Heelychat, the forum for heelys, the shoes with wheels - View topic

*Last edited by Slicer on Tue Jan 01, 2008 10:40 pm; edited 1 time in total*

EDIT: De-announcified as there ARE Mega/Plate styles coming out! Scroll down.

(I'm going to leave this one up as an announcement until the next Mega/Plate style comes out. IF the next Mega/Plate style comes out.)

Mike,

I hope you actually get this, and I hope you at least read it once. I'm the owner of the biggest Heelys community on the Internet, Heelychat.com, and I don't regularly send emails like this one. Please humor me.

People's *first* pair of Heelys can be anything. Atomics, Vapors, Strands, Catches... whatever.

However, experienced, serious Heelers' *second* pair is all Torches, all the time, formerly all Evolutions, all the time. The reason should be blindingly obvious: They want the shoes that can do the most. They want to imitate the team and the things they see on Youtube, and they can't do that with their regular Heelys, as the Mega wheel is required to get serious about steep curves, and no one wants to go to a skatepark and not be able to grind.

Men with size 10 feet and over can't buy Torches or Evos. Some of them are even having trouble finding Mega styles in their size. The Ebay wars have begun, much as they were waged for size 13 Predators. If I owned a pair of brand new Size 12 Torches I could put them on Ebay for $100 and get it. (But instead, I own pairs of Size 11 Torches and Evos, and treasure them, for when they are finally worn to nothing I can't be sure of if a similar style will ever again exist.)

And meanwhile, the channel is still stuffed like a clogged toilet on the 'regular' Fats-style Heelys, and retailers are selling them for $40. This is not because of a temporary slump or schools banning Heelys or radiation from Venus. This is because not enough people want them.

Fortunately, your initial push on Torches made enough for everybody size 9 and lower- so far. They're draining away at a constant rate. The 12s went first, then the 11s, then the 10s. *Whatever size/quantity curve you're using needs to be badly revised.* They're still selling, and will probably continue to sell until there aren't any more, unlike the masses of Atomics collecting dust. Bear in mind that we're talking about one style (which not everyone likes the look of) versus all other Heelys styles on the market.

Do you see the problem here, Mike? When size 12 people are engaging in long-term quests to find a suitable pair while your retailers are drowning in styles that won't sell, something is desperately wrong here. The production of Heelys hasn't quite matched the actual demand, and the demand will continue to shift farther and farther in the skateparks-and-performance direction, with more and more demand for larger sizes, as more and more people learn how to use Heelys, and it shifts away from being an almost purely kids' activity. This is your continued business, and what helps the whole thing keep from simply fading away as another fad.

There's already enough regular Fats styles for everybody. Why make more? Put THOSE on the back burner for a while, let the inventory on them drain down some more, replenish the sizes that retailers have sold out of, shift gears into making more skatepark-worthy styles (and for people with bigger feet), and see how much money you make and which way your stock goes.

Slicer
Administrator
Heelychat.com

P. S. Have fun trying to sell those Gamers. Good thing you didn't try making those in bigger sizes.

O.o You... Slicer... Are going under My Heros section on MySpace... Seriously... I wrote a letter similar, but it was a while back... With enough support maybe... just maybe they'll think about it

And how about this as well

The next letter that gets written, we can make a petition out of it... I'm sure at around 60 bucks a pair and with a population rapidly growing on HC, I'm sure that we can gather enough signatures to make their eyes buldge, maybe even as far as that one chick in the Guiness Book lol

*Last edited by Slicer on Tue Jan 01, 2008 2:16 pm; edited 1 time in total*

Petitions get ignored for the number of people signing them. One communication with twenty signatures doesn't have nearly the impact of twenty independently-created communications zerging his mailbox.

Even if there's someone screening his mail, the tidal wave has to get through at SOME point. If it doesn't this means that he's being horribly inattentive to actual demand and Gary Martin (final boss of Heelys) should get all up in his business.

And that sir, is why you are the administrator of the site... lol I have my MCSE if you ever need a server engineer XD

do they take feedback over the phone?

the wheel placement and brakes on furys are excellent but they need plates,

these things are COMFORTABLE!!!!

Joined: 27 Jul 2007 Posts: 252 Location: Ohio

nice one slicer...really well done

haha nice...idk what im going to do if they dont make mega plates models soon bc im really low Sad

Holy crap, I actually got through.

w0000000000000t awesome pic slicey

Joined: 04 Sep 2007 Posts: 4

P. S. Have fun trying to sell those Gamers. Good thing you didn't try making those in bigger sizes. no affence but dats funny

I figured I owed him a reply.

--

Thank you, Mike; that mention of a new Mega/Plate style in '08 gave a huge dose of relief to everyone who reads Heelychat.

Let me give you some more field intel, as it's all anecdotal but consistent: I get a lot of "Slicer, can you help me find...", and I try my best on Internet searches. I also hear a lot of "I called my local stores and none of them have it in my size." If there's actually 10, 11, 12 Torches sitting in your warehouse then any retailer who cares to buy them is going to sell a lot of them very,.very quickly, as size 10 Torch has entirely vanished from the Internet market (not including the occasional Ebayer) a month ago, size 11 Torch vanished probably four months ago, and size 12 Torch has been absent for even longer.

Size 12 might be .4% of your sales, but your Size 12 sales in many styles are noticeably less than 100% of the people who want them, in opposition to the general inventory glut. If your retailers don't want to buy more large-size Mega/Plates in June of '08 than they did of large-size Torches, it might be a good idea to point out how quickly they ran out last time.

It won't tell you how many people want them, only their desperation, but if you put a single pair of size 12 Torches on Ebay, you'd get to see bidding wars, probably to the triple digit range. If you were to do that with a pair of Size 13 (Men's) Predators, it'd be even worse. Not statistically meaningful, but food for thought.

I'll just offer one more thing before I leave you alone: Don't ever let the company get lumped in as part of the "shoe business". It's out of phase, in a place between the shoe business and the sporting goods business. Trying to stuff it into either category is only going to lead to problems and lower stock prices.

--

(Yes, I really will leave him alone. I probably unnerve him.)

OH (editted) YEAH BUDDY!

Amazing that you got a reply, and I'm so happy!!! Freakin... I can't type I have tears in my eyes... You sir, are definately my hero

Mad Props and major kudo points to you my friend

Joined: 21 Jul 2007 Posts: 29

This is exciting news.

I'm glad I got my size 11 Torches when I did. Smile

The bottom line is that if they want to open the market up to adults, they'll need performance models, in decent sizes.

I'm 23 years old. 99% of the time when I heel in public someone asks me "Aren't those for kids?" I respond that no they aren't only for kids. But if they only make sizes for kids, then that misconception will not go away.

It's very similar to the skateboard revolution in the 70's. Before that time, skateboards were considered one of two things. 1) A children's toy. or 2) A substitute for when you couldn't surf. Thank God for that summer drought in SoCal that caused people to think outside the box. Luckily, this also coincided with the advent of poly-eurothane wheels (as opposed to the plastic wheels they'd been using before) that allowed them to grip and curve hard. And now we have *expensive* professional, performance grade skateboards, and we have the X Games. We need that to happen with Heelys. But we need two things to happen. 1) People need to think outside the box (no big deal, it's already happening. 2) The equipment needs to be there (and this is where we're fighting it).

To Dynastie

I totally agree, and before anyone thinks of attacking, hear me out for a minute

First off, I'd like to say that its good to have older adults out skating, I myself am 19 going on 20 and believe me, I get the looks as well. I've even had stuff throw at me such as rocks in my path and even a person driving by hit me with a soda can.. At least I wasn't thirsty afterwards lol

But we also have to look at several view points of evolution

Monkeys didn't make humans over night, you know?

We have to be patient when it comes down to making new equipment, as we should turn the focus on to making MORE equipment.

I was strongly debating lobbing off my toes to fit a smaller shoe because the availability of larger sizes (I wouldn't go through the troubles of getting it done, but I did think about it lol)

Ultimately, we just need the patience, and the cooperation knowing that there will be a decent supply of shoes on the market. I could care less if I got Torches (actually, I would be estatic) versus just being able to find a pair of Grind This! or Rail 9151 so I retire the pair that my sock is being exposed.

All in all though, I'm glad we got a response to the matter at hand, am I'm glad to see more and more adult (or just older kids... hell, even younger kids...) getting into heeling, because as the trends have shown, there isn't one person in this nation who doesn't recognize those "rolling shoes", now we just need those people to recognize "OMG, you can do THAT on those rolling shoes" Know what I mean?

Joined: 27 Jul 2007 Posts: 252 Location: Ohio

june '08 ftw...Im gonna get my birthday present late....