the all aussie dribble thread!

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what is with aus company's it's ****ing easier getting a straight answer out of a politician.......................... and people wonder why i get most of my stuff

over seas at least they don't treat you like a retard .................
 
Michael Kennedy said:
Matt, its great that you have found a way to access GB at dealer prices. And it's great that you have a number of GB bars in stock. All the better for me.
In terms of providing a bit more evidence, you already have an invitation to come and see exactly what we do here in Melbourne.
Click to expand...

If you were only a couple of hours away I'd be there with bells on. It is pretty common knowledge that your Harvester bars are still made in Australia (which doesn't effect me as harvester operators have direct accounts). Nobody would expect your cheaper homeowner bars to be Made In Australia. The question has mainly been focussed on your <44" Ti bars and your Pro Tops so thanks for clearing that up.

I'm actually really pleased you showed up because as mentioned earlier this has been going on or many years, and not just by me. When Stens stopped selling GB in the states the rumours started over there too and that had absolutely nothing to do with me.

On another note I actually imported around $10,000 worth of GB gear from a Stens sale they had on a number of years ago. Still have some of it here.
 
Stihlman441 said:
:confused: Interesting reading on current topic

http://qirui.en.alibaba.com/product/300490097-50228757/guide_bar_pro_bar_chain_saw_guide_bar_chain_guide_bar_garden_tool_parts_3_8_063_10T_.html
Click to expand...

Qirui Tools do not and will not make GB Arbor Series bars. These bars and noses are stock left over from a failed partnership between Tom Beerens and Wang Wei Ming (owner of Qirui Tools). They set up a company and factory together to make consumer bars and for whatever reason they had a falling out. Qirui got left holding the stock and Tom has set up his own factory in China where he has lived for the past 3 years or so. Qirui has been trying to offload these bars for quite some time now.
 
MCW said:
If you were only a couple of hours away I'd be there with bells on. It is pretty common knowledge that your Harvester bars are still made in Australia (which doesn't effect me as harvester operators have direct accounts). Nobody would expect your cheaper homeowner bars to be Made In Australia. The question has mainly been focussed on your <44" Ti bars and your Pro Tops so thanks for clearing that up.

I'm actually really pleased you showed up because as mentioned earlier this has been going on or many years, and not just by me. When Stens stopped selling GB in the states the rumours started over there too and that had absolutely nothing to do with me.

On another note I actually imported around $10,000 worth of GB gear from a Stens sale they had on a number of years ago. Still have some of it here.
Click to expand...

Thanks Matt, it's true in Australia here we are mainly focussed on harvester bars because that's were we can still compete. Also the extra long chainsaw bars, double ended mill bars, all Lucas Mill bars and any other specialist bars are a big part of the Aussie business. In Australia we're not too fussed about competing with the consumer range of bars because it simply isn't economical to do so. However, we do still have a good list of loyal dealers that keep the chainsaw side of it ticking along. As I explained to Gregg and as I will explain again here the cost of producing the Ti bars is quite prohibitive but if people are prepared to pay for the quality and if the margins are still there we will continue to do so. I cannot be any clearer than this - Ti & ProTop bars have never been made anywhere else but Australia.
 
ozflea said:
Maybe it's time to bite the bullet Matt and get yourself a shop front I had the same problem 30 years ago when I was trading from home not only with GB but
with other companies as well then people including me wont be able to accuse you of being a backyarder
Click to expand...

Hey thanks for asking Bob and honestly if I was 100% confident that I could make it work I'd do it but it's not something I'd risk losing my house over. Unfortunately my area is inundated with homeowners and the best homeowner saws are Stihl without a doubt - we have two dealers here. I am getting more and more business in my area but it is all word of mouth. I have also never, ever advertised in my area as I don't want to upset local dealers who have WAY higher overheads than me nor do I want 200 tyrekickers rocking up at my house on weekends. As widowmaker mentioned the costs of running a shopfront business is huge. Way higher than most people realise. Sorry for the waffle below but here it goes.

I'll give you an example from my day job...

I was asked to do some numbers up a few years ago for a government group on almond production costs on a per hectare basis. I spoke to one of my almond clients and tallied up their total input costs including fertiliser, insecticides, herbicides, miticides, and fungicides. Even at unrealistically high margins (around 8% more than we were ACTUALLY charging them) their total input costs came to just under $3500 per hectare. Now the accepted rule of thumb (wrongly) is that you double these costs to get a representative cost per hectare of production.
At the time almonds were paying AUD$4.50/kg of kernel. At an average yield of 3t/ha many people would have thought that this particular property would have been netting around $6500 per hectare.
What was interesting was that the ACTUAL cost of production was $12,400 per hectare which included machinery depreciation, replanting costs, water costs, pumping costs (pump wear and electricity plus government charges), wages, workcover, superannuation, insurances, phone bills, etc etc etc. This list goes on and on - these are costs that very few people take into account. The actual return on investment that they were making was pretty poor yet people assumed they were literally making millions (almonds are likely to hit $11/kg next year so they will be making millions :D).

Now that we are dealing with online sales people assume that the local Stihl/Husqvarna dealer can afford to sell chain for the same price as "Jimbob" on eBay. The only way you can have a shopfront and be successful with online sales is to either be cheap and sell truckloads (Coles and Woolworths style), or offer something that others can't. Stihl and Husky dealers do not have the option of selling online or they lose their dealership. I can do a bit of both because my overheads are basically non existant, I don't have account holders which leads to outstanding debtors, and I don't owe one single cent on the $30,000 odd of stock I hold. My day job is quite flexible and I am also paid very well for what I do. The chainsaw side of the business actually keeps me sane and I really enjoy it but not enough to make it a full time enterprise. If I lived in the city I'd have hung myself by now!

A lot of what I sell on AS and from emails I receive is not far above my cost. With customers in my local area I charge a bit more.
The fact is that not all dealers are on a level playing field and in all honesty they shouldn't be either. I don't give a 2 acre grower the same deal on fertiliser when he buys 200kg as I'd give a 2000 acre grower who buys 150 tonne. I don't expect to get the same deal as somebody who buys a truckload of chainsaw gear every week.
I'm relatively small and I'm happy to keep it that way. My accountant has told me I have two options with my chainsaw business. I either push the hell out of it, or stay the size I am. This is simply for tax reasons.
I earn good money in my day job and also earn a reasonable amount from tree felling every year. Most of my felling is from corporate jobs and I am paid on an hourly basis as a wage. Therefore I can't actually incorporate what I earn from falling through the chainsaw business apart from consumables. I do the odd domestic job now but don't do anything risky anymore - As guys like Neil would know **** can happen and if it happens in the middle of nowhere then it's a lesson learnt. If it happens in somebody's back yard you'll get sued. I've dropped some trees earlier on that I wouldn't even touch now. My aunty asked me to drop a dead gum in their front yard a few years ago. I said no as eucalypts with a dead crown can compress, spring back, and throw dead branches from the crown straight back at you. Anyway she calls one of the local tree knobends who arrives and instead of using his high lift gear he proceeds to scarf it at ground level and drop it. What I said may happen did happen and he had a whole heap of dead branches spring back over his head and smash two of the four stained glass windows on their heritage listed home.
One thing that I have noticed is more and more emails from guys I don't know who have read my posts here and seen my contact details in my footer - they are not AS members. For example I had a guy contact me from an SES (State Emergency Service) crew near Adelaide a few weeks back and ordered a sh*tload of gear. I'm catching him this Sunday as he also wants me to look over a heap of saws he has there. I deal with a number of arborists and also deal with a massive olive orchard who have employees who can't sharpen chains to save themselves. The property manager sends me a bag of 50 odd 3/8"LP 44DL chains every few months to sharpen for them. He also includes a bottle of their olive oil to boot :)

Now the big problem with guys that sell online and plaster sites like eBay and Gumtree etc with the cheapest possible price is that the real dealers with higher overheads can't compete. What this means is that shopfront dealers will stop supporting a certain product line or brand because quite simply they can't make any margin out of it. In the long term this can be detrimental to distributors as they lose overall dealer support and can actually start losing overall sales because of some peanut on eBay selling Carlton chain at (or below!) cost or selling a Tsumura bar just to make $2 profit. This is the main reason that I no longer have pricing in my footer (apart from P&C kits which I import myself) as it can stir up too much **** amongst the dealer network and gets too many people offside.
Stihl have it sorted as a rule (even though some of their Australian pricing is a bit rude) and for those that don't know Husqvarna have just started to follow Stihl's lead and are making their dealers either fully support the brand or get out. You simply cannot have a profitable shopfront business now and do it halfarsed.

Bloody hell I've nearly written an essay :D Most of you have probably gone to sleep halfway through!
 
Michael Kennedy said:
Qirui Tools do not and will not make GB Arbor Series bars. These bars and noses are stock left over from a failed partnership between Tom Beerens and Wang Wei Ming (owner of Qirui Tools). They set up a company and factory together to make consumer bars and for whatever reason they had a falling out. Qirui got left holding the stock and Tom has set up his own factory in China where he has lived for the past 3 years or so. Qirui has been trying to offload these bars for quite some time now.
Click to expand...

You really need to hang around here. You're clearing a shitload of things up!
 
Nope I haven't mate I'm off to cut some fire wood on the weekend all black wattle dirty and hard as hell so I'm going to have a few chains to road test it on
 

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