So I had some time (Jeanie's out of town), and I put together an email to Susie Canvasser. It reads as follows:
Susie-
I'm a 50 y/o small businessman (commercial HVAC/R service- supermarket specialist) from Illinois. I've been a customer of CB for about 15 years.
I've got some suggestions for you, but first I'd like to let you know how much I appreciate CB Performance, and your continuing drive to keep the air-cooled hobby from slipping into oblivion. Your company has continued to push innovation, and is the best thing our little branch of the automotive tree has going for it. You are not merely reselling the same EMPI stuff everybody else is (which is a race to the bottom), but are designing and casting/building your own parts. This, more than anything else, puts you in another class altogether-- a class of a very few.
The world has changed in the last 30 years. In many, many parts of our country (and the world) there are only a handful of air-cooled VWs on the road, and no shops or parts outlets of any kind. You have survived in this shrinking market by remaining relevant, and doubling-down on the air-cooled bet. A niche means that you'll never be huge, but you'll also always have a market (unless you really dork things up).
However...
while you may be the best thing going, you are far from perfect. Purchasing from CB is frustrating for customers who do not live nearby. I'm not the prototypical "tightwad" VW person. I am in the process of building a dry-sump 2276 with twin-plug heads for my replica speedster. I've spent many, many tens of thousands of dollars on this car over the past 10 years. I've also got a '64 panel van with waaaay too much money in it. I've bought more than a few parts from you, but nowhere near as many as I would've liked to.
The reason?
- Your shipping is deplorable
- Your hours are ridiculous
Your order-takers (Daniel and Marianne) are generally friendly and helpful. But then... the customer service often just stops. The order might ship tomorrow afternoon, or it might ship in a week-- it's anybody's guess. Even worse? The "shipping and handling" charges ridiculous-- among the worst I've ever encountered anywhere for anything. A "Black-Box" ignition module, which could easily fit in a USPS flat-rate box and ship anywhere in the country for less than $10 costs $25. I realize that USPS is sometimes unreliable, but even UPS would be $10 for a bulk shipper. I can buy an electronic bit on ebay from CHINA, have it shipped to me for $5, and have it on my doorstep in 4 days.
And the hours? Closed on Saturday/Sunday and Monday? Really? You realize that this is a hobby for most of us, right? Saturday could be your busiest day of the week. And Monday? I know there must be some logic to this-- giving you time to catch up, or something-- but the whole thing kind of throws off a "too-cool-for-school" California vibe to those of us out here in fly-over country. Extending the weekend long par-tay into Monday? Meeting up down at the surf-shack for fish tacos? What?
These two things combined mean I don't order a LOT of stuff that I would like to. Really. While you are the best source for many parts, you are not the only source. I end up buying lots of parts from secondary vendors who answer the phone on Saturday morning or Monday, who charge a reasonable shipping and handling rate, and who actually ship the parts I order in a timely manner. Lot's of times, they are YOUR parts. That's really nuts when you think about it.
I purchase a lot of parts for my business from out-of-state vendors, so I know how it works. Customer service and logistics is very, very important.
Consider Summit Racing. 35 years ago, when I was a kid trying to build a hot Firebird, Summit was a regional catalog vendor (sort of like CB). There are a lot more V8s than VWs in the world, and a much larger potential market-- but specialty car parts remain a niche, no matter what flavor of parts your are trying to move. At some point, Summit decided they wanted to be "America's Speed Shop", and got their act together with their website and shipping.
Nowadays, I can wander down to the computer at 5:00 AM and order a bunch of parts on-line. If they total more than $99, they get shipped free. If it's less than a hundred bucks, it costs $10 or so. Either way, they're on my doorstep the next morning. Every single time.
Know what? I order a lot of stuff I don't really need to get to $100 and free shipping. Think about that for a minute.
Summit has 3 things going for them:
- They make ordering easy. Their website is really easy to navigate. Yours is okay, but it takes a LOT of clicks to get to anything. I'm not asking you to redesign it, just take a look at how other people are doing it, and what people's expectations have become.
- Shipping reflects the actual cost of shipping. I know there are labor expenses in boxing up parts, and that the boxes themselves are not cheap-- but really-- $25 for pretty much anything?
- Orders are filled in a timely manner. It doesn't matter if it's speed week in Daytona, Corvette Gold weekend in Bloomington, or if a meteor just hit Akron-- parts get boxed and shipped out the same (or the next) business day. If they are out of stock on something, they ship what they have, and ship the back-ordered part as soon as it comes in... at no extra cost.
You could do this, and dominate your market. You're already an industry leader (albeit in a shrinking market), but you could become a sole-source vendor for all things VW (and air-cooled) in 5 years. You could become "America's VW Speed-Shop", and it wouldn't take a whole lot. You're most of the way there, and the hard stuff is already in place.
Think about it.
Sincerely,
-- Stan Galat, Precision Mechanical Services
