Damn. It’s too bad too, VO seems like such a good company. They’ve got the right idea but are obviously falling a little short in many aspects. I’d kind of like to forward them this thread so they can see what people are saying and get some decent feed back from them. It could prove to be valuable to them and I’d really like to hear what they have to say too.
Thoughts?
Feel free, I’m going to call them on Monday.
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[quote=rj]Damn. It’s too bad too, VO seems like such a good company. They’ve got the right idea but are obviously falling a little short in many aspects. I’d kind of like to forward them this thread so they can see what people are saying and get some decent feed back from them. It could prove to be valuable to them and I’d really like to hear what they have to say too.
Thoughts?[/quote]
This all follows their business model; I doubt they’d change what they’re doing as they seem rather successful. Cheap products are cheap products for a reason. Velo Orange is no different from Origin-8 (the Gru Cru brakes I mentioned are the same as the Origin-8 brakes, just different branding); some products are just fine, some are total crap. I just wouldnt always expect top-shelf quality from VO. That’s not what they do. Kinda like writing a letter to McDonalds and saying their food could improve a bit.
VO is in the business of making cheap quality knock offs of mostly vintage products that have recently come into fashion again. they are able to get products into production astoundingly quickly, especially those of developing/surging bike trends/fashion. (see: interest in porteur racks/bikes and “constructeur” bikes/components over the last few years and v-o’s product line)
yea, there may be a bit of a chicken-and-egg situation going on in that example, but i think it is very accurate.
as a tangential point, they seem to be really good at sourcing hard-to find parts (not made by them), which i wish they would focus more on rather than flood the market with inferior products at too-high prices relative to the quality.
this is very similar to what h&m does by copying hot fashion trends, with an astoundingly fast turnaround from concept to production of very cheap clothing. at least in europe, i think. i don’t know that much about fashion [industry] so i’m not sure if this is an apt comparison.
just like the fashion industry, there seem to be some very influential tastemakers in the bike-world. (in the bike world, who exactly and what these tastemakers are, i’m not really sure)
tldr you get what you pay for. cheap knockoffs, however shiny and well photographed are still turds.
also: v-o fails at one of the key tenets of a good business- above-and-beyond customer service/ post-sale service.
both their customer service and warranty support is subpar.
How the hell is this a key tenet of good business, especially one that is primarily an online business which usually have pretty slim margins? Fantastic customer service is a key-tenet of a high-margin business with lots of repeat customers and high-value sales.
I’ll readily admit that VO is a small, busy shop with a few employees with somewhat flaky after-sale service, but I wouldn’t really expect it to be any other way.
Disclaimer: A friend works there. Half feel like defending 'em and half don’t because a lot of the criticisms are valid. I’m not sure that sharing these criticisms with them would make a lot of difference. They’re definitely focused on doing something and I’m not sure that it’s pleasing the kind of people that are being critical in this thread (myself included).
are you just being deliberately obtuse? or are you unfamiliar with how good businesses work and how to keep repeat customers?
there are plenty of online bicycle outfits that offer good customer service, heck, in another thread i remember you praising universal.
are you just being deliberately obtuse? or are you unfamiliar with how good businesses work and how to keep repeat customers?[/quote]
Huh? All businesses are not the same. It takes money, time, and other resources to provide good customer service. If this does not fit in your business model, then it doesn’t fit in your business model. Most VO transactions likely require no customer service efforts outside of fulfilling the orders, and their prices and offerings are a result of this. If they budgeted for customer service or bulletproof guarantees the prices of their products would take a hit, and given the customer base they have, they probably decided it was better to keep their current price level and compromise on customer service. Many products they offer, or similar versions, are already available at higher price levels from retailers that spend lots of time with customers going over minute details (Rivendell comes to mind) or manufactures that spend more time in development and testing (Berthoud, custom builders, Honjo, Nitto, TA, etc). They fill a gap by providing products of this style at the price level they do.
How you can provide “above and beyond customer service” when all your customers do is click a few buttons and enter some info? You’re never interacting with anyone, unless they call with questions. VO isn’t a boutique where you are waited on by sharply dressed sales people. It’s a web interface for buying stuff stored in a warehouse, where some dude making $10/hr pulls stuff off a shelf and puts it in a box and slaps a label on (a label that the customer had to enter the information for).
i actually called VO and asked about the honjo 43mm fenders.
how well they fit under the shimano 57mm brakes.
whoever i talked to couldn’t tell me shit.
This, and they’re not very good at it, either. Mostly because they’re very small and have a couple of high school students doing fulfillment. You have to do that kind of stuff a lot and iteratively improve your processes to get really good at that kind of thing. When I think of firms that have extraordinarily well-honed fulfillment processes, I think of Amazon.
Universal is surprisingly good for what they are. I have praised them, not because I’ve ever spoken to a customer service rep there. I think I emailed them once. I use them for most purchases because they have a great website, a good price (with price match), accurate stock, and they ship quickly from the west coast.
FWIW, the only problem that I had with a VO product was the track pedals (screws and dustcap were put in so tightly as to make the hex bolt strip instantly on trying to remove them - and they said that I voided the warranty by attempting to disassemble them), although Wellgo got me replacement parts so whatevs. Everything else I’ve gotten from them (fenders, constructeur front rack, that bag that fell apart for everyone else but has been fine for at least 1K miles for me) has been fine, especially considering the price.
Zappo’s has ridiculously awesome service and it’s a web site. It can be done but it means phone staff, lots of follow up email, lots more functionality in the site, etc.
I bought the Gran Cru long reach brakes and they seem pretty damn solid. Someone else makes 'em though, so we’ll see. Will wait until I get my 'guchi class bike built up and put them on the bike then.
Zappo’s is a couple orders of magnitude larger than VO. They have 1600 employees and an extraordinarily well-defined corporate culture that has honed the organization into what is probably the single best customer service of any e-commerce company. All this against a billion dollars in sales.
Totally bike industry sales in the US from any source are only around $6b.
I laced up two sets of VO PBP rims and hate everything but how they look. Going back to Mavic when these wheels are done for.
VO was started by a “serial entrepreneur” specializing in serving niche markets. Prior to VO he started Chesapeake Light Craft for the build-your-own boat crowd. I have bought from them a number of times and it’s true they are a good source for some hard-to-find parts. However, they are still quite small and, like Rivendell, they absolutely have to focus on customer service to get the loyalty of the quirky nutjobs (like me and others ITT) who shop from them.
IMHO, their pre- and post-sales support are lacking, and their e-commerce engine is funky as hell, sometimes resulting in what appear to be double charges on your card, as they allude to on their customer service page and try to pass off as “normal” (though it only happens when I order through them) and totally dependent on the customer’s bank… which in a nutshell sums up their attitude towards customer service: it’s the customer’s fault if anything is weird.
I’ve had that impression after contacting them via both phone and email. It’s just sort of hassle and always leaves me with a bad taste in my mouth, even if I eventually get what I need taken care of. Whereas ordering from Universal Cycles is, by comparison, totally a joy, as are many of the other online bike businesses with whom I’ve deal (Harris Cyclery, Box Dog Bikes, Peter White Cycles, RIvendell, etc. etc.)
Anyways, I hope they have success, but I definitely try to find what I need elsewhere these days, if I can, just because ordering through them sucks the joy out of buying bike parts, which is a shame since that’s supposed to be one of the highlights of this sport/hobby/addiction, after all.
Having talked a little bit of shit on VO recently, it only seems fair to defend them a little bit…
[tl;dr]
The Santa Cruz Bike Coop is a VO dealer, and when I worked there, we always had reasonably good communication with VO. I corresponded with Tom a couple of times when they accidentally shipped us two JIS headsets instead of French or something like that and he promptly responded and sent us the right products, no questions asked, and let us keep the ones he’d accidentally sent. A few other small interactions we had while I was there left me feeling pretty positive about their customer service, especially compared to some other companies. I guess it’s different for dealers?
Like most of us, I don’t think I’d put most of their house brand parts onto my bikes, but they were a great for the coop. They had a lot of things that appealed to a lot of people who came to our shop. Most of our customers liked their bikes and rode them daily for transportation, but didn’t know much about them and usually hadn’t thought about them much until recently. They didn’t have a lot of money, and until we got a VO dealership, were pretty much stuck with Dimension and various generic crap that any serious rider is going to break in a matter of days.They were willing to spend a bit more to get brakes and racks and fenders other simple parts that were a bit nicer and a lot nicer looking. VO was a perfect option for inexpensive replacement parts for their vintage (old) bikes that looked nice enough and worked nice enough that they could ride them to school and work and around town and feel good about their functional, attractive bikes.
[/tl;dr]
I think we here at Tarck are a much more particular bunch of cyclists than your average college student, through a combination of experience and variously obsessive personalities, and are not the type of cyclists VO serves best.
Well, from the few times I’ve been to the VO site, it doesn’t strike me that the average college student is their target market, Max. Maybe I’m wrong, though.