Best bankrupt? Not bankrupt!

[Mike101]

That's what I thought abour the bladdere- should probably have gone for the Roca too as it looks sweet. I got a 7 and 9m GP on the way from 2015. Hopefully I won't have issues. Stupid thing is I saw this thread and thought a 'bankrupt' was some new newschool move I'd never try so didn't read it until a week after my purchase

[Mike101]

Yeah i only replaced once after spiking the thing on the reeds in Gokova bay Turkey. Thing was trashed after that. I ran into the reeds to rescue the kite and puncutered my feet 100 times. The bladder was like a sieve.

[john a]

Who owns Eleveight?

The guys who work there, there's no backers or investors, just long time industry guys doing it on their own. Rider owned and run. Only possible because of Peter's long standing with the companies they manufacturer with. Think they're working from Peter's house still.

This is a brilliant business model. Full control back to the kiters No bad White color investors in jail
Peter the kitedesigner is brilliant so when he can chose to do what he think is better rather, then it Will be total awesome! Full freedom for the kite designer

[TomW]

This must be some sort of earned marketing campaign. On principle, I'll never buy a kite from anyone involved.

[Flyboy]

This must be some sort of earned marketing campaign.

What does this mean?

On principle, I'll never buy a kite from anyone involved.

What principle? Why?

[nothing2seehere]

This must be some sort of earned marketing campaign.

What does this mean?

On principle, I'll never buy a kite from anyone involved.

What principle? Why?

I think this was a sarcastic dig at the early Best marketing on forums (earn credit by writing nice things about the kite type stuff).

[TomW]

Earned marketing means marketing you get free by having chatter about your brand on sns and forums. You create content or let your users create content or you create some noise/ controversy and you get free exposure. It's the attention economy.

The principal is that Best will take money from people who have delivered goods or services to them, leaving them holding the bag, losing money. In the wake of most bankruptcy there are people who suffer.

Seems to me that when a company fails, it's the responsibility of many people in the company, not only the CEO

[Matteo V]

Hard to blame individual employee's for the not being able resist the immovable force of a corporation that takes on a life of its own beyond even it's CEO or board of directors. But I mirror TomW's sentiment, on those that presided over the inner workings of Best over the last few years, who do not have my admiration.

I am pretty sure that it was "individual" employee's decisions to stop communications with me on issues with their products (long before they stopped being paid). I am pretty sure it was individual employee's who FAILED to convince upper management to recall defective Best CL releases. So my personal past dealings with Best are sending me in a new direction.

I wish nothing but good things upon Eleveight. I hope they make it big and show that they can shake off the bad habits and baggage of the past. Given their track record, they will do so without the limited funding I am able do dedicate to kite gear.

[sq225917]

Do we think the customer service rep decided to flip customers off because he didn't like them and he liked being shouted at on the phone?
Do we think the bar designer decided that customers with defective bars would not get the spare part because he wanted everyone who bought something he designed to hate him?
Do we think the warehouse guy decided that he'd not send spare parts out when instructed to do so by customer service and warranty?
Do we think that the head of customer service/marketing decided that they'd like to destroy the brand's reputation by not serving customers because it would be profitable?

Or do we think some asshat at the very top of the tree made a financial decision to wind back on the expense of customer support either because they couldn't prove a direct statistical links between spare parts funding and increased sales or simply that they stopped spending money on everything because the owner was embroiled in a multi-million Euro fraud investigation and one of his investors was using that to leverage and aggressive take over of his main business.

I'll give you a clue, it was a combination of the last two and nothing to do with the first four.


I worked there for 7 years, before Javier took over.

BEST had the best reputation for customer service and taking care of people, the decline started when Javier bought BEST.



Tomw,
There's 'no kind of anything' marketing going on here. I simply answered questions about what had happened at BEST. They still owe me for work I did last year. I don't blame Seb for it, it's beyond his control.


Elev8 are a new brand, staffed by friends I made in the industry, all of them are great guys, skilled designers, keen kiters and there is no investors. It's their business, it's their money. I'll be riding their kites and I think a lot of other riders who enjoyed BEST, back in the day, will too. It's probably time that they had their own thread.

[Kamikuza]

Do we think the customer service rep decided to flip customers off because he didn't like them and he liked being shouted at on the phone?

I dunno, I know brand managers who like to abuse customers on the forums, then on Facebook, then challenge them to ring him up, then post up on the forums again about how the customer called him up and abused him like a crazy person Anything is possible...