Back to screwin' you Tuesday

There's not much getting around the fact that our Black Friday deal (our Novemberfest spoke upgrade, plus a stylish and versatile November pint glass) was badly overshadowed by some of the insane deals out there, and the response to it was suitably muted. In an environment where it was easy to find 40% or more off regular prices, our 10% or so effective discount looked paltry. 

Of course, this all goes back to regular pricing. At 40% off, we're close to selling you a set of wheels at zero margin. Even if we want to grow our customer base (which we do), and even if it's a slow time of year when we are operating at less than capacity (it is), the unattractiveness of doing a bunch of work and obligating ourselves to the service that we provide for zero profit should be self-evident. Other brands simply have more margin with which to make these deals, and we don't. There was one brand whose Black Friday deal was within a whisker of precisely our every day deal, and we don't doubt that they got a huge amount of takeup on it.

Plenty of retailers passed along deals that supplier brands had set up. There's tons of evidence of overproduction and excess inventory needing to be cleared out, and almost everything in the world can find a buyer at some price. There are also some products that came out which clearly didn't find their footing as quickly as planned, and those need more dramatic promotion (in the form of deep discount) to either gain traction or, at the very least, clear out and stop gumming up the system. 

We've had plenty of internal discussions about how to respond to these three situations, and what we keep coming back to is responding by not responding. We're not going to raise prices most of the time just to bring them down a few days a year, and there's nothing we can do about other companies blowing out their overproduction or "unsuccessful at full price" products. Our overhead is low, we don't any Sword of Damocles hanging over our head in terms of inventory that must be turned into cash or financing payments due, so we're well positioned to just weather these times and continue to do what we do the rest of the time. 

That said, you'll notice that the previous Novemberfest and Drinksgiving promos are down, and they'll be replaced with free continental domestic shipping (and reduced international shipping) for December. That's a reasonable and responsible level of promo for us, and it benefits consumers no matter what their ideal November wheel set is. Simply use code "Decembership" at checkout and you're good to go. 

The incredible value build we've been teasing, which gets you a set of top quality, hand built, beautiful wheels for barely more than $500, is also days away from launching, and will be eligible for free shipping.