21st (or even 20th) century and put their parts catalog online. They could still have their local dealers distribute the parts.
Have your local guy dropship from the factory if he doesn't have items in stock. Easy. Sounds to me like you haven't even expressed this to the guy.
sunvista wrote:
They should have a system like West Marine, Sears or Walmart...
Go into big marine store and ask for an anchor pin and see what happens. Ask them for a drain plug, ask them for anything and see what you get. The people working the registers usually have very limited boating experience. I'm not putting them down, I'm simply illustrating that there are many more complaints toward the WalMart model than there is toward the small distributoship model that Hobie uses. Could we do better? Absolutely! Let us know how. Secondly, Hobie dealers don't do a billion dollars worth of business every day, your suggestion would make the company broke in about 2 days... just like Sears, and West Marine.
Let me tell a little story about a large marine retailer that I used to work for. The reason that a lot of boat parts are so expensive is that the business model for this large marine store early-on was to take out the mom and pops chandelries in order to dominate the market. They did it by buying bulk, paying their workers the absolute minimum, telling the manufacturers what they were willing to pay for products, and off-shoring to China. Once the mom ans pops stores were gone they cranked up the prices, sometimes over %500 percent over retail. I saw it happen with my own eyes. Same way with Starbucks and the small coffee shop and WalMart and the local Grocer. Now with a virtual monopoly in the business, you as the consumer are paying their inflated prices every time you walk into their store, and customer service is almost non existent.
Give the small guy a little love. You hear a lot of talk about giving the small business tax breaks and all of this...No, just shop there. That will help a lot!
J