I want to start off by saying a big thanks to the mods of this forum and the various vendors out that who have helped to shape and evolve our small industry. We’ve seen an explosion of new vendors and options for those looking to buy parts in the last 2 years, thanks in large to this community, which is in reality, a product of enertion. So thank you @onloop and everyone here who helps to keep this community thriving!
Now, down to the meat of this. So it’s your first or maybe second time buying parts in the community. You likely understand some parts, and are fuzzy about other things. It’s the natural evolvement for most of us who don’t have a history of building RC vehicles. Once you’ve determined what parts you need, you need to decide where you want to get them from.
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The first logical thing to do is to go to a one stop vendor, like DIYElectric or Enertion (except they are getting out of the parts game). You can get everything in one swoop, using getting a decent deal if your buying a kit for example. This is a great way into the industry, especially if you don’t have experience with RC vehicles.
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The other option is to look for specific parts, and design a build around one or more of those parts. You can select a deck for example, and then from that, decide the system (belt or hub). From that, narrow it down to the type of wheels and trucks you want, which may steer you in a direction for a certain type of motor mounts, or a certain type of hub motors.
Up until about a year or so ago, your options have been limited between Enertion, Alien Systems, DIYElectric, and a few local vendors for those in Europe and the US. They all offered parts and kits. Now, we’ve seen an explosion of community members selling parts in this community and others. Things like specific batteries, specific enclosures, custom remotes, ect. the list goes on. These are specific services that big vendors typically don’t offer. This makes the second option above much more possible today than it has been in the past.
Regardless of which option you chose to go down, everyone should understand a few things about this industry and how it works so as you order parts, you know what is possible, and in a lot of cases, normal.
- This industry is always evolving and changing, faster than most of us can keep up on.
- Most of us are normal people, some university students, some working professionals, all are enthusiasts.
- Delays from manufacturers are common, and unavoidable to some degree, whether this be a vendor or a guy making his own ESC and has to order parts to assemble, cut, carve, ect.
- Because of #2, most people you buy parts from in this industry have some sort of day job.
- Because of #1 and #2, people selling parts get busy. This in tern leads to the next point…
- Because of #1, #2, and #3, DELAYS ARE COMMON! If you get parts in under a week, your extremely lucky. Under 2 weeks, pretty lucky. A month, lucky. It could be more than that. Be patient and understanding…
- Because of #1, #2, and #3, and the fact that some sellers get more emails per day than they know what to do with, you might not get any response back or it might take longer than you’d expect to get a response back from a seller.
This is not amazon, this is the status of the electric skateboarding industry right now. Things might get better in the future, especially on the bigger vendor side, but at the end of the day, a guy whose working a day job, making and selling some parts for something that no one else is making, is doing the entire community a favor. We have luxury in the number of options we have because of small people who make parts on the side. It may seem like packing orders and shipping them and order new parts, and maintaining your site and ect. is not that much work, until you count how many tasks it really entails and the amount of time it takes just to ship even one package.
Regardless of you route, please be understanding that lack of communication and longer waiting times than you’d expect are normal. People are not always in it to rip you off (though that doesn’t mean let your guard down). Especially those who are well respected in this community. But complications do occur, and in this industry especially, it’s not uncommon, and should be expected. These people do care about your order, they do want to deliver your product. But 1 of dozens of potential problems can arise that cause some sort of delay or lack of communication. This doesn’t mean they don’t care about you or are trying to scam you.
Creating new threads on here every time you want to know why seller X is not emailing you back or you don’t agree with how seller X dealt with your situation, provides little information, besides informing the community that theres been another person with a problem of how seller X is dealing with their situation.
I believe that this information is useful, while the community as a whole decided that it is not. To help with the situation, I have devised 2 plans.
First, if you would like to know if a vendor has been seen in the community lately, please ask in this thread, so that this type of information request is centralized, and not cluttering up the forum.
Second, I plan to create a website called ratemyesk8vendor.com which will allow users to rate their experience with vendors or or sellers on the forum (similar concept to ratemyprofessor). This will give both buyers and sellers information about a seller, so that buys can make informed decisions, and sellers can learn the areas they need improvement in.
In the end, complaints are ok, just not on this forum. I would encourage everyone to rate their experiences with sellers, both positive and negative, so that we can all have better idea of how sellers are preforming.
More updates to come on the website, and hopefully, it will be ready sometime in the next month or so! Check back for updates!
Thank you community and best of luck luck in your future purchases. It’s a great time to be alive in the Electric Skateboarding Community!
