After a day away considering wether it is wrong to critisize a shaper in a public forum or if indeed it is as as Bruce McClellan said about my telling of my personal experience
Quote:
Damn right. You’re full of complaints. What do you think you’ll get by washing your dirty shorts in public message boards?
Consider this:- A celebrity couple sell exclusive rights to the coverage of their wedding to a newspaper.When things wrong in the marrage,some embarrasing incident perhaps,the journalists descend and have a feeding frenzy,hounding the couple.Do we feel sympathy or do we feel they have brought it on themselves by seeking to profit from an alliance with the media?
OK consider the case of shaper M who posts good pictures of his enticing boards on a public forum.The motive may only be to share the stoke but you would have to be very stupid to not recognise that their presence among like minded surfers is a fantastic marketing tool.In response to these are posts by surfers that are wildly enthusiastic testiments about how well the boards ride,how they are functional art,how well they are made and what a fantastic guy shaper M is. How many surfers saw these posts in a public forum and headed to the professional looking website of the shaper and ordered boards?
So what I am saying is if you profit by the involvement in a public forum it is reasonable for people to voice an opinion backed up by personal experience when the board or the experience of buying the boards doesn’t match up to the implicit promise.Therefore we have people sold the dream of a M boards who go back to the source and give their experience of extending queues, jumped waiting lists and poor workmanship. It is worth noting that even those dissatisfied with their experience give a great deal of credit to M and balance their criticism with praise because I think they recognise that negative publicity has a greater impact than praise and could harm his business.
Also I am wondering why this particular shaper is singled out for this type of potentially damaging criticism?I suspect it is because we weigh up how much of a contribution they make and also how much they promote themselves as a professional as against an amateur or small scale operator who makes boards for friends and turns a little profit.For example I cannot recall M having posted answers to quad fin placement or fish rocker or recommending blanks for fishes or other areas where his expertise would help struggling shapers. The only thing I remember seing was a refusal to discuss fin setup because of betraying info Pavel gave him.Please correct me if I am wrong as he may have posted under different names. I do note however that OahuSurfer has recieved template and fin advice recently so maybe forums aren’t his way.
I agree with that it is important to build a relationship with the shaper but don’t agree that you should send him gifts in order to bring yourself to his attention.Sounds a little like bribing. Sure send something if stoked with the result.I realise that several disasters could probably been avoided if I had been more active in generating a better rapor through a more personal approach. Phone rather than email if at a distance. I never phoned because I am wary of taking up their valuable time.
Yes businesses need advanced orders and deposites but surely there is a way to manage waiting lists fairly.When we start out in business quite often we screw up badly.Too cheap and saying yes to too many people are common problems.Usually this gets sorted the first year as the realisation hit that the work has piled up and the profit is too small.Nothing more soul destroying than quoting too little and still having to finish the job.
I dissagree with the idea that a board can be rushed through (queue jumping) through paying more.This is something I hadn’t seen on M’s site before.It certainly wasn’t there when some of us from the UK were ordering boards ,on the contary a rush order was refused.Shocked to see that it acceptable. I wondered wether it was a device to curb people asking for rush orders.
I heartily endorse the necessity of shapers to be in the water surfing, how you juggle that necessity with business comitments shows how professional you really are.