Vendor Pricing

[Zef_66]

what's the problem with that? the goodridge lines sell all day long for 100 or more for the set, so they're competitive no doubt. every place you buy things has markup. some items have more markup than others, i'd even venture to say that some of the stuff zzp has, they may not break even on. this is no different from any other commercial vendor pretty much anywhere.

No, don't get me wrong, I agree that businesses have to raise their price over what they paid to make a profit. I understand that. But the problem I have is the attitude about the "price gouging". ZZP often comes off on other boards like they are selling things at rock bottom prices and not making a dime. They will "claim poverty" in hopes of making the buyers feel bad for them and accept their inflated prices. Sure, they may sell some of their custom parts at little to no markup (but I highly doubt it), but they make loads of money on the common parts that people can find cheaper elsewhere (SS lines, struts, gaskets, tranny fluid, etc). But people think that ZZP is selling these things to help them out and they know grand prixs, so they won't rip me off. Yes, they will rip you off, and they do it every day. Maybe "rip off" isn't the correct term. But they seriously inflate prices, and people that trust ZZP to be fair sadly pay those prices.

Just my $.02 on it. Sorry to take this thread off track...

[Toasty]

No, don't get me wrong, I agree that businesses have to raise their price over what they paid to make a profit. I understand that. But the problem I have is the attitude about the "price gouging". ZZP often comes off on other boards like they are selling things at rock bottom prices and not making a dime. They will "claim poverty" in hopes of making the buyers feel bad for them and accept their inflated prices. Sure, they may sell some of their custom parts at little to no markup (but I highly doubt it), but they make loads of money on the common parts that people can find cheaper elsewhere (SS lines, struts, gaskets, tranny fluid, etc). But people think that ZZP is selling these things to help them out and they know grand prixs, so they won't rip me off. Yes, they will rip you off, and they do it every day. Maybe "rip off" isn't the correct term. But they seriously inflate prices, and people that trust ZZP to be fair sadly pay those prices.

Just my $.02 on it. Sorry to take this thread off track...

The market helps determine what any vendor, including ZZP can sell their products for. If people werent buying the parts, the vendor is going to cut prices, or cut products, or go out of business. that's just the nature of the beast, and you're kidding yourself if you think that any major vendor isnt this way. but like you said, is off topic, so let's let it rest, and back to the brake lines....

has anyone gotten either set yet?

[Zef_66]

The market helps determine what any vendor, including ZZP can sell their products for. If people werent buying the parts, the vendor is going to cut prices, or cut products, or go out of business. that's just the nature of the beast, and you're kidding yourself if you think that any major vendor isnt this way. but like you said, is off topic, so let's let it rest, and back to the brake lines....

has anyone gotten either set yet?

Okay, we can let it go.

But all this has me thinking. My brother has an older Suzuki motorcycle and he went to a local place to get SS brake lines made up. I wonder what they charged. I should look into it and see about getting some sets made up. I am thinking they were pretty cheap. Anyway, something to look into.

[Toasty]

Okay, we can let it go.

But all this has me thinking. My brother has an older Suzuki motorcycle and he went to a local place to get SS brake lines made up. I wonder what they charged. I should look into it and see about getting some sets made up. I am thinking they were pretty cheap. Anyway, something to look into.

well, get workin on that, duuude!

[Zooomer]

No, don't get me wrong, I agree that businesses have to raise their price over what they paid to make a profit. I understand that. But the problem I have is the attitude about the "price gouging". ZZP often comes off on other boards like they are selling things at rock bottom prices and not making a dime. They will "claim poverty" in hopes of making the buyers feel bad for them and accept their inflated prices. Sure, they may sell some of their custom parts at little to no markup (but I highly doubt it), but they make loads of money on the common parts that people can find cheaper elsewhere (SS lines, struts, gaskets, tranny fluid, etc). But people think that ZZP is selling these things to help them out and they know grand prixs, so they won't rip me off. Yes, they will rip you off, and they do it every day. Maybe "rip off" isn't the correct term. But they seriously inflate prices, and people that trust ZZP to be fair sadly pay those prices.

Just my $.02 on it. Sorry to take this thread off track...

Anything can usually be purchased cheaper if you shop and shop. The point of ZZP is that it's taylored to our cars and it's a one stop shop. You know that what you buy will work and it's easy to find things. We charge less than the dealer, less than other 3800 vendors and give out advice on the use of products. I fail to see how this is price gouging. Look at the stainless brake lines. They are a custom part. You can't buy "longer than stock" stainless lines unless you shop around. We're cheaper than most places like PFYC on the lines and I posted a 30% off coupon here for you guys.

Take the trans fluid you posted as an example. 1st off, it's not sold anywhere but GM dealerships. You won't find it at Advance or Napa. Then when you do call a dealer, not many stock it. you have to call or drive around. When you do go to pick it up will they tell you how much your trans takes? How about if you are installing a shift kit? What if you have a 245 or 258mm converter? Will they tell you the difference between Dex 6 and 3? do they know?
All of these things come into play with the products we sell. That's what distinguishes us from Summit or Jeggs. Our parts are specific and so is the information and tech support. Hell, we have an entire article written just on that transmission fluid. How many places that sell it have written an article? I wrote it personally after much R&D and testing. I can even give you HP loss numbers based on the transmission fluids temperature. So how much is that worth? Is your time worthless? Would you go to work for free at your job? ZZP is my job. Don't you think we deserve to make an extra 50 cents on a gallon of trans fluid to compensate for the R&D and tech articles or are you a person that shops our site for the information and then drives around to save $2 on products so we don't 'rip you off'? If that's the case I would ask that you stop ripping us off by gleaning our information for free. At least contribute by sending us tech articles to post, buying our stuff or sending a donation...

Edit for another thought...About 1/2 of the parts on ZZP are designed, developed by ZZP and custom for your car. How can you even put a baseline price on something that doesn't exist? What do you think funds the development of these products? Looking at your mod list, you're running 1.84 rockers. Guess what? ZZP developed those. Someone had to pay for the wages of a person taking the time to test rocker ratios and find out the highest you can safely run without valve float on stock springs. So you are reaping the benefit of the so called "price gouging" by ZZP. I'm sorry for going on and on but as the owner I've poured blood, sweat and tears into this company and re-invested our profits into developing parts to help the comunity. i would hope that ZZP could have enough appreciation that we don't have to be the brunt of baseless attacks for selling merchandise at a profit.

[Reptile]

Take the trans fluid you posted as an example. 1st off, it's not sold anywhere but GM dealerships. You won't find it at Advance or Napa.

Not true...Dextron 3 is no longer produced, so Dextron 6 is starting to show up on shelves everywhere once surplus supplies are depleted.

Then when you do call a dealer, not many stock it. you have to call or drive around.

Also not true. Every GM dealership will stock a good supply for their transmission rebuilding. The only reason for them not to have it would be a shortage by the supplier through GM, which does happen on occasion. Simply for the fact that GM does not make any of their chemicals. They are contracted out by a certain company for a given time. If they do not renegotiate said contract, and it expires then it can lead to a shortage of that certain product or line of products. This happens quite often surprisingly, but fortunate for everyone things get worked out in a timely manner.

When you do go to pick it up will they tell you how much your trans takes?
Will they tell you the difference between Dex 6 and 3?

Yes, and every dealership has the means to look up the information. If they say that they don't, then either they are inexperienced at their job, or they are lying. I get calls like this every single day, not to mention PM's, email etc. I've done this line of work for 10 years, so I do know what I'm talking about.

How about if you are installing a shift kit? What if you have a 245 or 258mm converter? do they know?

One point that our vendors have up on dealerships. This they will not know, since it's not OEM, it's not a concern to them once you start modifying. Specifically for the reason that GM does not want to be held liable for any false information in modification of anything in the drivetrain. And dealerships CAN be held accountable for such things, hence the reason they won't usually install things as a "favor", unless you know someone very well at a dealership.

Ain't competition great?

[Rocket468]

I just see it as if you don't like the price don't buy and go elsewhere. No need to complain about the price. You can always find a cheaper place but you get what you pay for in the long run. If you got a question you can call and someone answers the phone thats familiar with whats going on.

Custom parts don't just fly together. R&D is expensive and so is time. I usta do everything myself. Then i started looking at i can make 50hr if i work. So if it takes me 2hr to drive somewhere b.s. with them on a 100 dollar part to save 20 dollars I should have just spend my time else where.

[archemedes]

I add $4 to my UPS stuff usually as I don't have daily pickup and they charge me that for doing a scheduled pickup

[Trannyman95]

Yeah daily pickup is definately a better rate and I dont use that either. Some weeks I dont sell much, sometimes I ship things out every day but its not enough to justify them stopping by, and they also stop by around 3 PM which doesn not help me in the least. I am only about 2-3 minutes from the local UPS terminal and they are open until 8 PM so if I have an order at 7:30 PM it goes out the same day as long as parts are in stock, otherwise it goes out the following day but I like the convinience of dropping off my own parts and wait until late in the day to help people out in case I can ship something out after my daily pickup would have been here.

[archemedes]

takes me an hour to get to the drop off point (so about $5 in gas I guess)

[David99GTP]

takes me an hour to get to the drop off point (so about $5 in gas I guess)

Just wait a few months and it'll be 10 bucks in gas.

[archemedes]

don't remind me, that's why the $4 seems like a deal (and they don't get here until 5 at the earliest anyway)

[Zooomer]

On the Dex 6, you cannot compare Valvoline to GM. Even if it's the same product (which it's not) the cost is different. That's like saying Meijer price gouges on Cheerios because you can buy Spartan brand at another store for less. You have to compare apples to apples. $4.50/quart is .50 cents cheaper than ZZP is on Dex 6. I don't know if you're getting a deal at your dealer but I'm not sure most people do. At the time ZZP started carrying DEx 6, we were the first vendor to do so and most hadn't even heard of it.

In running a business we do charge as much as we can for products. This takes into account lost sales if the price is too high and what other vendors charge. It would be stupid to undercut competition by a huge margin just for the sake of being able to. That's a fast track to going out of business. Speaking of which, Thrasher, RAT, DHP, MDPP, Modbug and many others have gone out of business. I don't think this market is a gravy train so the notion that anyone is getting rich isn't justified. If there was money here to make 'price gouging' mark ups, there would be more people involved instead of companies like SLP dropping this platform.

A business such as ours cannot survive buying at $60 and selling at $72. We'd be out of business overnight doing this. It's very ignorant to assume it could be done. The cost of a building, insurance, charge backs, payroll, problems, etc could not be met with markups like this. To a guy sitting at home with a normal job thinking about a free $12, it sounds fine. But when you're actually running an operation you quickly find out it can't be done. I had a meeting with some business associates a couple months ago discussing successful business models. All of us concluded that the cost of the product cannot be the most expensive part of your business or you will fail. In fact with some of the businesses advertising was more costly than the product.

Sometimes politics and business strategy come into play. Take brake lines as an example. If a person comes into our market to sell a product, it's a threat. We may offer a product at a low price without cost consideration simply to maintain our status as the #1 vendor. Sometimes it's more important to be the only one selling stuff than to make a profit. This is especially true on a forum like this where only a few dozen people are exposed to the coupon code and it doesn't remove value from the product.

[GR8racingfool]

This may very state to state, but I know in Kansas, the R&D (research and development) that a business spends outright to expand the over all growth of the business and product line can be added as a business expense, and deducted off your yearly tax's.

Many here take advantage of this, and spend money on a known useless product, research in testing, fabrication or engineering only to write it off as a expense if they choose to or want to.

Vendors can charge what they want, because its their business and they can. They can keep the prices of retail with in the playing field of their competitors, and once and a while have sales, if they are offered a discount from their supplier.

Example, I used to work at a bicycle shop for 8 years, 3.5 of those years managing my own store before I left for a higher paying job with benefits. Bicycle inner tubes, these would cost us $0.15 to $0.50 each when we bought a box of 50 at a time. We would sell them for $3.99 each as the retail price. Still with other bike shops in the area according to price. Those 50 would last us a month maybe in the winter time. Come summer time, we would be buying around 1000 tubes a month, and still cutting it close between orders. Thats cost, vs. retail.

But in our market, 95% of the items on the vendors web sites are made in house, and not just merely ordered from a suppliers catalog for resell.

If you don't like the prices...either buy it yourself out right, or make it yourself. Thats what I do anyway. Just because it costs what it does, doesn't mean its worth it on many things.

~F~

[Zooomer]

True, any business expense (including R&D) is written off. You only pay tax on end of year profits.

Speaking of R&D and someones notion that R&D cost should only factor into a product that you're selling. What do you do when the product fails or never makes it to market? You certainly aren't paying for $10,000 of R&D with $12 markups on brake lines. We have dozens of failed or never released or unprofitable products. The money for these needs to come from somewhere. Usually it's made up with the outrageous markups (like tire inner tubes) we have on products where we purchased a vendors inventory when they went out of business or found a one time closeout on something no longer produced.
In the end it has to average out to a profit. During the months of November, Dec, and Jan, ZZP loses money. I have to borrow around 100k to keep the business going and make up for it during the profitable months. This is why you see woot sales and such on ours and other vendors web sites. At some point, we need capital to make payroll and keep bills paid. But this is also a risk. What happens if we come out with a differential that gernades and people stop buying from us? I'm left with 100k of personal debt I can't pay back. In that case, I would have been better off working for someone else w/o this type of risk. Taking that risk though means that I deserve the potential of reward someday. That is the only reason I take it.

[Reptile]

On the Dex 6, you cannot compare Valvoline to GM. Even if it's the same product (which it's not) the cost is different. That's like saying Meijer price gouges on Cheerios because you can buy Spartan brand at another store for less. You have to compare apples to apples. $4.50/quart is .50 cents cheaper than ZZP is on Dex 6. I don't know if you're getting a deal at your dealer but I'm not sure most people do. At the time ZZP started carrying DEx 6, we were the first vendor to do so and most hadn't even heard of it.

OK, allow me to correct you on something here. If it says Dextron 6, then it IS Dexron 6. That name is a registered trademark, and therefore they have to sell the same formula under that name so that they can say that it was approved by General Motors. And even then, the "knock off" formulations that other companies like AMSOIL, Chevron, and yes even Penzoil MUST meet or exceed the API requirements. Either way, you're not going to get a crappy product from any of the big petro companies.

Reference here

Currently, most ATF formulation and testing costs are borne by the additive manufacturers, who qualify a particular additive package in a specific base stock -- a so-called "original" formulation. Lube manufacturers then must buy those specific qualified ingredients to make their ATF, and must pay to test their "reblend" of this identical formulation. One lube company owner estimated that a reblend test regimen costs approximately $30,000, and an additive company representative indicated that the "original" test costs can be two to three times that.

This essentially states, that companies who wish to manufacture their version of Dex 6 must first buy the formula, and keep the formulation within + or - a certain requirement.

[Zooomer]

I understand that the fluid may be the exact same but that's not the topic here. The topic was that ZZP is price gouging. If we sell a product branded GM, then it costs us more than if it's labeled Valvoline even if it's the same product. By your logic, we could sell at a loss and still be price gouging.

[Rocketman69]

ZZP is price gouging.

LOLZ!!

[Abrasive]

I hate to say this, but price is dependant on what a customer is willing to pay. Prices are, and always will be, consumer driven. I work in the glass industry, which is really two businesses in one. You've got flat glass and auto glass. The mark-up on flat glass would probably absolutely mortify most of you. It's huge. Auto glass on the other hand is low profit, but that is mainly due to insurance companies dictating their own pricing. Even with flat glass mark-up high, I am right in line with my competitors.

Prices are consumer driven, if people aren't buying, then prices drop. If they are, then they stay the same or even go higher if demand is higher. Considering what the mark-up is in my business is, I think that 50% or less mark-up on a set of stainless lines is still not that much. Of course I'm comapring glass to stainless lines which in no way is related, I'm just taking into consideration the average mark-up on things that are sold in my business.

[Reptile]

I understand that the fluid may be the exact same but that's not the topic here. The topic was that ZZP is price gouging. If we sell a product branded GM, then it costs us more than if it's labeled Valvoline even if it's the same product. By your logic, we could sell at a loss and still be price gouging.

Hey, I'm just responding to what you said about the formulations not being the same. I never once concerned myself with what you price your ATF at, but when SyntheticShield states that you can get a different brand cheaper, and you respond basically by saying it's not as good....then it's false. And people can get the same product locally and not pay shipping on it, I don't think it's fair to assume they get a deal on that. But in the same turn to be fair, GM prices the certain things that they purchase from other companies to make huge profits.

For example: they could buy your stainless lines for say....$80, and turn around to sell them at $140. And oddly enough, people buy them.

I continually buy ZZP products, so don't think I'm hating. I love the (cheaper priced ) pulley system, I have the snout turn-down tool, Your Stainless lines etc. You do good work, but I'm also on the lookout for the next best deal....just like everyone else is. I'm still a consumer, and I go where my money is best spent.

I guess now I'll bow out, since I appear to be off topic.