Leaderboard

Prosharp has released Zuperior and Quad profiles for smaller sizes. I'll reach out to them and see if I can get those in.

I can send you a pair. You need the blue and red?

Don't know which was better, the win or the ejection - congrats! Chris, I think you were on a "weight reduction plan" a while ago. Don't know if it was that or some other influences, but your moves seem so much more fluid of late - keep up the great work!

Maybe they view eyelets like laces, replaceable. It doesn't sound like they save a lot per skate. If you factory in all skates across all lines. Its probably a decent chunk of change for them.

Vet88, CCM has some real smart guys working on their skate lines. I can't imagine it's a cost or a weight issue using these thin weak eyelets that react to sweat and break down so quickly. To me - the only logical explanation is planned obsolescence. If the eyelets fail after a couple of years (normal user) - great, you need to go out and buy a new pair of the current line of skates. Seems those that sweat more than average get caught in the crossfire - having to replace the eyelets or skates before a single season's use. What's your take on why CCM sticks with these inferior eyelets on their otherwise great top of the line skates? colins

You would obviously know more than the average beer leaguer when it comes to wholesale costs and being able to make an educated guess as to what it costs true to produce a pair of skates. In the case of my skates, I have no idea how True could have even broke even on my order. I would assume that you know what the exact wholesale costs are for their skates, but I’m sure True wouldn’t want that made public. I’m going to do some rudimentary math to see what their potential costs were for my order. In my case, I paid $839 US (plus tax) on my boot-only order. From my understanding from what I’ve gathered from people I’ve know who’ve worked at an LHS, most products are keystone so even if I round up and say that they wholesale for $450, I would assume that True would keystone to the retailer and their production costs is $225. Under this assumption, before shipping and what not, True would break even when they build a customer a second pair but when you factor in all the shipping costs for the old pair to be return, the new ones being sent and then sent back and returned, along with footbed requests, unless they’ve figured out how to make a pair skates for like $20, they’ve had to have taken a bath. Sent initial pair via FedEx Ground to retailer – Manitoba to Texas - $20 Pair returned to via FedEx International 2 day – Alabama to Manitoba - $50 Replacement pair sent FedEx Ground to retailer – Manitoba to Texas - $20 Additional footbeds sent via FedEx Ground – Manitoba to Alabama - $15 Replacement pair sent back to True for modifications via FedEx Int. 2 Day – Alabama to Manitoba - $50 Skates returned after their tweaking via FedEx Int. 2 day – Manitoba to Alabama - $50 So based on my conservative estimates, True spent over $200 on just shipping costs for my order. It may make sense for True to farm out some of their customer service functions for the US market to their parent company’s HQ in Memphis or somewhere else that they have facilities. It would save them tons of time and money by not having to paying international shipping and dealing with customs for things like customers requesting additional footbeds or replacement tongues, etc. It may make sense for them to freight their retail orders once a week or in some other scheduled interval to Memphis and then shipping them out of there since, depending on their volume, should save money by eliminating a lot of international shipping. But these decisions are for people that are way smarter than me. I fully understand that they’re getting commercial rates which are far better than if I went to FedEx and paid for the same service but if I was True’s accountant or their parent company’s accountant, I’d have a stroke every time I received the monthly bill from FedEx. I think a lot of the problems that True are having know is the growing pains of expanding from beyond specialty hockey shops with knowledgeable, experienced employees who’ve been fitting skates for years and into the “big box” hockey shops where the employee knowledge can be hit or miss. I think it is great that there is the demand and enough retailers who want to carry the product which makes it more available to the general public as a year ago, I would have had to have traveled to north of the Mason-Dixon Line to get fitted but now that they’re expanding beyond the West Side Skates of the world so they’re going to run into inexperienced fitters or less-than-ideal scanning environments. Another issue that I don’t think anyone has mentioned is that with the expanding availability of and I assume increase in order volume, that they’ve had to have hired additional people to build the skates and that their inexperience perhaps is also causing issues. I would assume that their long-time employees would be exclusively working on their NHL and other pro orders, so it wouldn’t surprise me one bit that the pairs that I’ve gotten from them along with others on here were made by newer, less-experienced employees. It seems like no one that hasn’t work for True really has any idea how incoming orders are reviewed, how QC checks are made, and so on so it’s anyone’s guess as to how many sets of eyes are reviewing scan info, notes, etc. and comparing them to the finished product. From what I’ve gathered on here and other hockey nerd forums is that they’re having issues with about one in twenty orders so if they keep their problem orders to less than 5% then they should be able to weather the baths that they have to take to make things right for me and the others with less-than-ideal results.