simonr Posted March 16, 2006 Author Share Posted March 16, 2006 Hi SiI think (but may stand to be corrected) these guys were supplying SR with a similar units to yours b4 your website was launched http://xtremelandy.co.uk/xtremelandy/Septe...%2004.09.05.JPG Regards, gary OK - fair call - maybe just being a bit paranoid. Before I had a batch made I did look to see if anyone was doing the same and couldn't find any - as I would not wittingly copy anyone without their agreement. Si Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Outrage Posted March 16, 2006 Share Posted March 16, 2006 Just registering my suport for Simon. Looking forward to a series version of the "Original" X-eng disk handbrake! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LR90 Posted March 16, 2006 Share Posted March 16, 2006 If any of you would like stickers (Before Sunday?), send me a PM with your address and what size (5x5" or 10x10") and how many and I'll mail them tomorrow afternoon FOC.Si Are these X-eng or the ban lobster racing ones? Either way I'll PM you as I was hoping to come to Slab on Sunday to spectate and there seems even more reason now. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mark Posted March 16, 2006 Share Posted March 16, 2006 How about adding this to all the x-Eng products... Mark Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Niall_CSK Posted March 16, 2006 Share Posted March 16, 2006 Sad days Si, ignore it and keep up the good work, I'm sure there are plenty more good ideas where those came from. I vowed never to buy stuff from them a few years back when they arrogantly told me they would only sell me a whole suspension kit as they did not want their name "tarnished" if I had an accident with only bits of their kit. I laughed then and I am rolling around now. They are the reason I haven't bought a set of Second Air bead locks as they are the UK distributor. Maybe it would have some effect enquiring about various products direct with the makers pointing out that you want the product but don't want to deal with Scrapiron, bu@@er it I do just that. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Daan Posted March 16, 2006 Share Posted March 16, 2006 They are the reason I haven't bought a set of Second Air bead locks as they are the UK distributor. Just what I was thinking. Anyone an idea how to get these, while avoiding our scrap suplier? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tobias Posted March 16, 2006 Share Posted March 16, 2006 Just what I was thinking. Anyone an idea how to get these, while avoiding our scrap suplier? Try the inventor Tireloc Sadly the same story lies behind the Stauns as the SR handbrake. The Au distributor copied it and sells it as "an improved design". Tobias Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
andylandy Posted March 16, 2006 Share Posted March 16, 2006 si nice to see the support everyone is giving and i would like to add mine x-eng handbrake as used in the rain forest callenge simon you are ace keep up the good work and keep pushing new products i will get some stikers and t shirt for the shows i will be in the arena of three shows with the landy perhaps i should get a fag with it on Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hillbilly Raider Posted March 16, 2006 Share Posted March 16, 2006 i hope you meant flag?! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
V8RRC Posted March 16, 2006 Share Posted March 16, 2006 I have never brought anything from Scrapiron! & I never will.. From what I have been told Simon you make top products at a great price & your customer service is A1 so don't let it get to you I am sure if this is how SR work it will backfire on them & you will have the last laugh! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Colin 009 Posted March 16, 2006 Share Posted March 16, 2006 I have never brought anything from Scrapiron! & I never will..From what I have been told Simon you make top products at a great price & your customer service is A1 so don't let it get to you I am sure if this is how SR work it will backfire on them & you will have the last laugh! I have bought stuff from SI as I live quite near to them, was thinking of buying a H/D rear bumper from them, I think I'll be buy it from DiscoParts now though. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GBMUD Posted March 17, 2006 Share Posted March 17, 2006 I have bought stuff from SI as I live quite near to them, was thinking of buying a H/D rear bumper from them, I think I'll be buy it from DiscoParts now though. I presume you live close to SR and not SI? Si is the proprietor of the wronged X-Eng. Chris Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mark90 Posted March 17, 2006 Share Posted March 17, 2006 I guess SI=ScrapIron Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GBMUD Posted March 17, 2006 Share Posted March 17, 2006 I guess SI=ScrapIron Aaah, dur.... Chris Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cal Posted March 17, 2006 Share Posted March 17, 2006 Hi Si, I just wanted to add my support. I've only had my Discovery for 6 months and did have a couple of products from SR on my list of mods. They wont be getting anything from me now. I know none of you need any further verification of their lack of manners, but I've never heard anyone be so grumpy over the phone when asking for a price of their product than the chap at SR who answered the phone. Keep up the good work Si and we will see who how many people will no longer touch SR with a barge pole Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
John_T Posted March 17, 2006 Share Posted March 17, 2006 Whoopee! My X-eng stickers and freebie key ring tool arrived to-day. Cheers Si! Hopefully I will be able to order an X-brake soon. Loadsa support here in the forum but don't forget we should be on a mission to push this in the outside world and see if we can make Si's order book a bit fatter. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Colin 009 Posted March 17, 2006 Share Posted March 17, 2006 I presume you live close to SR and not SI? Si is the proprietor of the wronged X-Eng.Chris Do'h SR is what I meant. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chrissyboy Posted March 17, 2006 Share Posted March 17, 2006 Hi Si, Some thoughts: Thought 1. Was this patentable? You have probably looked into this yourself at some stage. You may know this already but to be patentable the thing must not be in the public domain. So if you talk to anyone at all about it it is no longer patentable (unless you get them to sign a confidentiality agreement aka non disclosure agreement.) Obviously you cannot patent this now but if it was patentable you should really have done it. I think 2 things might have put you off, 1. The diffulties and expense of defending any patent infraction and 2. The expense of taking out a patent in the first place. To be patentable the idea must be a genuine innovation and not something which would be obvious to anyone in that particular field. I don't know enough about your product to judge that. (By the way some history and an explanation of what the brake does exactly might be useful for us non-anoraks.) If you have any more ideas like this I think you should definitely patent them. Did you know that the inital costs of registering a patent are very small? It is only after a year or so when the patent office has done a thorough search and are sure that your innovation can be patented that you have to pay big bucks. During this time however, you can say "patent applied for" and no one is allowed to copy it. This gives you a year or more of protection for peanuts. During this time you can make as much money as you can and when it comes time to take out a full patent, a. you may have raised enough from selling the product to cover this and b. you will know from the market reaction whether it is worth taking out the full patent or whether you want to just quietly let it drop. If you do let it drop of course there is no need to go around shouting from the rooftops that you are not taking out a patent after all and most potential rip off merchants would be too lazy to check whether you have let the patent lapse and would just assume that you have patent protection. Thought 2 You may still have some protection under copyright law. You do not have to do anything to own copyright of something you have created. It is intrinsic in the act of creation. (The copyright of this post belongs to me for example - unless there is something in this forum's terms and conditions where I have agreed to waive my copyright when I signed up). You have design copyright on your handbrake - that is a fact. The question is whether scorpion racing infringed your copyright in copying it. If they did then you should send them a "cease and desist" letter telling them to stop sales of their copy of your copyrighted work. To pursue this line is going to cost you quite a lot of money up front but if you win you should get it all back in the form of damages and costs. The trouble is you are going to have to employ a barrister and if you think Colin is a plop wait until you meet the average barrister! The first thing you will want to know of course if you consult a barrister (or solicitor) is whether you stand a chance of winning. The problem is that barristers will always tell you there is a very good chance of winning. They will then proceed to bleed you dry! If you want to pursue this path I would advise you to do as much research as you can on your own and then make sure you give your barrister clear written instructions (That way if he goes off on a tangent of his own you can always sue him). What you could do is approach the "job shop" of a University with a good law department and find yourself a law student to research the question. He or she will be able to dig up all the relevant case law and precedents for beer money. In any case it is going to cost you nothing to send a "cease and desist" letter. It is then for Colin to decide if you are bluffing or not. Thought 3 In my opinion the best defence of your products is good marketing and advertising. Have you read a lot of books on advertising? If not - why not? Advertising nous is the difference between success and failure. Lots of people make the mistake of thinking that there is nothing to learn about advertising and that anything there is to learn is obvious. If you think like this you should not be in business IMHO. Did you know that only 1 in 20 business start ups survive more than five years? Two books which are absolutely apposite for this case are "Positioning" and "Marketing Warfare" by Al Ries and Jack Trout. Read them several times. If I was in your position I would get together a group of enthusiasts like yourself who have designed their own products. I saw an article not long ago about a couple of guys who designed some way over the top suspension designs. Why not get together with them and pool the marketing and distribution costs and take out a full page full colour spread every month in LRO? Why not call yourselves "The Real Thing" products? By the way - what is the most effective kind of advertising? Editorial of course. But you don't have to beg the magazines to do some editorial for you. You can write your own editorial every month. You just don't call it editorial you call it an "advert". If you want an "advertorial" written I am available but it'llcostya! Cheers Chris www.before-n-after.co.uk Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Turbocharger Posted March 17, 2006 Share Posted March 17, 2006 Si - do you do X-tinhats? [ducking and covering] Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Peter Posted March 18, 2006 Share Posted March 18, 2006 Okay, who is Scorpion ripping off with this site ? Is she wearing protection ? Whoops - think this is a different company - is it ? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
headhunter Posted March 18, 2006 Share Posted March 18, 2006 Okay, who is Scorpion ripping off with this site ? Is she wearing protection ? Whoops - think this is a different company - is it ? Re:-"Okay, who is Scorpion ripping off with this site ?" Peter, in your dreams!! John Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
white90 Posted March 18, 2006 Share Posted March 18, 2006 They are undoubtedly chisseling gits, copying ideas being underhanded and if you look at their adverts, all of it is copied brought in gear. all the radius arms/suspension mounts/body armour is WV in bradfords gear the suspensions a direct rip off of Equipe(I heard from Tangoman that the Equipe italian owner threatend to kill colin at Billing a couple of years ago) Also heard that Mon-Fri covers advertising Sat they make some money. all to fund Colins Drag racing hobby apparently. I for one hope they fold! they are unethical POS's Simon I'm sure all will be well for your decent company against these total losers. a few calls to them expressing my displeasure will be my next project. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
simonr Posted March 18, 2006 Author Share Posted March 18, 2006 Chris, Thanks for your thoughts and considered opinion. We have considered patenting of this and other products, however, there have been one or two cased in the off road arena where a patent has been granted for a product, it has been copied save for a change of colour and a bolt or two in a different place and the patentholder loosing in court after the changes have been deemed to be an improvement on the original design. I like the idea of applying for a patent and not following through. As you say, most people will loose interest in the first year. However, you could just say "patent applied for" and not actually do anything - whic would probably have the same effect. I am applying for an European Community registered design for one or two forthcoming products where it is the appearance that is more significant than how it works. I fully agree with whaty you say about marketing and advertising - and indeed I run 1/4 page ads in three mags at the moment. What works (advert wise) and what does not continues to surprise me despite having read a couple of books on the subject. Much of what the books suggest is just plain wrong in this marketplace. A good example is putting prices on adverts. One book seemed to think that if you do not include prices, it encourages people to ring up and enquire - and you can change a proportion of enquiries into sales. As this thread has suggested in a couple of places "never trust a company who do not advertise prices". The prices went back in after a month! For the next batch of ads, I'm using a graphic and strategy designed by an agency (who have done some good but simple campaigns in this sector). Time will tell if they know what they are talking about! The new ads look pretty good though! My biggest problem in all this is time! It's proving difficult to find enough for taking and dispatching orders, project managing the manufacture, marketing and the all important research & development whilst not really having the turnover to support employing more people. It may be that one has to bite the bullet, employ some help and that this in turn will lead to higher turnover because you can do the same job more effectively? With the release of the next few items, I will employ some help in producing press releases etc as it is not my strong point (I'm definatly not a salesman!). My company ethos has always been to treat everyone the same and to treat them in the manor in which I would like to be treated as a customer. I hope this will pay divedends (literally!) in time compared to the double-glasing salesman approach, which undoubtably works - but I suspect only short term. I'll order a copy of the books you suggest - just need to find a few days to read them. Wonder if they do an audio book version! Si Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Steve H Posted March 18, 2006 Share Posted March 18, 2006 I'm a bit too far away to get involved but we do have a local ( in NZ) outlet for scrapiron stuff that I won't be patronising. Sorry if its already been mentioned ( I haven't read every post ), but I was pleased to see that for all the bagging LRE gets on here, in their latest issue ( 1/2 price airmail sub) they've reviewed the Xeng park brake & no mention of scrapiron, only Xeng, I thought credit where credit was due. Cheers, Steve. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hillbilly Raider Posted March 18, 2006 Share Posted March 18, 2006 Thanks Simon for getting back to Kev (KKK2 HILLBILLIES) Glad you liked our website/forum you will be welcome there any time! Have a word with Kev about Jonathon (Maverick) he could be useful to you as regards selling your stuff in Ireland. Keep up the good work. Mandy. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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