Aggressive Skate Blog

This is probably one of the most asked questions we get when a product is out of stock. There are a lot of reasons why a product might not be available and I have got to tell you that it is frustrating to us too. I will attempt to explain a little bit of why our industry is different than other sports- it might make it easier to understand why we run out of some products.

First, consider that aggressive skating (for lack of a better term) is a very young sport. Compared to baseball, football, hockey and other mainstream sports we are barely on the charts. Because this type of skating has only been popular for like 8 years or so, there has not been enough time for really large established companies to evolve. In my opinion, that is a good thing. Smaller companies run by young dedicated skaters are going to be a lot more innovative than huge corporations run by nameless, faceless shareholders.

There is one good thing about those huge corporations run by nameless, faceless shareholders though. They are very organized, and have spent gazillions of dollars on market research and forecasting. This allows them to always have lots of product available all the time. Lets, face it- Spalding is probably not going to run out of baseball bats.

At the other end of the spectrum is the new rolling company. Picture two guys, maybe one-time pro skaters somewhere in the 714 area code, that have a great idea for new anti-rocker wheels. They scrape up every spare penny they can and start a new wheel company. The first month they make a couple hundred wheels. When those wheels run out, they might make more. They might make something else. They might tell all the skate shops they are going to make more wheels so we all place more orders. After a month or so they might not have enough money or maybe they just change their minds and make t-shirts instead.

Everyday we are faced with a load of new problems like this. Sometimes it is incredibly frustrating- there are numerous times when we get incorrect ship dates three or four times in a row and when the product finally arrives the order is wrong and we were sent the wrong sizes or colors. This happens all the time. It really makes it almost impossible to provide accurate information to our customers. There have been a lot of products that we sell a few hundred of, only to find out 3 months later that the company just decided not make the product at all! The guy in charge of purchasing has been known to throw perfectly good phones against walls resulting in thousands of little phone pieces on the floor.

Here is the way we look at it. We feel fortunate to be part of such an exciting new industry. Yeah, sure there are a lot of headaches. But look at we get to do- we sell skates! What a great job, we actually work in the sport that we love. It is worth it a thousand times over. None of us want to be working at a desk in some bank or working in a factory or a driving a truck. We want to do what we do, sell skates.

So, the good side of this is that we have a steady stream of young new innovative companies producing cutting edge products. These companies are constantly pushing the limit. New skates and parts are coming out so fast that the skates from two years ago look like Toys-R-Us specials compared to what you can buy today. Think about the last time a major breakthrough happened in baseball bats? No comparison.

If you love skating, then you learn to deal with the reality that it is hard to get certain products. You just gotta deal with it. If the part you want is not available, pick something else. Then go skate and forget about it.

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 9th, 2006 at 7:17 am and is filed under skating, Roller Warehouse News, aggressive, rollerblade. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. You can comment below, or link to this permanent URL from your own site. Your comments will appear immediately, but I reserve the right to delete innapropriate comments.