Postby Dan-at-Duotone » Thu Feb 14, 2019 7:12 pm
Just to clarify a few things:
1. If you fill out a "contact" form on our website your message is automatically forwarded to the person in charge of your area. Generally this will be an official Boards&More (Duotone/Fanatic/Ion) employee/agent, but in some areas it may be a local independent distributor. In any case we do our best to put you in touch with someone who speaks your language and is geographically as close as possible to you.
In North America all Duotone contact forms are forwarded to me. If you are in North America and filled out the contact and didn't hear back there are two possible reasons: Either I dropped the ball or there was some sort of technical glitch. I have seen this system glitch, but I also get many of these contacts daily so I know it usually works. If you have tried to reach us through this method and never heard back, whether you're in NA or anywhere else in the world, feel free to PM me here.
Also keep in mind that we work hand-in-hand with our retailers, and they should generally be able to answer any questions/solve any issues and they are able to contact agents/reps/etc if the issues are beyond their ability.
2. Our spare parts/clothing webshop: We have been working on this for years. I used to get complaints on this very forum that there was nowhere to order spare parts online and I bugged the managers here in NA and at our international office to address this. It took so long mainly becuase our ERP software is very specifically NOT designed around retail sales. Everything is run off a local server, which is why the pages on our webshop may be slow to load. I'm begging the powers-that-be again to change this, but it took years to get them to add a webshop at all and I'm aware that for an enterprise of this size it's not as simple as throwing a switch.
The whole reason we have the webshop for spare parts in North America is to make an official simple-to-use place for consumers to buy small parts direct from our main warehouse in Europe so that local availability won't affect their ability to get replacement parts. There are so many tiny parts for years-old gear that for every part that gets ordered there are 10 that will never be sold, meaning that stocking all of these parts in all the warehouses around the world simply does not make sense. Even for more commonly sold items, such as replacement lines, the factories won't send small replacement shipments to our various warehouses/distribution points and instead our warehouses take a few shipments a few times a year, so if a particular part is in higher damand than predicted it may be unavailable in some areas, but by having one particular warehouse (the main one in Europe) stock as many parts as possible and then linking a B2C site to the inventory in that warehouse, it allows us to streamline the system and get more parts to more customers more quickly.
Yes, this system bypasses our normal distribution system and in theory should make us more money and piss off our retail partners, but having seen it in action I can tell you that this B2C enterprise will NEVER pay off the cost of building/maintaining it and for the most part shops are happy... Instead of having an angry customer off the water for a month while they wait for a part to become available, the shop can point them to a website to help them get back on the water much more quickly.
As far as I'm aware the webshop is working correctly. If you have issues using it please PM me here or just fill out the 'contact us' form at the bottom, and again, if no one gets back to you within a day or two, please send me a message with your location and your issue and I'll point you in the right direction (and hopefully figure out where the issue with the contact form is at the same time)
If you have any questions or issues or complaints please FEEL FREE TO PM ME HERE or fill out the contact form on the website or contact your dealer directly.
-Dan