Yup, that's what we're calling it......
Many may know that I'm in South Africa and we're faced with a massive outlay when it comes to buying simple things like rubber kits for our cars.
The locally made cars are honestly, not that bad, they are tough as nails, but they lack the finishings, parts from boats and very badly made repop parts result in well made cars, just not having that final finish that you guys have. An average guy picks up the phone or pops and order on Ebay, pays via paypal and a few days later, he has the part.
In South Africa............oi vey......Firstly we have to find someone in the US who will agree to let us pay credit card and also ship to our country. We can only deal with shops and not the private seller most of the time as pretty much if we don't, we'd get screwed over. While the parts prices are not bad, we get nailed on shipping, duties and taxes when it lands. My last order for $300 (over $300 and we have to pay a hefty tax on it) cost me $200 to get here. While I admit, I've dealt with some great guys, (Jim and the guys from klasse356), not everyone is willing to do business with our neck of the woods.
I spy with my little eye.............a business opportunity.
A local chap who I got wind of a while ago started making parts, small things at first, but one thing stood out.....the detail. He was doing what other guys couldn't. So we'd been chatting for a while until I cornered him and asked him to sell to the local community.
All our initial kits have been sold and the first run is pretty much gone.
What started with just doing this for our cars has now turned into branching out to lenses, horn assemblies and various other small must haves. Thanks to FB I made my first sale to a bloke in the US and we even dropped the price as he was the first. Because we're not set up to do sales overseas, we agreed to a barter, he sends me a part that I need and I send him a stack of rubbers. He covers shipping and I do it my side. We get nailed with paypal over with tax, so I guess that the barter system will work out well (until we have everything that we need....lol.)
So here's what we're doing. Horn grill base rubber, teardrop rubber, door handle rubbers, (big and small), hood rubber for handle, (small and big), rear mirror rubber. We're looking at branching out, but at first we're doing the rubbers that are almost always crap on cars that we see, or worse yet, missing.
We've also started work on front horn grills done two ways, laser cut and then also casting......we're still a bit away from the casting, but it's looking promising.
Lens wise, we're made a set of front indicator lights and will also be looking at making rear lights for teardrops, US spec and EURO.
So if anyone stateside is looking at some good quality replacement rubbers for a trade for some various small parts, lemme know.
