12/4/17 Rambler Notice

[John Hawrylak]

Saw this on the Ocean Air Rambler website:

Update 12/4/17 - Ramblers are on hold for a bit while we sort out how these will continue to be produced

Any more details available?? 

John Hawrylak

Woodstown NJ

[Robert Perks]

John,

It comes down to making the cash flow and pricing work.  I really do want to keep getting people an the Ramblers, but any hitches in the process, with embarrassingly thin margins and they become a charity project.  So I have to figure something out, possibly move to a bolt on brake and some other changes to control cost on my end, or have a significant price bump on the customer end.

This last batch ran long in delivery to me, which cascaded in to a challenge with paint.  To make it all work with minimum risk, the customers are getting $450 wet paint jobs on what I had budgeted $150 for.  On the plus side I was able to work with a known vendor and reduce the risk of loosing a frame(s).  Back in the big run of Ramblers from Zen I had a powder coating firm actually destroy multiple bikes, and fought to no avail with them, as they considered it a cost of doing business, my cost.  Lessons learned the hard way then, so I spend on working with known vendors now.  But a $300 bump in our direct costs combined with our overhead persisting while wrapping up the project did us no favors.

We will persist, but in the next year I need to focus on the projects that move in a timely way, and have some margin.  Tough choices, but they have to be made. In that time I am thankful the continued support of our fans and customers.

Best

Rob 

Ocean Air Cycles

[Hugh Smitham]

Rob dude your the best. I feel ya on tight margins and hyper number of choices.

~Hugh

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Ocean Air Cycles" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to ocean-air-cycles+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.