raganblink

FWIW we have sold about 100 and have yet to have someone come in seeking a warranty except for the one kid who got it stuck in the Zamboni doors. Nothing like FT3P days.

Migrating booking is out, so jury still out on new Vapor if that would have it. I would also guess a hard no that it comes to retail, though.

I think part of it is getting that deeper heel pocket for him. 7.5D APX2 is a lot narrower than a 6.5 FIT3 HL allowing for the foot to properly fit all the way back in the skate. Not saying that isn't what is happening to you, but, in my experience with skates the wider you go you can usually go down in size. And typically people get too long of a skate (even if it is "touching" the front) because they need that width.

Friend just went from APX2 7.5 to 6.5 fit 3 Hyperlites...couldn't tell a difference in stiffness at all, but sure as hell felt more in control & better push offs. Especially if you "aren't that heavy" then I highly doubt the intermediate sizing is going to effect you at all in your skating. The more properly fit skate is going to help more than that. The info you have been giving about lacebite, etc screams to me you're in a skate too long and just not enough volume. Go back to the shop and try 3XPro or HL in 6.5 fit 3 or even 6.0 fit 3, I'm sure it'll be better than you think.. Especially once you bake you'll gain some room in it.

Haha no kidding. You also don't know if they're sized correctly or anything else that may have caused that. I picked up a pair, baked, forgot my socks and had the best skate of my entire life after 1 go around.

I give my rep crap about this every time. "CCM - ALL OUT (of stock)" 🤣

Absolutely nothing. That's why no one blinked when sticks went from $199 to $249 to $299. Or top-end skates being $499 to $599 to $799 to $849 to $899 to $949 to $999. Or helmets going from $69 to $99 to $139 to $199 to $299 to $399... As for becoming a JIT manufacture, the biggest pro is what was mentioned by Leif, you will never have excess stock that needs sold off nor will you have a warehouse storing that or accounts that do not pay their bill, etc. However there is a demand for players going into a store and getting a high-end product that despite however much they want that to go away, most likely never will. I think one solution they could or should get to would be offering one retail top-end skate, in one fit, and making that your offering for a top-end skate. If you need a FIT 3 for instance and you want a top-end boot, go custom. Otherwise buy the $600 skate. For the $1000 skate it only comes in 4-12, half sizes, 1 fit, 1 model. Knowing these companies, I'm presuming that the financial costs outweigh any pros for them to offer this. At the end of the day they are a business and need to profit, and cut as many areas as necessary in order to increase their profit as much as possible. There is a reason you can only buy 4-6 colorways on gloves these days, and they don't make every model pant in royal blue or red, or the forgotten maroon and greens. Just didn't make financial sense to stock those items, so they pushed a lot of teams to go MTO custom ordering.

The margin for custom is worse than stock, but it's a sale with 0 over head (although you do need a high volume to even be able to do customs, but all of your dollars don't need to be in skates). Same with custom goalie; great for retailer but downside is you need to have a big stock in order to get volume in custom. Ideally for the retailer they do not stock any skate above $600, and all high level skates are custom-only. The manufacture probably wouldn't like that though with a massive increase in labor costs.

Opportunity buy. When retailers have a lot of excess inventory they will offer it to retailers at a great discount to encourage us to buy their stock out before the new models arrive.

it's going to be $399 usd

my clearance section would like a word with you. Granted partially because CCM had an opp buy and Bauer did not.. but the fact that there was an opp buy to begin with says something. They had excess stock, Bauer didn't. So they overbought initially.

Unfortunately that list only says a few things about the stick such as grip, flex, model, shaft shape. Rarely does it come with a picture of the curve. Also, once they are no longer on-hand with True they delete it. I just checked and it is not on there.

CCM is over-estimating the demand for $1000 skates I think and the practicality for retailers to bring in all of their lines and stock 3 different fits. 2 lines and 3 fits works for Bauer because they do substantially more volume in skates. 3 lines and 3 fits would probably work for Bauer, too. I don't see many shops carrying all 3 models and fits beyond the largest Pure in an area (and even then, probably only 4-5 cities) and a half dozen independents. Best of luck to them, just seems challenging to me to accomplish. I know we're our rep's biggest dealer and while we'll have all 3 models, we're only bringing in regular and wide fits, and even then a low quantity with us chasing the rest of the way. $1000 skates don't sell daily, unfortunately.

He's looking for the model before this one. This is the S20 pro series.

Nothing new in 2021, possibly 2022 would be it. Go buy the bag from your favorite retailer now!

🍿 y'all gonna be in for a treat next summer if you're in for a new bucket and don't care about dropping as much on your brain as you do for sticks. Except those that won't pay retail for sticks; but you're in a v08 or 4500 anyways.

Does anyone know where I can buy some O1s? Trying to find for a VIP customer and cannot find any. Size large. Thanks!

I mean they couldn't, if you want to talk out of your ass go ahead though. At Bauer World they talked a lot about this - to create the slingshot effect of the stick you have to separate your blade cores. To achieve that you had to physically separate them. Wasn't another way to create the effect without doing that. As for if it works or not? I'll put it this way - We took a radar gun out last week and screwed around with the sticks I had and my buddy had. We used the same p28 curve in 75/77 flex. They were 2S Pro, 2N Pro, MX3, AS1 & Trigger 2. For me I was shooting around 52-57 consistently with those sticks. He was 55-60. In the Nexus ADV my low was 57 and high of 63. He never dropped below 60 and highest was 64 in the ADV Essentially a 5-10% increase on shot speed is what we noticed. Not insignificant in any way. The shaft felt amazing on the bottom hand and definitely felt like I had more control as well. I would recommend to buy it if you can afford it, stats speak for themselves. Minimum 6 yes. Bauer doesn't do that just top-end.

It appears to be that you are unfamiliar with what some companies actually do, do. I sell 6 pack CCM Team custom sticks like crazy. Price point is what people want, most curve options available, its win-win. Talk to your local shop about CCM TEAM custom and they should be able to help. Pretty easy to do, honestly.

And that becomes a problem when there are more guy's in hockey (or any hobby, really) to make a buck rather than trying to make things right for the customer to leave them genuinely happy with their purchase which will ensure less money spent in the future. Don't get me wrong - the goal of running a store is to make money - you're dumb if you don't - but the best way to make your money is to build something over long periods of time and create a well-known, knowledgeable, respected store that takes pride in making sure the customer gets the best thing for the customer, even if it means that customer won't spend as much with you in the future. Instead of the current status quo with a lot of stores in the US - which is let's just try to make as much money as possible every year, even if it means selling product that won't leave the customer satisfied. We have a AAA team which has kids come in from all over the country - these kids are 18-15 - and it is insane at how many of them have ill-fitting skates. I had one in today, he's 17 and has skates that have 2 inches between his toe sweat and the edge of the footbed. I know that's not a sure fire way of finding out the correct length, but, I know you're not supposed to have 2 inches between your toe sweat and the end! Whoever sold him skates didn't give two shits about proper fit. And now his less than 6 month old JetSpeed FT1s are going bad on him because he doesn't fill the skate out correctly and is causing a crease because of it.

That's funny, I had the opposite experience. Half of the Easton bags we sold ended up ripping out. The reason they sold so well I don't think had to do anything with how good they were, but rather that they offered good sized and cheap youth bags. Plus when I am at my max with Bauer, CCM doesn't have great offerings for bags and neither did Warrior, AND I had to get my dollars up with Easton, it made sense why a lot of dealers went with Easton bags to stock. I remember the last booking we had with them was literally for 70 youth bags, a dozen stick bags and some regular bags simply so I could add 4 more pairs of Bauer skates into my order. They're definitely an improvement on what they had before the buyout, however, I don't think you'll see similar numbers in terms of sales due to people still wanting to put their Bauer dollars into other products (skates, helmets, sticks, protective, etc etc).

But how many players are there that are 30 years old or older, and how many need new skates every season? The market is changing a little bit right now, with more and more players giving CCM a chance, especially since they have a money back guarantee right now on their new Tacks line, but, skates are still dominated by Bauer. For us its still 70% Bauer, 30% CCM. A little better from a couple years ago when it was 80-85% Bauer, 2-3% Graf and 10-15% CCM. I say give it another 2 or 3 years and we'll start seeing some 50-50 sales for the average skater, but until then Bauer is still king with skates. As for the Graf skate stuff - its delaying the inevitable I think. They're going to die. With lower and lower margins, and retailers not wanting to dive into large stocks of skates due to so much turnover and clearance product out there, its not the most incentive business. Vaughn if the move is to improve their goalie skate sales, I don't know how much this will help. It will I think but is the investment worth it? Goalie skates are a niche market since how many goalies are there to skaters? And a lot of goalies also have a pair of ice skates, so the sales are probably 1 goalie skate to 15-20 player skates. There currently isn't a company out there I think that can compete with Bauer and CCM in the overall department, especially skates. Warrior, STX, True, Vaughn, Eagle, Sher-wood, Graf, Brian's, Winnwell, Montreal, Tackla, etc etc etc etc all have their niche. Bauer and CCM are so great overall. Warrior, Sher-wood, True, STX are probably best known for their sticks. Eagle gloves, Tackla pants, Graf skates (although not popular skates), Vaughn and Brian's goalie, Winnwell and Montreal ???, There are so many companies out there and some definitely have the capital to get a start in the skate department to try to become an overall brand in the hockey game, however none of them have the shelf appeal to become an actual important factor in skates. I know a lot of retailers would just prefer if they all died and it left CCM and Bauer standing. I try to give options to customers, for instance I have True, STX, Sher-wood, and Warrior composites in this year in addition to CCM and Bauer, however unless the margins are there for us and are better than what Bauer is offering, I'd rather sink that money into Bauer product since I know its going to sell and its going to sell quickly. And for the companies who aren't going to make it worth the while for us, I'll still get some but the quantity isn't going to be much. The only way I can see Graf (or whatever becomes out of this stuff) to succeed on the market is ditching the name and do a Vaughn powered by Graf (for goalie - maybe get True/STX/Warrior on board for player skates?) but make it the most valuable skate on the market at the price. Example - for $70 PP have it comparable to Bauer's $100 PP. have the $150 PP be the market's standard for a $200 PP (with removable steel, etc), have the $200 like the $300, $300 like $400, then maybe have a $500 skate worth a $600-700 skate, and have a skate retailing at $850 that's just as nice if not nicer than the top-end on the market. THEN, to make it worthwhile for the retailers, give them amazing margins. Better than anything out there on the market. That is the only way I can see a new skate company being successful - higher quality products and lower than industry standard wholesale prices.

The Vector series of skates are SMUs for SFS and another buying group dealers. CCM offered some amazing products at great price points for the consumers, so if a store is apart of this I would be surprised if they didn't purchase them. We've been overjoyed with these SMU skates. The Vector Plus & Pro are insane quality for the price.

G3035 is the widest heel and instep IMO of the G series from Graf. The padding in the G5035 - 9035 is a lot more substantial and therefore takes up a little more volume. From experience selling these skates, they are very similar in nexus instep depth, however a little wider in the heel and narrower in the forefoot.

I skated on them in January - no bake or anything, they felt good. Turns were really responsive, they were light on my feet. I didn't feel any spring in my step compared to the Nexus skates I was in earlier and later on in the day. However they were a definite upgrade over the Ultra Tack...if you're thinking between the Super and Ultra, go Super. The money is worth it. On sizing I had some severe issues with the ball of my foot like JR, which I assume would go away with a punch out. I skated for about 15 minutes and after 3 I was in trouble.... 15 it was definitely time to come off and take them off. For comparison sake on sizing, I skate in 9.5EE Nexus and I was in a 9.5EE ST. Had to go up to a 10EE in the Ultra Tack, not sure if the sizing is still off with those two models. A 9.5D Nexus felt better in the forefoot compared to the 9.5EE ST. The only downside I could think of is questionable durability. Is this skate going to handle a season of high end hockey? I don't want to crap on CCM, but, I have yet to see a player on my USHL team make the season through a pair of Tacks, RBZ, JetSpeeds, Ribcore, etc. All the guys who buy Bauers from me to begin the year - not counting the 6'7" kid that was drafted, they've all had their skates last all through the year no problem. We've seen 1 piece boots before and they didn't quite go for that long. Who knows if that was Easton Quality or if it was an inherit flaw in the 1 piece boot process. You'd think Bauer for all of its R&D and innovative skates would have brought a 1 piece to retail a long time ago and they never have. Maybe they know something we don't? Saying that, I feel as if any issues do come up they will come up quickly, and CCM is offering the demo to try the skates out and if you hate them you can return them....they must be truly committed to thinking their product is superior and is going to work well. Hoping these are a home run for CCM as its good to have a healthy competition in skates, as we're only down to 2 (basically) manufactures.