Flyryde Business Update.
12-13-2006, 03:11 PM
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I had 3 months with about a weeks worth of work done for FlyRyde. That was unfortunate, and unavoidable, but thank God its over. The bad part is that all this time thats past has left me dead in the middle of Christmas season, and EVERYONE is strapped for cash in December. That means that other customers who have been patient thus far, are getting impatient, and in quite a few cases I've had to send refunds. As long as I'm making progress I'm fine with refunds. On the issue of the hood, I took every dime you guys sent in, and payed Import Trenz with it. So the money is there, not wrapped up in other projects that are sucking up cash. Its payed for. They were basically backed up until mid November, and I've had two weeks out of the last month that I've been back to business with FlyRyde, and over my 40+ hours a week at the family biz. Too bad the past two weeks have been the first two of December, because otherwise I'd have more time for R&D and wrapping up my current projects. I've been putting in MAD hours to both companies, so that I can get people products, refund others, and still come through with a few gifts for my wife on Christmas.
While it sucked that I had to take a 3 month hiatus with FlyRyde, I did firmly establish myself in our family business, which is paying great. Since its paying great, I'm able to send refunds for projects that have fallen through, I've been able to wrap up pending orders, finish pending new products, and actually pay my bills to boot! That means that as I'm wrapping up my current projects, I'll actually be in the black for the first time ever. I'll be able to put my profits into my pocket, and back into the business, instead of putting them towards refunds, or any personal bills. Basically, FlyRyde is starting to build up finally.
I started all of these projects with Import Trenz over a year ago. They made me a carbon fiber Type R bumper in 2 weeks from the time it showed up from overseas. They made me CF fenders in about a week, and Type S bumpers in FG in about the same time. After that I was sure they were a quick company, and that they could handle everything I threw at em. Next came the CF Cowlings, then the Wide Fenders, then Turby skirts, Type S rear, Shark spoilers, and on and on. They didn't finish any of those, and misplaced more than half of them. They made the same mistake I did in my novice experience level taking peoples money for new parts. Only they were no novice, and ever since I've been in debt to them and the people that funded these projects. I thought everything was cool on the performance side, and started to "recover" from my debt by getting new projects worked out with Hotshot. A year later they never touched the car, I never yelled at them about it in fear they'd not finish the parts I paid for, and promised everyone, and then I was 0 for 2 in failed new products.
Its been a recovery ever since, and only now have I got to a point where I can see the light at the end of the tunnel. I did dumb business, basically because I didn't know any better at the time, and I didn't use contracts or anything that'd hold up in court. Otherwise I'd be trying to get some of this money back through the court system. I even recently had to cough up over 1000 dollars in profits because Hotshot moved, and cut off all vendors, leaving me with 6 customers to pay back when I could no longer purchase from Hotshot to fill the orders. I honestly just had a really rough year, and if it took that to get me in shape for a lifetime of good business, then so be it. Most everything I've done so far, has been completely on my own with no guidance or help to find my way. Granted I've had some killer bad luck, it didn't kill me, so it only makes me a stronger businessman, with experience to fall back on. I wont take money on new projects until my current projects are either finished or everyone is refunded. In the case of the equal length headers I had going through hotshot, once they bailed on me, I was faced with either refunding 5 or 6 people, or purchasing a batch of 60 headers that would probably take 3 years to sell and get my money back on. So I opted to refund.
Probably the best thing for the business right now, is focusing on wrapping up all projects, while at the same time pushing regular mainstream products through the site that earn profits without the production costs of making products of my own. I fully understand that the past year has slowly led to doubting my ability to manage this business, and its most certainly led to a lack of faith from my home base (you guys). While not everything has gone my way, I dont blame anybody but myself for the way everything has worked out. I accept the responsibility of cleaning up any messes I've been a part of, and I also accept all the praise I've recieved on account of finished new products, and pats on the back just for supporting the community. Its been a bitter/sweet year for me, but PACKED solid full of education for a young man in business. I have quite a few nice projects lined up for when I'm ready, but until everyone else is ready for new products to be made, they wont even be started. So to sum it all up, No new projects until the pending products are released and finished up, and I'll be putting effort into getting the site updated, quickened up a bit, and stocked for regular sales with fast shipping. I dont think I could do anything more beneficial to everybody than that! Now here is my overall company update for you guys to take an hour to read, lol:
================================================== =================
Hey everyone. If you take a quick look around my threads here, you'll notice a lack of posting, updates, new products, and most importantly a few sales gone bad. I just wanted to take a moment to touch on the business side of my company for a second. If you've never purchased from FlyRyde this may not be too exciting to read, but for my many patient customers, this just needs its own thread.
I'm glad that my company is growing, and its about time we open the doors to the entire aftermarket industry, but there are a few key moves we have to make before we get there. First off, I'm picking up the pieces from the past 3 months. I'm not sure how many of you got the sob story about my family's business, but I'll keep it short. Basically for the past 48 years, my parents, grand parents, uncles and aunts have all fed their family off the paycheck from our company, Darafeev Furniture. The company was facing some bad times due to lack of updates, lack of recent technology, and namely lack of man power in these much neglected areas of business. Well, in short, I was pulled away from FlyRyde, which is my passion, pride and joy, to sit in an office and work a company back on its feet. Regardless of how successful FlyRyde was doing 3 months ago, I had to basically leave it by itself for a few months. Even if my bills were getting paid, I couldn't leave my entire family in danger of loosing everything just because I had some carpart orders to fill. Thats a harsh reality, and its been eating at me for months now.
I'm happy to say I accomplished my task, somehow restoring balance to my family company, and I have more time, and more money to invest in Flyryde than ever before. That is, I WILL have this excess of money after I've restored balance to FlyRyde and taken care of all my customers who have been waiting on me for the past 3 months. I have had to send out more refund in the this period of time, than in the past 3 years of business. It makes sense that if a part doesn't show up, the customer wants their money back. It also makes sense that to develope new parts, as I love to be able to do for you guys, I have to pay my bills with the manufacturer. No time to put into updates, and no part showing up in the mail turned into refunds very quickly, and all profits from those sales were out the door as well. An profits that went to pay my production costs, were all of the sudden needing to be refunded on paid for goods. This quickly snowballed into a huge mess, which I've been putting every dime to my name into so that I can squash this monster before it grows, or leaves my company's reputation destroyed in its path.
I just want everyone to know that slowly but surely, my customers have been taken care of, one by one. From 40 problems, down to maybe 10, I've cut a huge portion of this stress out of the picture, but I'm not finished yet, and it will continue to take time to do so. I'm working with some new accounts to help raise the profits needed to fill all pending orders, or process refunds, and I've cut my losses with bad accounts that have given me much grief. I've also paid my programmer for the newest installment of FlyRydes website, which will be up very soon. We're shooting for the 1st of January, to relaunch FlyRyde.com. The site will be MUCH faster, the functions will be much more user friendly, and it'll be packed with tons of great content to keep you coming back even if you're not looking to buy a part. Basically, this is what I've been waiting for since I started the business. To any new business, the thought of being in the profits after the first few years of hard work is the dream you chase after through all the struggle and uphill battles. I'm going to be a very happy man come to the time to celebrate, and you'll see the evidence of that in the magazine adds, project build ups, race results, product developement for Hyundais, and our overall customer satisfaction, which I intend to keep our top priority. I'm really looking forward to a new year of great business, and finally getting to have a little bit of fun!
I just wanted to say thank you, to all of the people who have waited on my every move for the past few months, keeping patient with me and the business. If I didn't have such a great customer base, my company would have never got off the ground in the first place, much less push through the first few years of business. So thanks guys, and I wish everyone a Happy Holiday Season!!!
-Chris
While it sucked that I had to take a 3 month hiatus with FlyRyde, I did firmly establish myself in our family business, which is paying great. Since its paying great, I'm able to send refunds for projects that have fallen through, I've been able to wrap up pending orders, finish pending new products, and actually pay my bills to boot! That means that as I'm wrapping up my current projects, I'll actually be in the black for the first time ever. I'll be able to put my profits into my pocket, and back into the business, instead of putting them towards refunds, or any personal bills. Basically, FlyRyde is starting to build up finally.
I started all of these projects with Import Trenz over a year ago. They made me a carbon fiber Type R bumper in 2 weeks from the time it showed up from overseas. They made me CF fenders in about a week, and Type S bumpers in FG in about the same time. After that I was sure they were a quick company, and that they could handle everything I threw at em. Next came the CF Cowlings, then the Wide Fenders, then Turby skirts, Type S rear, Shark spoilers, and on and on. They didn't finish any of those, and misplaced more than half of them. They made the same mistake I did in my novice experience level taking peoples money for new parts. Only they were no novice, and ever since I've been in debt to them and the people that funded these projects. I thought everything was cool on the performance side, and started to "recover" from my debt by getting new projects worked out with Hotshot. A year later they never touched the car, I never yelled at them about it in fear they'd not finish the parts I paid for, and promised everyone, and then I was 0 for 2 in failed new products.
Its been a recovery ever since, and only now have I got to a point where I can see the light at the end of the tunnel. I did dumb business, basically because I didn't know any better at the time, and I didn't use contracts or anything that'd hold up in court. Otherwise I'd be trying to get some of this money back through the court system. I even recently had to cough up over 1000 dollars in profits because Hotshot moved, and cut off all vendors, leaving me with 6 customers to pay back when I could no longer purchase from Hotshot to fill the orders. I honestly just had a really rough year, and if it took that to get me in shape for a lifetime of good business, then so be it. Most everything I've done so far, has been completely on my own with no guidance or help to find my way. Granted I've had some killer bad luck, it didn't kill me, so it only makes me a stronger businessman, with experience to fall back on. I wont take money on new projects until my current projects are either finished or everyone is refunded. In the case of the equal length headers I had going through hotshot, once they bailed on me, I was faced with either refunding 5 or 6 people, or purchasing a batch of 60 headers that would probably take 3 years to sell and get my money back on. So I opted to refund.
Probably the best thing for the business right now, is focusing on wrapping up all projects, while at the same time pushing regular mainstream products through the site that earn profits without the production costs of making products of my own. I fully understand that the past year has slowly led to doubting my ability to manage this business, and its most certainly led to a lack of faith from my home base (you guys). While not everything has gone my way, I dont blame anybody but myself for the way everything has worked out. I accept the responsibility of cleaning up any messes I've been a part of, and I also accept all the praise I've recieved on account of finished new products, and pats on the back just for supporting the community. Its been a bitter/sweet year for me, but PACKED solid full of education for a young man in business. I have quite a few nice projects lined up for when I'm ready, but until everyone else is ready for new products to be made, they wont even be started. So to sum it all up, No new projects until the pending products are released and finished up, and I'll be putting effort into getting the site updated, quickened up a bit, and stocked for regular sales with fast shipping. I dont think I could do anything more beneficial to everybody than that! Now here is my overall company update for you guys to take an hour to read, lol:
================================================== =================
Hey everyone. If you take a quick look around my threads here, you'll notice a lack of posting, updates, new products, and most importantly a few sales gone bad. I just wanted to take a moment to touch on the business side of my company for a second. If you've never purchased from FlyRyde this may not be too exciting to read, but for my many patient customers, this just needs its own thread.
I'm glad that my company is growing, and its about time we open the doors to the entire aftermarket industry, but there are a few key moves we have to make before we get there. First off, I'm picking up the pieces from the past 3 months. I'm not sure how many of you got the sob story about my family's business, but I'll keep it short. Basically for the past 48 years, my parents, grand parents, uncles and aunts have all fed their family off the paycheck from our company, Darafeev Furniture. The company was facing some bad times due to lack of updates, lack of recent technology, and namely lack of man power in these much neglected areas of business. Well, in short, I was pulled away from FlyRyde, which is my passion, pride and joy, to sit in an office and work a company back on its feet. Regardless of how successful FlyRyde was doing 3 months ago, I had to basically leave it by itself for a few months. Even if my bills were getting paid, I couldn't leave my entire family in danger of loosing everything just because I had some carpart orders to fill. Thats a harsh reality, and its been eating at me for months now.
I'm happy to say I accomplished my task, somehow restoring balance to my family company, and I have more time, and more money to invest in Flyryde than ever before. That is, I WILL have this excess of money after I've restored balance to FlyRyde and taken care of all my customers who have been waiting on me for the past 3 months. I have had to send out more refund in the this period of time, than in the past 3 years of business. It makes sense that if a part doesn't show up, the customer wants their money back. It also makes sense that to develope new parts, as I love to be able to do for you guys, I have to pay my bills with the manufacturer. No time to put into updates, and no part showing up in the mail turned into refunds very quickly, and all profits from those sales were out the door as well. An profits that went to pay my production costs, were all of the sudden needing to be refunded on paid for goods. This quickly snowballed into a huge mess, which I've been putting every dime to my name into so that I can squash this monster before it grows, or leaves my company's reputation destroyed in its path.
I just want everyone to know that slowly but surely, my customers have been taken care of, one by one. From 40 problems, down to maybe 10, I've cut a huge portion of this stress out of the picture, but I'm not finished yet, and it will continue to take time to do so. I'm working with some new accounts to help raise the profits needed to fill all pending orders, or process refunds, and I've cut my losses with bad accounts that have given me much grief. I've also paid my programmer for the newest installment of FlyRydes website, which will be up very soon. We're shooting for the 1st of January, to relaunch FlyRyde.com. The site will be MUCH faster, the functions will be much more user friendly, and it'll be packed with tons of great content to keep you coming back even if you're not looking to buy a part. Basically, this is what I've been waiting for since I started the business. To any new business, the thought of being in the profits after the first few years of hard work is the dream you chase after through all the struggle and uphill battles. I'm going to be a very happy man come to the time to celebrate, and you'll see the evidence of that in the magazine adds, project build ups, race results, product developement for Hyundais, and our overall customer satisfaction, which I intend to keep our top priority. I'm really looking forward to a new year of great business, and finally getting to have a little bit of fun!
I just wanted to say thank you, to all of the people who have waited on my every move for the past few months, keeping patient with me and the business. If I didn't have such a great customer base, my company would have never got off the ground in the first place, much less push through the first few years of business. So thanks guys, and I wish everyone a Happy Holiday Season!!!
-Chris
12-13-2006, 03:14 PM
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Good to hear youre getting everything set to move into the new year. Im sure next year will bring more good stuff for Flyryde and hopefully less problems. Also, get back to my PMs when you can. Im hoping to have the VIS problem crossed off your list as well very soon
12-13-2006, 03:58 PM
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Wow, long post Chris. Real informative. I know what its like to run your own business.
Once you get these ends tied up, I suggest you take a vacation for a couple weeks to de-stress.
I hope you have a Happy Holiday Season, but more importantly, a Merry Christmas fing02.gif
Once you get these ends tied up, I suggest you take a vacation for a couple weeks to de-stress.
I hope you have a Happy Holiday Season, but more importantly, a Merry Christmas fing02.gif
12-13-2006, 08:52 PM
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Dude that post was a good way to put things into perspective. You are deffinately a hell of a guy, running all this bussiness and getting stronger through it all. I give you alotta credit because its hard to handle. I agree though man take a vacation becuase youve been working nonstop. None the less have a happy haolidays and a merry christmas!!
12-13-2006, 09:35 PM
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i just finished reading through that and i must say it's good news. I know it must be difficult to work 40+ hours a week and family always first.
I think it's best that nothing new start until the old get resolved. That should have happened sooner but it's good because you're really not stopping dead in your tracks, really you're moving on we're just stopping.
i'd like to see ALL of your customers who have been waiting for over a year to get their things one by one, and you get your profits one by one. it's sort of unfair that the companies take their customers over yours. it's for the best of everyone and we can all move on.
your customers who have not asked for refunds are the strong ones so show them what patience can do!
I think it's best that nothing new start until the old get resolved. That should have happened sooner but it's good because you're really not stopping dead in your tracks, really you're moving on we're just stopping.
i'd like to see ALL of your customers who have been waiting for over a year to get their things one by one, and you get your profits one by one. it's sort of unfair that the companies take their customers over yours. it's for the best of everyone and we can all move on.
your customers who have not asked for refunds are the strong ones so show them what patience can do!
12-13-2006, 10:25 PM
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Glad you posted the update. Even though I haven't ordered from you yet, I most likely will in the future. I was begining to have second thought about you pulling through on all the projects you promised to do. Thanks for posting and letting us know you actually care about your customers, becasue there are many companies out there who could give a damn about a single person. Thanks for sticking around and happy holidays!
12-14-2006, 10:00 AM
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^^^ i cant agree more. i have not purchased from you, and was actually somewhat decided on not doing so in the future. but i must say the way you handle your business is top notch, i also believe that you will handle your quality management issues in a timely manor as well. i am excited to see that your getting your waiting customers taken care of and products shipped. this is how all business should be ran.
i can now proudly say i look forward to bringing some of my business to you in the future.
its people like blacktibs that make me very glad to be in an aftermarket like ours.
get some vacation man and have a happy holidays
i can now proudly say i look forward to bringing some of my business to you in the future.
its people like blacktibs that make me very glad to be in an aftermarket like ours.
get some vacation man and have a happy holidays
12-14-2006, 01:08 PM
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I wish you all the best man, and Do believe in you.
You proved it to me once, you prove it once again.
don't worry, you'll get to ship more stuff to the middle east in the future... hehe.
You proved it to me once, you prove it once again.
don't worry, you'll get to ship more stuff to the middle east in the future... hehe.