Did anyone else notice that yo parts in no longer the drag forum sponsor?

 

Well it's a new month, maybe his deal was only for a certain period of time.

 

I can only imagine what it costs to be a forum sponsor. This place is completely psycho on its sponsor pricing. It obviously is not worth the cost because they never stay long. I sponsor some other forums and cost is a fraction of the cost here. I know it costs some of the shop nearly $300/mo just to be able to mention their business and sell products in the for sale section.

 

I think it had to do more with the BS / drama of the forum then the money

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by cluelessmale &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">I think it had to do more with the BS / drama of the forum then the money</TD></TR></TABLE>

I agree also. I don't think many shop owners or online resellers like tom b/c of his pricing strategies. I have met tom several times and he was always nice, courteous, and down to earth. He was always thinking of the next big idea i.e. BOTI TV. I know a lot of shop owners and online resellers would rag on him any time he posted and just be flat out disrespectful to him. Sorry to say but that is business, he identified a well known fact in online selling and capitalized on it. Honda people are cheap and 99% of the time just want to get the parts at the lowest cost. Most of the time you don't need support when buying a lot of parts, he identified that and created his business plan around it. What I saw was instead of other shop owners and online sellers trying to find a new strategy to beat his business plan they took the easy way out by attacking him and disrespecting him. There were a few that started to push the service end of their business but that is kind of hard if you are a reseller that just sells out of their basement. If I was a shop owner I would have welcomed Toms approach. You now have people who think they know about Honda’s, buying parts trying to install them and either failing or messing something up. That creates more work for you. You also eliminate that problem of having your customer calling you wanting to know when the parts coming or why something doesn't fit. That huge headache is now in tom’s court.

I would have personally reached out to Tom and said hey listen I have a shop in PA for example. I am too busy dynoing cars, and fixing peoples hack jobs. I am going to send all my customers your way to buy the common parts. In return if you can send people that have bought parts from my geographic area my way for install help and product support that would be great. Which I now will charge a set fee for, you both win. If you’re trying to make money in selling parts and not a service it is going to be hard because of the Toms and eBay’s out there.

The 4 Walton’s who are ranked in the top 10 of the richest people in the America did not get where they are by doing what everyone else did. They identified a need and capitalized on it and as much as people bitch about Wal-Mart and say it is ruining America they still shop there b/c they can get their common household goods for cheap and the same quality as if they would have gone to K-Mart or other similar stores.

I don't blame tom for not sponsoring the forum anymore. I would assume it costs over 1000 dollars a month to sponsor this forum and for what? To get **** on and attacked? To have people be nice to him when they see him at the races then jump online and start bashing him. If I was in his position I would have stopped sponsoring the forum a long time ago.

These are just my thoughts and observations so feel free to flame away.

 

Well said Chad.

 

Yoparts is horrible for this industry and no shop owner can support that. I think its funny that the above poster says he'd welcome someone like Yoparts. The problem with this industry is that even before Yoparts there was NO MARKUP. Everyone sees Hondatech prices and then want more of a hookup when they buy 2 things or more. Theres nowhere to go!!!! People, we're making 50-75 on 1000 coilover sets. Buy something for 1000$ ANYWHERE else in ANY other industry and people make 300-400 on that. Taking an already ruined industry and doing what Yoparts is doing is horrible. Manufacturers do NOT support that and hate the Yoparts business model. No company likes people whoring out their product. It hurts the companies that offer product support and install their products when the "Costco" of the import scene is just giving parts away. AEM put a pretty quick policy out there to protect its suppliers. people still ***** it out.

-Steve

 

In my electronics store we are held by MAP pricing but non-authorized internet sellers bust that wide open. The above poster is exactly correct, there already is not enough markup to survive. I gave up on selling honda parts a couple years ago and moved on to where the customers dont mind spending a little extra for a good product and a dependable business. These get-it-cheap places come and go only to muddy up the water for legitimate business'.

 

Manufacturers have more to do with this than anything. They need to blacklist online and ebay sellers that ***** their products out and kill the shops that support them year after year.

Just an example....AEM is pretty strict on what their dealers sell their widebands for...and any of their products for that matter. Ebay sellers disregard this and sell for $5-10 above what the average performance shop can buy the parts for. How are they supposed to stay in business matching a 2% markup?

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by 4piston &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote"> How are they supposed to stay in business matching a 2% markup?</TD></TR></TABLE>

If a shop is trying to live off of part sales it is a parts store, not a shop, shops make their money off the dyno, installing parts, custom fabbing, welding, ect.

 

I just dont understand these damn shops. I bought parts from shops and got the run around on shipping and no calls back. I bought from Tom few times and product was here on time and He would PM or call to see if everything was fine. Took care of me all the time.

Shops need to stop bitching and start taking it to next level to stay above water. I only see few shops around New England area bitching most of the time.

I work in automotive industry and we always try different things to bring customers to our doors.

 

The funny thing is that Tom was out for the racers this sport needs a restructure. You guys wonder why there are never any people in the stands or new racers. People in this industry sometimes forget what they are here for and what this sport is about. Go back to the grass routes what made this sport???

Tom is a great guy and I can't believe after he paid to sponsor the drag racing forum he got dumped on he tried to give back and I really dont blame him for pulling the plug on drag racing. He should just keep doing what he is doing.

Just think of NOPI for example did you guys support the events enough? Take a minute to think what your doing to this sport.

 

i wasn't going to get into this, but i couldn't stay out of it.

i have bought parts from tom, dealt with tom on putting some things together, and talked about his business with many.

my family has depended on the drag racing industry for 30 years now. we have seen things come and go, and we have changed our business through out the years to stay with the pace. there were the good times, there were the bad times, there were the times when jegs and summit raped us over the coals and now the online market is doing it again.

you cannot blame tom for taking his idea and running with it. if you don't like it call your warehouses and tell them you need to be more competitive or call the manufactor and tell them your issue. if your a shop then tell you customers straight up , you want to buy parts somewhere else, either i won't install it, your going to pay a different labor rate, or your going to have to wait until my normal customer are taking care of. tell them i can come close to the price but with buying from me you know what kind of service your going to get and the quality you will recieve and 90 percent of the time they will buy from you. the drag racing industry has become more and more competitve over the years and your profit margin will never be the same unless you make custom parts.

so stop crying and deal with it and get your customer to stick with you.

 

AMEN!

 

I felt the same way when Summit came on the scene.We figured on making twenty or thirty percent on parts and the rest on labor.We lost most of that when Summit started getting big.Some shops started charging more if you brought your own parts.The customers didn't like that at all.I had some customers ask for a parts list so they could get them through Summit or Jegs.I would respectfully decline.Most people realized after a while that there was more to it then just ordering a bunch of parts.We stopped dealing with any parts over the counter.We also used more parts that Summit didn't sell or didn't have a deep deal on.

 

The worst part about this is that its an uphill argument from both sides. The people who bitch about Toms business are the ones who have set the standards for the classes and always have top of the line parts and the fastest cars. Unfortunately the classes progressed so fast that you need a mid-low 9 sec street car to compete in the popular classes and many cant afford that without getting parts at cost and fabbing/tuning there own cars. That just forces them to try to be cost effective buying there parts.

 

people will search for the best deal no matter what they do!

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by NRGtechParts &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">Yoparts is horrible for this industry and no shop owner can support that. I think its funny that the above poster says he'd welcome someone like Yoparts. The problem with this industry is that even before Yoparts there was NO MARKUP. Everyone sees Hondatech prices and then want more of a hookup when they buy 2 things or more. Theres nowhere to go!!!! People, we're making 50-75 on 1000 coilover sets. Buy something for 1000$ ANYWHERE else in ANY other industry and people make 300-400 on that. Taking an already ruined industry and doing what Yoparts is doing is horrible. Manufacturers do NOT support that and hate the Yoparts business model. No company likes people whoring out their product. It hurts the companies that offer product support and install their products when the "Costco" of the import scene is just giving parts away. AEM put a pretty quick policy out there to protect its suppliers. people still ***** it out.

-Steve</TD></TR></TABLE>


I love how your post puts all the blame on yoparts, it is the typical honda-tech thinking and reasoning. Why is it all yoparts to blame? If the manufactures do not like him so called whoring out their parts they can put a simple stop to it like AEM does. You don't see tom whoring out Motec boxes, or liberty gears sets for a few reasons. I can bet that the manufactures that he so called ****** out do not have an issue with him pushing and selling that many parts for them. It is not like they, the manufactures are losing money. So it really boils down to how much the manufacture cares about its product and how much do they care about someone selling it at cost or lower then everyone. Being that most of these parts are made oversees, the manufacture only cares about getting paid, the distributor only cares about getting paid so then it is the responsibility of the person selling the product to provide upward feedback in hopes it will end the selling of the parts at a low cost.

Plus another thing I have noticed about Tom, is you don't see him going into people’s posts saying buy from me, or I can get it cheaper, or I will beat your price like a lot of other users on this forum do. Plus last time I checked Tom has put some serious money into the sport this year. Sponsoring CM Teg, sponsoring BOTI, sponsoring other racing venues such as today’s race at NED. With all that being said where are all these other shops that sit on here and bitch about Tom and his company? I don't see many of them throwing money into this sport, sponsoring classes, cars and so on.

 

you other sellers are on here bitchin all the time. This country was built around people reinventing and making money. Now you bitch cause you have to try harder. Step up or get out. I spend alot of money on parts and have never bought from TOM. But the shops i have bought from have horrible service and those shops are the ones forcing there customers to go to TOM. You owners need to realize something when you got it.

And as far as the Drag racing scene, its not as bas as compared to the local asphalt racing scene that i am involved in. I can say this, if Frank steps up and walks around and intoduces himself to each racer and thanks them for coming, the racers will keep coming. And as far as the fans, I agree with good promotion and Cheap tickets.

 

Im not bashing on anyone or anyones business because i have not met the guy and I realize how difficult it must be to start a business like that, but his parts were not that cheap. i recently just spent almost 3 grand on parts and i found almost every single part at the same price or cheaper on other sites that sponser honda-tech. His tial 40mm wg and his tial bov were cheaper than everyone else's but it still didnt make up the membership fee. That and the website was kinda difficult to use, if you knew exactly what you were going for it was ok, but if you were trying to shop and compare multiple items it wasn't worth the hassle. If you guys want I can post up everything I bought and the prices I paid and you can see what I mean.

 

You also got to remember his family and himself eat food just like everyone else... He is not a robot...

 

im curious as to how much has YoParts invested into the sport compact industry in the year of 2008. its gotta be a shitload of money. i gotta commend them for trying to better or make the sport bigger. i dont agree with their business model, but if it works for them, more power to them. i have met Tom in person, and he is a very nice guy

 

can somebody better explain yo-parts "business practice/strategy" that everybody doesnt like? i literally have no idea.. i figured it was just a random online parts store just like every other

 

like sam's club but with auto parts

 

you pay up front for a member ship that gets you a better discount. Nothing wrong with that! Comes with really great service!