For those of you who missed the indoor meet we discussed going directly to the manufacturer of Clark boards to place an order. If we meet the minimum order Clark will give us the distributor pricing which will work out to about $100 Canadian a board. We need an order of 15 boards to do this. I will give it one month to accumulate that number and at the end of June be prepared to pay via paypal for your board after I work out the exact price with the taxes.

Here are my 2...

T34
PZ IV

I might be on board for two, just have to decide which ones.

Sometimes too many tanks is a problem.

One for sure for me. Maybe 2. Depends on project status at the time of ordering.

+2 here, Panzer 3 & 4!

2 for me please, 1 tiger(its for the elefant) and 1 British...more to follow on that


edit: make that a M26 pershing please.

That's 10 I might add another I think. So 11. with 3 weeks to go. Pretty good! :-)

I have a couple of units on order  with our man in Barrie but he seems very busy with some other projects . I would like to support him  because he has helped our club so much in the past but.......

I too respect all the support Curtis has given us but there seems to be a dramatic change in his business and communication level since the new year. By all means anyone who wants to work with him, no problems. I just found it hard to get any answers as to what he was going to do moving forward and I was presented with this opportunity to work AS A CLUB with Clark directly as opposed to ordering from the U.S. so that is why I put it forward to the club... :-)

Distributor pricing is a $100 a board?  Man Curtis was doing a lot of work for free.

The wholesale margin on this product is horrendous. You also have to remember that in the last 2 years the CDN dollar has lost 18% against the U.S. dollar. This also includes the shipping to get them here. If you remember Freakydude changed his pricing last year back to U.S. dollars because he was getting killed. But yes, Curtis was not making much on these boards. Certainly not worth the crap he was taking from some of his unforgiving customers...

Yes as a marketer that is why I stayed away for them.  Very little profit, and then the threat of the manufacturer selling direct was always a concern.

I would know how I would feel if the same thing transpired for me.  Do all the work, supply the support, and then get cut off at the knees.

Online commerce is killing the "middle man".  Over time it will be interesting to see what transpires.  On some products the middle man supplies an incredible amount of service.  This product being one of them. My fear is not only is the manufacturing going off shore, but now all the retail jobs are going to evaporate as well.  Everyone want's the least expensive option, but this mindset does have an ultimate price, if the economy you live in benefits nothing in the trade.

Generally it seems as if China produces all most everything, and now they are selling direct so western economies just bleed money to them with little upside.  I guess it will all balance out when the Canadian dollar drops so low even Chinese imports will seem expensive.

I know not the place for this discussion.

Yep, unless you are building it yourself there is always the risk of direct. That being said it is always a crap shoot from the manufacturer's perspective too that the distributor who you have placed your faith in will grow the business to make it viable. And that is a huge concern in a niche product like this. You get the initial bang of orders and then it drops down to dribs and drabs with the distributor pushing you for better pricing all the time. And then you have the scenario where the distributor drops your product in place of something new or does a poor job marketing/servicing it and leaves you hung with a bad rep in that market. Look at Clark/ Tankzone in the U.K. very poor decision on his part. If he had went with one of the recommended vendors or someone else probably would have tripled his sales. That being said you never know what goes on behind the scenes...

On China, as an importer/exporter for over 25 years I could talk about trends all day and my fingers would fall off from typing! Suffice is to say we dug our own graves a long time ago on that front...

That's the last I'll say on these subjects here....

So, anymore orders for Clark boards??? LOL!

Of course! I deal in latex...