Hey, people have to make boat payments, man. :)

Timing is everything and his was impeccable. I had dinner last night w someone who took the bitcoin plunge @ ~$1400. They are @ $8k and climbing, this has all happened in 2017. :eek:

So SSF used to have a huge warehouse in a horrible neighborhood in one of the beach cities. I accidentally became very good friends with the general manager of that location because of my government job. I was a young guy, not making a ton of money, but was very interested in German cars.

I was able to buy my BMW and later, Porsche parts, directly from the GM, under his name. He made me swear a blood oath that I would never mention to anyone where I got my parts. When I would stop by to pick up my "order", he inevitably had scraped the SSF labels off of the boxes/bags, because he was so paranoid that someone would find out that he was selling directly to an end user.

Anyway, I was at an automotive event, ran into Wayne and mentioned that I thought that the "drop shipment" method was brilliant. Wayne pretty much denied that that was the Pelican business model, indicating that Pelican stocked all of the parts they sold. I was kind of stunned, and mentioned that I knew for a fact that SSF was one of his suppliers. Again, he denied it.

I left it alone, but prior to my conversation with him, many, many times I saw Pelican Parts orders (pelican parts labels) in the SSF warehouse on the table waiting to be shipped. I just shrugged it off, but I wondered to myself what the big deal was.

In retrospect, maybe he was drop shipping from so many sources he wasn't even aware that he was buying from SSF. Or maybe he was buying from another source that was buying from SSF.

This was the mid 90's. I remember buying all four drilled rotors (Zimmerman) and pads for my 1990 535i for way under $100, including the wear sensors. Another time, while doing a restoration on a 2.7, I bought every rubber seal for a 74 911 for like $120-$140 bucks. That included the front and rear windshield seals. Retail was over $800 back then. This was before the "rubber kits", and I had to order each piece individually.

I just checked right now, and it looks like Zimmerman isn't even making a drilled or drilled/slotted rotor for those 535i's anymore...

DL

Things were drop shipped from SSF. I remember getting my order and seeing the SSF part # labels on the packages. They were the same stickers that were on the orders at my friends shop that got shipped overnight from SSF. lol

^^^ He was aware where the parts were shipping from. Who do you think set the deals up in the first place?? I too get annoyed with misrepresentation like this. They (any company that does this) wants you to think they have this massive inventory when really they do not. Sure, they have some stuff in stock but it is a very small percentage of what they market online.

This is not unique to Pelican. There are renowned Porsche tuners that have a large internet following that don't even have their own brick and mortar facility.

There are other well known specialty parts suppliers that are in the same boat. Drop shop everything. We call them pajama retailers. They drop their pants on pricing below MAP and say "email for quote" because they know they can't advertise the price they will sell for. They have no overhead and that allows them to devalue a brand. But then I wonder why brands who set MAP still sell to those who sell below MAP. The internet allows you to represent your company or yourself as anything you want it to be. Guard Transmission is one of the few examples that actually get this. You can't be a re seller/installer unless you have a legitimate brick and mortar and you had better sell the product at the price they feel positions their brand where they want it.

I never understood why people/businesses feel they need to misrepresent their operation. There is nothing wrong with offering products and saying "we can ship it in X days". No one has everything in stock, so why pretend?

Bingo

This is likely because their software builds pricing on Margin not MSRP. All good retail software offers the ability to change this globally and for each part. This looks like they have set a min margin they will set retail pricing on and in this case they aren't buying at a price that supports this. They are likely getting 15-20 points from a dealer and their pricing margin is far higher. Hence the price is too high.

This works great in a brake and muffler shop where all the parts are cheap POS and bought for pennies so they use a blanket 70 or 80% margin and make a decent living. Not so much in specialty retail.... The problem is, with all the parts in the catalog it requires a ton of manpower to be on top of every part number to ensure it is priced according to market value and not margin.

Pelican is the biggest drop shipper in town, probably. That's the business model. I explained a few posts up how a guy in a one bedroom apartment who doesn't even have a credit card processor can make $20k a month doing the same thing. eBay supplies the selling format and worldwide audience. People do the same thing on Amazon. Zero investment, just list the parts.

I'm not saying that Pelican is a zero investment business but the selling technique is the same.

shipping is the other thing.

my wife can order shoes, get free shipping AND free shipping on returns.
I order a $2 gasket from here and its $10 shipping. just put the thing in an envelope and put a stamp on it!!

Giving Wayne the benefit of the doubt, it is possible that he had a manager setting up those wholesale relationships by 1995 or so and Wayne was already out of that loop by that time, concentrating on other things.

When I saw how wild the price was between wholesale and retail, it occurred to me that maybe Wayne was buying from the guy in the 1 bedroom apartment and the guy in the 1 bedroom apartment was buying from SSF.

So technically, maybe Wayne was not aware that he was buying from SSF.

DL

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1511365062.jpg
I may not always purchase from Pelican Parts
But when I do, I have to wait an extra week for the order to arrive and pay more for shipping as well.

Interesting times on the forums. A little Pelican bashing going on on their own forums.
I have been using pelican for hard to find stuff, tools and back up for years, as I already accounts with the other heavy hitters , with free shipping and overnight on all orders .
I have never received anything other than excellent service, and always just took it as " it is what it is " if I have to wait for a few days to get something, that I cannot get easily elsewhere.
Hopefully new owners are paying attention, and they make the necessary changes.
If the rumors are true, ECS is based closer to me . Some good east coast presence, quick shipping, competitive prices to you know who, and I am all ears.

A couple things:

1)- does it really matter if one person or another actually has a warehouse full of goods or they drop ship? Point is, you're paying for access to the good- it's the typical retail sales model Also you're not gonna walk into a wholesale parts warehouse and get a wholesale / repair shop pricing willy nilly unless you get a business license, are known etc. etc.

2)- buying from Pelican VS XYZ on the net ensures to a certain extent, you're buying quality and real goods. Ever wonder if your parts off of Ebay or some other anonymous retailer online are actually real and not used or counterfeit? Would you trust to spend your $$$$ at "mingpotrading.com" even if the pricing is 1/2 of Pelican's? Especially when you're gonna spend thousands on an item? Would you risk buying a fake?

I wouldn't. But, that's just me.

3)- it's also real poor form to come to these forums (which ECS and virtually every other company doesn't offer) and bash the pricing. Doesn't anyone shop as part of due diligence? As a consumer, it's YOUR duty to find the best deal, not Pelican's. You don't go to a guest's house and complain about their food or decor, do you? C'mon now guys..

If you don't like the pricing / ship time whatever, keep quiet, and shop elsewhere. That's how it works. Apparently there are enough people out there that will pay a premium for good service, a real community and legit goods that Pelican's business model works.

(off soapbox)

rjp

I will say that fastfred is right that Pelican does provide a service that has benefited many of us. Years ago there just wasn't any place to source parts like there is now. Also, back in 2003 when I purchased my car, the BBS was a life saver with tons a valuable info and many of us are still benefiting from our benevolent forum provider.
If it is a not a ton of money higher and I can wait, I will purchase from Pelican in return for those benefits. If I need it ASAP and the cost differential is too great (especially with expedited shipping to the east coast), then I may have to use other sources.

^^^^^^ This.

Back when they had 3 day for $3, I purchased a decent amount of parts from them. Now, the USPS quote is quite high and I really don't want to wait a week for parts since I live on the east coast. I'll use ahaus or fcp. I was never a fan of ecs. I'd say I use Pelican about 25% of the time.

I'd also like to point out that I really hate how a lot of places are selling Meyle, febi and Uro junk. They should just stop offering cheap Chinese crap that lasts a couple thousand miles. Instead, they should try and work with corteco, lemforder, trw, etc to make better quality parts. On my W126, I'm starting to see a lot of the parts show up as NLA and Lemforder has been cutting back production...very sad.

I blame the manufacturers for not supporting their older product. Part of the reason I gave up my BMW's are that parts in general aren't what they are supposed to be.

Dealers themselves has low grade **** passing as replacement these days- I wager it's part of their planned obsolescence strategy.

Amen Randy! As long as I participate on these forums I will buy from Pelican. It’s hard to quantify how much money the people here have helped me save, but it’s easily in the thousands.

Just west of Akron by ten minutes. Slightly southwest of Cleveburg by about 50 minutes.

I buy VW and BMW parts from them. Gotta pay tax though, being in Ohio.

My special moment was driving to their location, calling them from the parking lot asking where the entrance was so I could buy a new windshield cowl for a 3 series. No dice.

I've rebuilt beau-coup American-Iron engines over the years (plus a few Japanese ones and the one in my `66 912) but when it came time to split the engine case of my 930 I leaned heavily on the guidance and expertise of several great guys in the turbo tech section. In return, I bought every new part I could from Pelican. Figured it cost me maybe a few hundred extra in parts but I saved whatever a shop's labor charge might be - I'm guessing somewhere north of ten grand.

_