My RANT!

[flat]

March 18, 2008

I’ve been catching a little slack lately. Mainly it’s been around some of my products that are apparently a ‘copy’ of the German ones. These thoughts have been brewing for some time, so I figured this is as good a time as any to purge my ideas on the subject…

I have NEVER, copied any product out there. All my designs and manufacturing work is unique. My method is simple; the three C’s; Calipers, Calculator and CAD. I have measured, built, messed-up, re-measured, rebuilt, buggered-up, rebuilt, tested and marketed all my own products. It takes time and money to do it this way. I do admit, that it would be a whole lot easier to just buy something, reverse-engineer it and be on my way. I can’t do it though. If I put my name on it, then I have to have a credible and legitimate reason to do that. Making a product in the manufacturing game is the easy part. The design, prototyping and testing is where the most amount of time goes, and essentially this is lost money because it is very hard to recoup these efforts.

I will admit that conceptually my products may be similar to others on the market. I can’t help that fact. It’s the right product that fits the application. It’s a free market. I don’t see consumers raging over the fact that the Ford cars look a lot similar to the GM’s. I have put products out there that are unique, and a couple months later another company will be marketing the same. I do not get upset about this because if they can develop their products independently then overall this is more development in the dub industry and is better for all. If they can offer the product for less money than me then I applaud their efforts and application of lean manufacturing. The concept may be the same, but the developement is unique.

Now, on the flip side of this coin; I have sold some of my products to guys who have blatantly copied them for resale. To be honest it doesn’t bother as much as it used to. I can’t do anything about it, so I’ll let karma deal with the bottom-dwellers. Maybe one day these guys will ‘man-up’ and learn how to use some calipers and figure out some stuff on their own.

I know a lot of the ‘hating’ about my products is usually based on price. My products are not cheap, I never claimed it to be. But then again, my parts are dreamt-up, designed, built, manufactured and tested in North America ,North of the 49th . I’m not going to get into a heated disrotation regarding the shift of global economics, but I’m sure you can understand where I’m going here. My new mantra these days is “VW prices for VW parts, Porsche prices for Porsche parts”. After all, we all know that Porsche parts are made from that rare (yet super strong) element called expensium.

There are a heap of guys out there who continue to support me. I have to take my hat off to you guys. You guys endorse me and my products when you have no reason to. These are the kind of guys that support me, financially and mentally. Those around me may know that I was ready to pack it up about a year ago. I had enough at the time. This (vdubengineering) is a part time thing for me. It was getting stressful at the time running around like a chicken-head. I am an engineer in the ‘day job’ and put in my 44-50 hrs a week there. I did not set out to make a dollar on brake conversions and suspension parts. I set out to make parts for myself. Along the way word got out and guys approached me to do some work for them. That’s how it grew, and my passion is VW’s regardless of whether I’m making parts for resale or not. I love when guys bounce crazy ideas off me, I roll with it. Like Russell with his Cayenne S setup. That made me laugh out-loud when he first called me about it. “This guy wants to do WHAT?” But he insisted and I made it happen. So, to all the guys who support VdubEngineering, I really appreciate it. Without you guys to keep me motivated I’d probably be designing lowering springs for Hondas or an even worse fate . To the haters, keep hating and keep sending your dollars to far away places…

I don’t mean to be defensive, but I take pride in what I do. Empty accusations are one of my pet-peeves, so I can get a little passionate about this….

Peace,

Lanner Khan
(lanner@vdubengineering.com)