posts: 8703
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| 8703 | 119 | questioning the process | 1 | gene | Apr 25, 2007 | 2007-04-25T03:02:01-0400 | i got an email from a customer this morning canceling an order. i thought i'd pass it on to you LN guys cause i thought that his opinion and my response might be of some interest. i'm sure that some of you will agree with him and others will agree with me. although this email is about my boards i'm presenting this as a general topic. i believe that many people still have a romantic vision of how their boards are shaped and on top of that many are misinformed or misled by the person shaping their board. i once had one guy ask me to handshape his board during a full moon. i obliged. i later rode the board and it was a dog so made him a new one. so much for a customers romantic vision. CUSTOMERS EMAIL Gene, I'll be honest. After visiting your shop and seeing a bunch APS3000 preshaped blanks and seeing your price list $1200 for a board sanded by somebody other than you, I lost interest in my order. Gene I'm 60 years old and ishapes, and production surfboards aren't my cup of tea. You still have a beautiful finished product. Good luck and Clean waves, ** MY RESPONSE hi **, it's a surprise to me that you feel that way, you seemed pretty stoked on my boards when we met. i would say that refering to my product as production surfboards pretty far off the mark. i believe that most production outfits can produce more that 3-4 finished boards a week! shapes- i shape every cooperfish, that's what we were making for you. i spend quite a bit of time shaping those boards after having most of the blanks precut by kkl. my programs leave a lot of room for interpritation and i feel comfortable that i'm giving you the highest quality custom shape that i'm capable of (by any means). i can shape from raw blanks(and often do) all day long and not get a better end product, for this reason i have a hard time understanding your point of view. how do my shapes look when they're done? i can tell without hesitation that i'm very proud of those shaping jobs. i have no moral conflict in using cut blanks. when i was auditioning shapers to shape the cooperdesigns label i found that the ones that refered to shaping cut blanks as "sanding them" did just that. needless to say their shaping jobs fell short and i kept searching until i found someone with the same attitude about shaping programs that i have. this is why zeph shapes the cooperdesigns. others came with a more impressive pedigree but i based my choice strictly the shaping job and his general attitude about shaping. just to clarify- gene shapes all cooperfishes and zeph shapes cooperdesigns. there is never any ghost shaping and everything is up front. when kkl sent out a out a request for permission to put my name on their customers list i gladly gave them the ok to do so. when the list came out i was suprised to see how many names of those using their services were missing from the list, many of those were big names. i've seen guys that scurry around hiding their programed blanks when the cameras come out or customers come by. i can proudly say that i've never been in that group. in conclusion my goal has been to make the best product that i'm capable of and i use kkl's services to help me achieve that goal. a big thank you to tyler hanel, dianna, and john(who is a master at cutting my programs) at kkl. glassing- we have a "by any means nessesary" attitude toward quality glass work the are always doing best we can. pricing- my prices are based on what it takes to keep the doors open and pay/earn a decent hourly wage. your order- i'm going to make your order as planned to sell on the open market. i'm sure it will find a good home. no hard feelings, gene COOPERFISH SURFBOARDS |