How does one get in touch with you these days. Phone number, web site? And what are you selling still?
I sell a full line of repair kits - exactly what I was selling before - (trans kits, transfer case kits, timing belt kits, water pumps, knuckle kits, belts, hoses, glow plugs, engine rebuild kits, fan clutches, clutch kits, gasket sets, brake parts like the smaller rotors for the HDJs, and so on - it's a HUGE parts line-up and goes far beyond Land Cruisers), and I have access to ARB and all the other accessory brands I sold before. The line of parts I sell for Land Cruisers (and other makes, models) is virtually identical to what Rob was selling from Terrain Tamer (and which we used to sell at RADD before the N. American supply of Terrain Tamer re-shuffled a few years ago) - the parts I supply are from DriveTech4x4, which is also out of Australia. The parent company is MotoSpecs - which is a large Australian Supplier of parts for all makes models of vehicles available in Australia.
My inventory is divided between Victoria and Kamloops at the current time, with most of it being in Kamloops and a buddy of mine helps me ship it from there to wherever it needs to go. It can cause a few delays as a result, and at some point I'll try to find a 3-PL to handle it.
I'm working on drop shipping arrangements with my various suppliers as I'm wanting to be location-less so that I can travel more. I'm also working on getting better shipping rates for both importing, which dramatically affects the retail cost of the parts I sell, as well as the international shipping of parts outside of Canada.
Yes, the number on the website. I did a bunch of updates explaining what I was up to and what the disposition of Radd was, but they got lost somehow and didn't stay posted for more than a brief time. I'll put that all up again soon, but I didn't keep a copy of what I wrote so I have to start from scratch.
I get asked about this a lot, so I'll explain it here: the webstore I had up disappeared because I missed a few major server upgrades while I was away for a few weeks last May/June and then a full software re-write that was incompatible with what I had up previously. I had a new webstore up, which was a lot better, but at a different address (another change that was forced on me by my provider) - I just didn't make it public because it wasn't quote ready to go. It takes a LOT of money and time to put up a webstore and then re-write all the return, warranty, about us BS and that was lost during the updates that I missed out on... the payback time to break even on these kinds of updates is very long. Also, I have so far haven't found the motivation to re-do it as I was super busy with other things last spring and summer plus a sudden death in our family that caused me to reassess a few things about how i was living my life.
It's also about making this sustainable for me personally; there's often a huge amount of 'take' from my knowledge base and time, and not a lot of 'return' through sales to make it worth it for me - this is a fairly common remark that some others in this industry share when we talk privately, and I suspect in time you'll see quite a few of the smaller businesses that offer specialty services either disappearing because of frustration/burn-out, they can't afford or keep up with the rate eComm and technology changes, or charging a lot more for what they do so they can try to make ends meet.
Anyhow, a longer answer than you asked for...
~John
