Can A Legit "Trick" survive the competition?
 

I've been a member on OSO for a little while. In that time I have seen/read some great stuff. Some of the reading on the other hand has been less than favorible. Obviously, the latest OSO read is the Trick Marine/Fred Cecil episode. Many members are out a ton of money and they are pi$$ed....may I add rightfully so. I believe I was one of the Lucky members. I ordered from Trick, not a huge order by any means, it came in a remarkably timely manner, and it was correct. I was impressed and posted a "good Job trick" reply on a thread. Remembering back, there were a bunch of people that posted positive remarks. Lately I have been pondering on the question...Could a individual open a Marine parts Store, work out of a warehouse/office keeping overhead down, Buy in Bulk and compete with big players i.e. CP Perf., etc. etc....???? In theory Fred had what seemed like a great thing going. When I had a conversation with Fred after he just started he mentioned he was doing about $40K a month (just from mentions on OSO). I spoke with him a year later and he said he was doing four times that figure! Not bad for a years worth of Growth! Granted his figures could have been a little inflated. With the number of people on OSO alone that cunducted biz with Trick it sure seems like the numbers make sense. Not to mention the magazine ads etc. etc....
Whats everybodies opinion. Can you duplicate Freds model, pay your bills, and have a success OR is the marine parts biz a HUGE pain in the a$$ with WAY to much competition etc.etc.

are you serious with another trick thread, lets talk about me and how wonderful i am...

they call me MR. Wonderful......

Model of low prices on name brands/ after heavy advertising works ONLY in huge quantities like Walmart/ Home Depot.

Marine business will never be high volume for a parts retailer since the manufacturer will sell parts direct to big industry players. Do you think Trick ever sold parts to Fountain or Cigarette?

What sucks is Trick buried the competition along the way by setting the low price levels and now Trick is gone. Those competitors were victims 2-3 years ago.

Can you imagine dumping your money in a business to make money and a competitor decides to compete with you by giving parts away at 5% over cost?

Personally I think it would be hard if not impossible to model any business after the "Trick" model...selling at cost or just above leaves no room for error on the sellers part... If you had something that was exclusive you'd have a better chance of surviving...

From what I can see as a consumer, most places offer either the same equipment or ones that are comparable and when everyones selling the same apple it comes down to who wants to make less...That is not a good recipe for lasting success in any business..

I don't remember the exact quote but it's something like: "you can only have two of the three when selling, best price, best service or best quality"...anyone trying to have all three at the same time will not make a dime doing it in the long run...

just my $.02

Fred might be able to survive with Trick the way it is.
Hell, Pantera owes members a lot more $ then Trick does and they are still in business!!!

not selling cup holders he wont......

The first rule in business is to stay in business.

This means you have to turn a profit to pay the bills. Just under cutting your competition, and living on the cash flow won't work in any business model in any industry.

People are out there just getting absorbently rich in any industry. Whenever you see someone come in so much below the competition they're bound to go out of business, and all it does is hurt the entire industry.

Now I don't know all of the facts with what happened, but businesses have insurance, and legal ramifications to take care of debt, hopefully at least all of the individuals get taken care of.

Any business based on giving parts away where you don't make enough to pay your overhead is doomed to fail!

[QUOTE=RumRunner;2353700]

Now I don't know all of the facts with what happened, but businesses have insurance, and legal ramifications to take care of debt, hopefully at least all of the individuals get taken care of.
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Agreed with everything you said except what kind of insurance do you buy to take care of debt?

[QUOTE=Jupiter Sunsation;2353703][QUOTE=RumRunner;2353700]

Now I don't know all of the facts with what happened, but businesses have insurance, and legal ramifications to take care of debt, hopefully at least all of the individuals get taken care of.
As a manufacture you can take certain policies, and take certain precautions. Where I worked before we would have the actual owners sign "personal" guarantees that items would be paid for if the business went broke.