How long does it take a blank company to fill an order?
Rockers perfect?
No Pukas?
On time delivery?
I ordered 46 blanks on Monday.
Thursday I received all 46 Blanks with no back orders.
Rockers within 1MM.
One company can do that.
Sorry No names.
I don’t see how some of these blank compaies are still in business?
Boy are you going to hit some nerves with this post!
why no names,because i have been having trouble.share?i have a bunch of blanks that took far too long to get to me,apparently shipping dept. took a vacation or something when i placed my order.so i get to shapeing them and they’re are choke pukas,seen?i was told the new company was dedicated to helping the small guy and i am still wondering when that is going to happen.i have these blanks still and its better for my business to not sell them at all and take the hit now while i have little time and money invested,although it has been a thorough waste of time even trying to figure out if any were good.it sucks shit don’t get me wrong,but i am not gonna sell crap and have it come back on me.i am a one man operation in a small state in new england,word gets around fast,and i want to serve my brothers and sisters the best i can,but it seems this is some far fetched idea from a time long long ago,wtf.boycott china and these so called “enviromental friendly” blanks.big corpos too.we(americans) need to get together and help each other out here.i am out,gonna go read a kurt vonnegut book or something…not.
in a free market we just vote with our feet… when I don’t like a crappy product, I don’t buy from them again and I tell my buddies about it too. I’ve bought and been stuck with plenty of crappy blanks in the past few years, that sucks but I think was inevitable after a major shakeup like Clark & Walker shutting down. The market will stabilize eventually though. Maybe you can sell them here on Sways as seconds and let some newbies hack them up?
Dead Shaper:
It’s only to challege the Blank companies to improve their service. We all talk in detail about foam quality which is extremely important. However I feel that their ability to provide the correct rocker (Read the Deck Rocker notes acturately) deliver the blanks in a timely manner are important as well.
I’m still waiting to get all my blanks in to test, however without follow thru by the blank companies I don’t see the point? Say they make great foam but it takes weeks to get? The season can be gone. There are systems that they can put in place: TQM - ISO9000 - COMMON SENSE Management (Flow Charting).
So far I have seen good reasonable foam from the following companies who are able to fill an order in a timely fashion:
US Blanks - Rockers are spot on - Good Boards are made from it - Machine Blanks available - Large Selection - Quick turn around - Custom Blanks not an issue.
Just Foam - Rockers are spot on - Good Boards are made from it - Machine Friendly - Getting better all the time
KING MAC - Rockers are spot on - Good Boards are made from it - They are ramping back-up after some adjustments to their operation.
These three are listed because I apreciate companies who get the rocker right! Plus they know how to add extended tabs.
thanks for the good words guys,i appreciate the positive responses.i hate on being a hater,but we do need to speak up when things are not right.
DTOTHEM
You and I know who you are talking about. I had some experience that nearly crippled my image and my pocket book. Can you just think how you would feel if you sent your son with a quiver of boards to INDO for the biggest swell to hit Lances rights in 15 years on a Yacth full of Photographers and have the leash plugs blow out? Or how about trying to set up a new account and have large PUKAS pop up on the finish boards? Have you seen a board shrink from the vacuum pressure of an airplane cargo? Boy was I laughed at. I had a few blanks left that I was a fraid to glass in my blank racks. This same company is making a better product currently and I think they will get it. However if your like I am with no outside capital you run a lean operation and cannot afford to have Quality Issues especially in a small town setting like your in. I don’t want to bash them because I think they will be good some day. For now I need to go with what is working and proven.
Being hit hard economically creates swift results and a genuine distaste in one’s mouth. Becoming a laughing stock or losing one’s credibility overnight is a huge detriment to anyone that pride themselves doing a quality business.
If delivery of the blanks is poor, when we have so many suppliers vying for position and market share, can you imagine how much worse it could be with reputable companies overloaded with orders if there were only two or three suppliers? And all of this in the wake of Clark, who as we go along, we learn more and more how together they had it to regularly supply both large and small accounts.
I really do not want to start this thread in yet another direction about offshore production, but I do want to highlight the importance of timely delivery of quality foam to those of us dedicated to producing a quality domestic product, in a reasonable amount of time, at a fair price.
Delivery is notoriously slow by many craftsman I know, and the consumer will look elsewhere for that reason alone. In this day you have to deliver or you are a goner.
This goes for the blank companies as well, and spot on rockers shouldn’t be an insurmountable problem. I will say that things can happen though, I had a Velzy someone brought to me for duplication (yes, at a better price) and when I gave Clark what I needed using their method what I got when it finally came was not even in the ballpark.
Sh-t happens.
Surfding…you mention without good delivery that “the season can be gone”…of which “season” are you referring to?
Boards purchased with tax return money?
Funshape and longboard for summer and begnners?
Winter startup shortboards and guns?
Mid winter or fall replacement boards?
Spring windswell shortboards?
Last time I checked I didn’t see any snow on my local CA beach.
I believe there are four seasons. Depending on your 1020, there are slow times of the year. If you were depending on good quick service, you could miss the boat, thus dissapointing your customer, thus losing numbers in the fourth quarter.
1020? Is this Business 101 or Account-Speak or something?
I’ve had plenty of business experience in retail surf ndustry as both a factory and a retail owner…the slow quarter is generally Jan-March like many other retail businesses, but business activity is commonly and most affected by available disposable income.
Most surfers look at their board expenditures as a necessary expense for their peace of mind and if they are tight for a buck they spend available funds on repairs rather than new board replacment or adding to a quiver.
California isn’t sitting in snow as I indicated, Texas, Forida,and gulf states don’t freeze out, Hawaii is still paradise…
…so I still am not quite sure what you guys are driving at. Speak plainly and make your point.
Perhaps you are misleading me because you are talking about being purely a machining operation that has a large number to mill in order to meet a break even?
I apologize for the non surf lingo. FYI- 1020 is cop lingo for location. I jumped into the thread after you were asking which season ding thought he would miss due to slow blank delivery. If you dont have the blanks to mill for christmas…you miss a season…If you cant get the guns to hawaii by december, your screwed, as you well know having your factory and retail experiance. If you can depend on a company for delivery, thats one less thing to worry about. It seems a lot of people are still very touchy about foam companies…very brave post
Didnt it snow last winter in Malibu? 
Don’t know…I’m a Rincon man. But if you want to see snow above The Con go to:
http://www.goletasurfing.com/fowler.html
and there will be a shot in there.
Dead:
The season I’m talking about is the one coming up. Tax return - Spring - Pre-summer.
Like you said just after the slow period (Jan, Feb, Mar).
I’m looking after the board builder who owns a retail shop and orders Blanks from a blank company to be milled so he can have them processed and fill his shop for the 1st of April. Well that did not happen. The blank companies that can not deliver are not going to be around very long or never be able to grow if they can not figure that out?
This post is under Industry Talk so I think its OK to look for the best way to make our Industry Stronger.
RANT -
Concerning Milling boards: You have to do a lot of them and be fast and accurate to maybe make some money? There are bad boards that come off of machines too. You actually have to be a good shaper to get good boards off a machine. The boards are only has good as the file generated as well. Having a machine does not make one a good shaper from one day to the next. You can hack a board on a cnc just like you can with a skill 100 if you don’t know what your doing. Designing a board from a computer that cuts correctly and actually rides unreal takes more skill than anyone realizes. To be a good mower of foam is another skill in building a board but not the only one. When guy’s were shaping with draw knifes and spokeshaves they dised things about the power planner.
You are more than welcome to come to my shop and check it out? There are a lot of Rocker jigs and Rocker Templates. I even can hand shape. I use a Hitachi because I love the weight of it and don’t own a skill 100 even thought I know its the greatest planner ever made. Someday I’ll buy one. You might even become a Shape 3D user (Industry Standard). To add the new technolgy to your experience would make you one of the best in California I have no doubt. Embrace it. You should see Timmy Patterson with a Skill 100 (He Smokes). He also can design a board on the computer unreal. Both technologies are used. It’s the only way we can keep the Surf Industry alive. I went into Jack’s Surfboards Sunday and seen it full of Californian made Boards, was I relieved! I know most of the board builders that made the boards for Jack’s (even some of the Ghost Shapers who finished them off the VARIOUS machines). The quaility was uniform and designs highly functional. The saleman in the board room said that these boards are selling like crazy. I was stoked to see our industry getting it right. The board prices were pretty decent for shortboards ($520.00 Polyester, $620 EPS, $720 Parabolic). These were made in California and they were selling a bunch of them!
In the meantime we need good foam with the right rockers delivered in a timely fashion in order to maintain our production for our own market!
And no PUKAS, SHRINKING, HARDSPOTS, YELLOWING, GLUE VOIDS, GASSING, BAD ROCKERS or DELAYED DELIVERIES!
Surfding…Good clarifications. Lots of valid points made.
I want to highlight one of those points for Swaylockinans and the general public. The CNC approach doesn’t validate the design’s merit, it only validates the machine’s ability to dedicate itself to what the designer intends and realizes and correctly inputs.
In this I mean that some people are mistaking symmetry for good design. Well, I can design you a surfboard that will ride like an absolute disaster and I can even design it so the disasters you experience are exactly as I intended: “you will dig a rail when you do this”, I guarantee you will pearl when you are here", “you will slow and come to a crawl when you stand here” etc. .
Given that I am a designer as well as a shaper, I could create this design and as soon as the rider went out and experiened those nightmare features that (I had intended) I would then consider that (ironically) as a ‘successful design’! Then you could machine stacks of them ‘successfully’!
I think you get my point in supporting what you are saying. A dog is dog is a dog if you don’t know what you’re doing. It can be a high tech carbon parabolic dog or a low tech woofer. (And I apologize to the entire canine world for using them as an example).
Hey! I am absolutely stoked to hear about Jack’s selling domestic boards like hotcakes. What a great thing to hear…you’ve already made my day before I even get out the planer and squeegee.
And I do agree with you about the expectations that we should have of foam suppliers. I had mentioned a Shapers Manifesto to Stu at Ice Nine and he thought it was great at even added some items to it…add no gassing to your list. OOPs… you already DID!Thanks.
So we are of like mind when it comes to reasonable expectations. Delivery is probably the key bitch over any other aspect in this consumer driven industry…the age old cry remains:
Is my board ready yet?
Anyone addressing flex and rider satisfaction, color (yellow or white), density/weight/hardness and ease of shaping, soft spots, and gassing (i only saw one mention of gassing). Just wondering if these issues are important to shapers?
Bimini…whatplanet did you go to for vacation? This stuff has ben heavily discussed in other threads. Get up to speed mygoodman!
I haven’t been on this site for awhile, no time and just too darn busy. I simply haven’t seen it discussed at length and since I have been accused of advertising Just Foam on this blog I am staying out of the posts and allowing the small guys to talk amongst themselves. I talk to the larger manufacturers on a regular basis and many of the cutters (CNC owners/operators) give me some limited feedback from their clients which I take use to refine what we are doing. I saw the post and simply wanted to list a couple of other issues shapers and laminators tell me they have with blanks these days.
B…oh,I getcha. Hey, I don’tknow if I would be that sensitive if I were you. For the record, the buzz about Just Foamis really good. When I was freaking out how good the Walker “Mowses” foam formula was when Harold collaborated with IceNine, I think it was John Mel… that brought up a very similar experience Terry Martin had with Just Foam.
I know it was as big a deal for TM as it was for me…the truth is there are numerous blank manufacturers looking at this sight (as well as others in the industry) and to think otherwise would be naiive.
I would hope we all contribute to make things better…you should feel free to participate and offer up insights from your perspective as it is coming from a part of the industry that few of us are directly involved in.
thanks for that, anything requested of me will be met with an answer and if possible a solution.
Scott Saunders
Just Foam