Sorry your website is really amateurish. Take it offline, hire a professional photographer and get some decent photos of the finished product and hire a web designer to create you a professional, credible website. Then start your marketing/advertising.
I will have photos once my first shipment arrives from the manufacturer. The photos on my website are stand-ins (albeit glorious representations of how poor my Adobe Illustrator skills are) based on design schemas I sent to the manufacturer with my wheel logo superimposed.
I’m not sold on the logo either - if you hate it, let me know as I’m open to suggestions!
I would have spend a couple of thousand dollars to get an actual graphic designer develop a decent looking logo and likewise, have something better than badly photoshopped pictures when my website went live.
You never get a second chance to make a first impression and my first impression is, “I am selling re-badged generic chinese imports” via a very cheesy website. Good luck
Fair enough! It’s tough to build a solid web-presence on a shoe-string budget when you’re bringing a new product to market and doing all of the dev work yourself. I definitely have plans to improve the design once we have a decent sales flow and will have real images of the wheels once the samples arrive from my manufacturer.
you still have not answered the point that you are effectively peddling the same chinese wheels one can find in China: Wheelsfar …
they even offer dt swiss as well … and to be honest you are not even original - tokyo wheels tried their luck on roadie forums and well …didnt end well
Fair enough! It’s tough to build a solid web-presence on a shoe-string budget when you’re bringing a new product to market and doing all of the dev work yourself. I definitely have plans to improve the design once we have a decent sales flow and will have real images of the wheels once the samples arrive from my manufacturer.
Regard it as constructive criticism! People won’t want to part with their hard earned cash when the website is so poorly designed irrespective of the quality of the product, especially when the company and product are new to market.
Mopshiv -
It’s impossible to see a product that has not yet gone into production.
Yes, but you are trying to sell it.
There is reason that people are willing to buy a product that has not yet gone into production.
That reason is reputation and past performance, of which you have neither.
I realize your finances may be tight and you had to pay for the product up front, but if this is what your business plan is relying on due to shaky funding, you may be screwing yourself.
As I said, you never get a second chance to make a first impression and your first impression is completely amateurish. At best your proposition is to offer more variety to what is already out there, you are not introducing a “game changer” that people will give you a second look after seeing your cheesy photoshop images.
I mean seriously, your best bet would be to pull your website down immediately before anyone else sees how bad it looks and then stop digging yourself a deeper hole with this thread. Beg Dan to delete it for you and then get your shit together.
My apologies, I thought I had answered that above.
We are not selling the same wheels that you can find in China. We’re using
- A custom rim shape (extra-wide 25-28mm toroidal) and material (high TG T700 Carbon Fiber)
- A custom spoke build (Sapim CX Ray black on black)
- Custom coloring options
- A build process that ensures universally true wheels
Sorry to hear about Tokyo wheels - let’s hope we can provide a better product and service than they did.
I can tell you that I did design these wheels with the manufacturer
What exactly did you design? Did you create a design, layup schedule, mould, prototyping? Or did you point at click on the options listed on the site?
Why would I trust you and your company to provide a quality product and warrantee when you can’t even invest a small amount in a decent web presence or logo?
Can you business stretch that far for an investment?
Mopshiv -
If you recall, Flo had photo-shopped wheel designs posted long before they had a finished product or design. It seems to have worked pretty well for them.
Your point about the web-store is well taken. I may heed your advice and take it down to rebuild it until I can establish a more high-quality presence.
Thanks for all of the advice - I’m off to bed as it is way too late to still be up and online here in Chicago.
It’s taken as such - thanks for the advice!
When they launched they also had a established history detailing the processes they had gone through to get to the point of finally having a product to sell. You may remember at one stage when near to commercial availability they withdrew and and decided to find a new manufacturing factory as they were not happy with the product that they had received and tested. At that stage they had invested a large sum of money already and subsequently established a quality reputation even before launch.
You haven’t invested in a decent logo…
Good night, some things are best put to bed. Your ‘company’ is one them.
- A custom rim shape (extra-wide 25-28mm toroidal) and material (high TG T700 Carbon Fiber)
By “custom,” do you mean a shape that is unique compared to anything else on the market? If so, I imagine designing, building, and validating molds must have been quite the chore (and expense)! If not, what exactly do you mean by “custom?”
Dude, I’d love for you to succeed in a well-reasoned venture. Unfortunately, you’re coming off as a fast-talking salesman, not a wheel guru, and what you’ve put forth does not inspire confidence. Your website is full of pabulum like “but we take pride in using only the highest-quality components to lovingly craft our wheels,” and I think you’ll agree that that conjures a misleading mental picture of you and your mates toiling away in aprons in an upcycled Chicago warehouse with spools of pre-preg and a bin full of pads from hand-polishing your molds and micrometers and stacks of spokes and truing stands built from Hattori Hanzo steel.
It seems, rather, that the correct mental picture is you opening poorly-scanned PDFs from the “QA supervisor” 7700 miles away, filled with data that couldn’t possibly be fabricated, and forgetting that some people reply “yes” emphatically when they simply don’t understand a question.
Good luck; I mean that, really and truly. I just think you’ll need more of it than you’ve counted on.
Company name change “Dissed”
.
Here is some of your ‘custom’ T700 Sapim spoked wheel. Complete with photo of your factory!
Welcome to the forum Ben. As you can see, 'twitchers can be a harsh lot and expect many things with start up companies. It is good to see an alternative like FLO to the industry, because we all know zipp/hed etc are pricey $$. The thing working against you straight from the get go, is your prices are pretty much like for like with FLO. This is good, BUT, FLO has been well established for a while now and has the runs on the board. They invested a lot of $ on CFD and data to support their claims, kept engaging future possible customers in the start up (which you have begun which is good), have a strong reputation for customer service and warranty etc. Being a start up company, hopefully you will be able to do all this. What you have working for you is that you do sell tri-spokes as well as tubulurs and brand name hubs. Whats going against you, is the internet presence is rather lacking as mentioned, which also includes artificial pics of the wheels and the label ‘dished’ seems to be a bit Microsoft word. In my opinion, I would take the website down, re-invest in a better website which has more presence as well as look to change your logo. Fluff it up a bit. And for all intents and purposes, when it comes to wheels and all things aero, people like to know data. It may be cost prohibitive, but even if you claim wheels are around 9.8seconds off of each other in a 40km, people usually wont touch aero products without knowing at least basic data. 'Twitchers will want gold standard type of testing etc, but even if you can get some generic type of testing done, you will at least cater to the majority of the crowd. Even if the data comes up a touch slower than your 404’s etc, people will still take into account price. I wish you well 
As far as I can tell there are two disruptive forces in the tri-market and you are not one of them.
Tri Rig and Flo - and I’ve bought from both, and I have opinions about how both do their business which makes not difference to them but the point being that in spite of not perhaps agreeing with the way that they work i think in both cases the product is exceptional - the model of Flo’s sales strategy, and communication from Tri Rig - but what both of them have done is bring to market a thoughtful considered product that delivers, a product which they are heavily invested in and one which has built a loyal following.
In both instances I’m amazed in some respects that anyone would go to the lengths that they go to given its so niche, and has to be a headache on so many levels.
I’ve also bought Reynolds wheels and Wilsons (which are open mould - but they have excellent customer service and were a bargain)
On the other hand we have you, who has actually said nothing, offered nothing, is offering no information about work done to date on the development of moulds / designs (did you invest in moulds, invest in design and have someone else fund moulds, if you invested in design did you invest in any CFD analysis?) but you came on here to announce a new business
At the very least it demonstrates a failure to know your audience - there are individuals here that will pick apart a company that has clearly invested heavily in bringing a product to market - see the Ventum thread - how did you think this would go for you.
What you will have done though is alienate far more potential buyers through coming here than had you actually brought a concept and product to market which was needed, that was thoughtful, considered, had a evidenced based offer and one which people could buy in to.
If you hadn’t put your name to it, I’d have put it down to trolling.
What sets you apart from:
https://www.tokyowheel.com/
http://www.bladecarbonwheels.com/
http://zerocx.com/en/
http://carbonality.com/
Speaking of tokyowheel… this thread is eerily familiar:
http://forum.slowtwitch.com/gforum.cgi?do=post_view_flat;post=4974784;page=1;sb=post_latest_reply;so=ASC;mh=25;
Company name change “Dissed”
beats “OISHEO”, as the wheels seem to say.
but hey, OP, you seem to be willing to stand in there and take your lumps. good on ya for that, at least.
- Our wheels cost more than Flo’s for two main reasons
- Ours are made using structural carbon rather than aluminum with carbon fairings. This provides greater durability and, in some cases, a weight reduction.
You have a couple of problems here. Firstly;
this provides greater durability
A lot of folks on here have had their best reliability with wheels like the Hed Jets and Mavic Cosmics and whatnot. My personal experience is that full carbon wheels are less durable.
Also;
a weight reduction
Most of the folks on here who have their priorities in the right order would place that secondary to the benefit of having an aluminium brake track. The problem is, if your design ethos parts ways with current popular thinking on the subject, you are going to struggle.
My initial thought when I read your post and your subsequent replies was that here we have somebody seeing an opportunity to make a few bucks, vs somebody invested in the scene, eg the guys at Flo. That could be my mistake, or it could be that you are coming at this the wrong way. But there is little point trying to find a way to differentiate yourself from the competition, when the competition is getting it right.
I always enjoy the Cool Hand Luke types - staying relentlessly positive while being mauled. Ben Greenfield can be pretty good at that on here as well. They just won’t stay down!