SLEE SliderSteps for your +’10 Lexus GX460/ +’10 4Runner (1 Viewer)

[MrTorgue]

I have visited a bunch of venders the past year, ALL of them are insanely busy. Most of them have a dozen or less employees. Some of the larger more well established have less than 30. When 330 million people get told to shut down their life and stay home with govment money in pocket plus the rest of the world things get sold out quickly.

I bought my GX February 28th last year, thinking that this virus thing is kinda getting big, February 29th I sat on my couch and order $17,000 in parts and still took many months to receive everything.

Communication and a website system can be fixed. That's the problem in my opinion. We all get their busy that's not at least my issue. The communication and website store issues aren't related and shouldn't be an issue. If the workers are busy the owners and managers needs to step in. I was more speaking about the stock issues which fall in to that category. Hope that helps explain it a bit better.

On another note, man I wish I had $17k to spend on my GX's.

 

[re_guderian]

...On another note, man I wish I had $17k to spend on my GX's.

Not nearly as hard to do as it sounds... a grand here, $1500 there, $500 in labor here, $300 in shipping there, a few repairs over there, and boom, you're there...

 

[re_guderian]

Not nearly as hard to do as it sounds... a grand here, $1500 there, $500 in labor here, $300 in shipping there, a few repairs over there, and boom, you're there...

I've had my truck home for 3 weeks, and including the fly and drive ($1,300 for plane tickets, hotel, meals, gas, etc.) I'm in over $5k just in tires, wheels, misc junk, sliders, pedal commander, a second key, a hitch, and 50-100 bucks here and there.

 

[Washingtontaco]

Not nearly as hard to do as it sounds... a grand here, $1500 there, $500 in labor here, $300 in shipping there, a few repairs over there, and boom, you're there..

And just think I've spent $0 on labor unless of course you consider Truckvault building my Truckvault as labor? But yeah it's not hard to spend what I have and then some on parts. If I had to pay Seattle area labor rates you could easily double that.

 

[re_guderian]

And just think I've spent $0 on labor unless of course you consider Truckvault building my Truckvault as labor? But yeah it's not hard to spend what I have and then some on parts. If I had to pay Seattle area labor rates you could easily double that.

yeah, the only labor I've spent so far is tire mounting. Even going to do the UCA's myself, and will have to pay for alignment. Did a Techstream brake bleed already, too.

 

[BigSwede]

I think I ordered $1200 worth of stuff the first day...

 

[sleeoffroad]

Well, hell... Apparently "in stock" comes with a 3+ week shipping backlog. May reconsider my order. No mention of that on the website at the time of ordering, now not going to ship until the end of the month. That's not what I expect from the premiere, and premiere priced, offering...

Actually we do state on the site on the ordering page that LTL orders have a longer lead time to depart. We are also adamant that we do not sell items we do not have in stock. Seen to many issues with companies going down that road and not being able to meet deadlines. The flip side of this is that when we put a batch of items to sell it sells pretty quick and that puts a huge load on our shipping department. We also do not just strap them to a pallet and slap a label on it. The packaging takes time to do it right to ensure that we have the best chance the items arrive undamaged even if the forklift driver drops the box.

We are sorry about this and working as fast as we can to get items out of here, but unfortunately due to a huge batch of LX570 sliders that we sold, times have a slipped a little. We also have more personal coming on line in the shipping department to try and reduce lead times for shipping. Typically the lead times given out is worse case scenario.

 

[sleeoffroad]

Had a buddy order their sliders for the LX570 a few weeks back immediately upon getting the in-stock email on a Friday, come Monday morning he had an email saying they canceled his order. I guess the system allowed them to be over sold? Crappy deal regardless.

@Tex68w if possible, can you please have your friend contact me directly do that I can look into it. Our system does sync inventory to our back end and it is very unusual for it to oversell, however since it is not real time but every 15 minutes there is a remote chance that can happen. We normally only cancel orders where we can not verify address details vs. credit card details as supplied by our processor.

 

[sleeoffroad]

I have visited a bunch of venders the past year, ALL of them are insanely busy. Most of them have a dozen or less employees. Some of the larger more well established have less than 30. When 330 million people get told to shut down their life and stay home with govment money in pocket plus the rest of the world things get sold out quickly.

I bought my GX February 28th last year, thinking that this virus thing is kinda getting big, February 29th I sat on my couch and order $17,000 in parts and still took many months to receive everything.

This is very true for most shops in the 4x4 space right now. It is very difficult to hire people, parts availability from just about every vendor is an issue. Wholesale vendors to shops don't want to give out ETA's for parts due to shipping issues at ports etc. This coupled with weekly price increases on raw materials makes operating now a challenge, but that is what we choose to do, so we have to suck it up and do the best we can. We are always open to ideas and feedback to make sure we can service customers the best we can.

 

[re_guderian]

Actually we do state on the site on the ordering page that LTL orders have a longer lead time to depart.

Did I miss the 3+ weeks for in-stock product part?

...We are also adamant that we do not sell items we do not have in stock. Seen to many issues with companies going down that road and not being able to meet deadlines. The flip side of this is that when we put a batch of items to sell it sells pretty quick and that puts a huge load on our shipping department. We also do not just strap them to a pallet and slap a label on it. The packaging takes time to do it right to ensure that we have the best chance the items arrive undamaged even if the forklift driver drops the box.

We are sorry about this and working as fast as we can to get items out of here, but unfortunately due to a huge batch of LX570 sliders that we sold, times have a slipped a little. We also have more personal coming on line in the shipping department to try and reduce lead times for shipping. Typically the lead times given out is worse case scenario.

I appreciate the response and explanation. Honestly? Amazon's business model has spoiled me (and probably your entire customer base.) It's easy for me to forget that you, and most every, off road shop are small businesses (except ARB, Ironman, etc). It just seems that after waiting to get a rig, deciding on a product (which wasn't hard, as the Slee sliders on my 100 rocked, and the GX ones are well designed and thought out), and then buying the most expensive ones (yours), that to be derailed by 3+ weeks of ... shipping...of all things? is a let down. Especially when it changes my end-of-month travel plans, and by the time I install, puts me square in the middle of hotter-than-hell weather. I know, I know, my first-world problems. I have no choice but to wait. Every other shop has outrageous lead times as well. So I'll wait. But not gonna lie, it's not an experience that makes me want to recommend this to anyone else. Waiting is waiting. Doesn't matter if I'm waiting for fabrication, powder coating, or shipping. I went from being super excited about my new Slee sliders, to now having to explain to the 460 owner how she'll have to wait a month to get her sliders on that she was so excited about, and she's wondering why we paid a few hundred dollars more for these ones, compared to all the others that also have a long wait.

...Hence the email notification system. It is pretty much a first come first serve basis.

That said, a batch of 20 of these sliders will become available on the site in about a week or so. These might sell fast, but I do not believe they will all sell out in the first day based on the number of people signed up to be notified...

Got my email on Wednesday afternoon, ordered sliders on Friday afternoon, and as of today they're sold out again. Glad I pulled the trigger on this batch. Those are good problems for a business to have, they just lead to different, better problems, like how to ship all this stuff they just sold in record time.

 

[Tex68w]

@Tex68w if possible, can you please have your friend contact me directly do that I can look into it. Our system does sync inventory to our back end and it is very unusual for it to oversell, however since it is not real time but every 15 minutes there is a remote chance that can happen. We normally only cancel orders where we can not verify address details vs. credit card details as supplied by our processor.

I'll relay this to him.

 

[r2m]

And just think I've spent $0 on labor unless of course you consider Truckvault building my Truckvault as labor? But yeah it's not hard to spend what I have and then some on parts. If I had to pay Seattle area labor rates you could easily double that.

If you brought it into Seattle for work, you may wind up with a homeless person (or family?) living out of your rig!

 

[r2m]

Did I miss the 3+ weeks for in-stock product part?




I appreciate the response and explanation. Honestly? Amazon's business model has spoiled me (and probably your entire customer base.) It's easy for me to forget that you, and most every, off road shop are small businesses (except ARB, Ironman, etc). It just seems that after waiting to get a rig, deciding on a product (which wasn't hard, as the Slee sliders on my 100 rocked, and the GX ones are well designed and thought out), and then buying the most expensive ones (yours), that to be derailed by 3+ weeks of ... shipping...of all things? is a let down. Especially when it changes my end-of-month travel plans, and by the time I install, puts me square in the middle of hotter-than-hell weather. I know, I know, my first-world problems. I have no choice but to wait. Every other shop has outrageous lead times as well. So I'll wait. But not gonna lie, it's not an experience that makes me want to recommend this to anyone else. Waiting is waiting. Doesn't matter if I'm waiting for fabrication, powder coating, or shipping. I went from being super excited about my new Slee sliders, to now having to explain to the 460 owner how she'll have to wait a month to get her sliders on that she was so excited about, and she's wondering why we paid a few hundred dollars more for these ones, compared to all the others that also have a long wait.



Got my email on Wednesday afternoon, ordered sliders on Friday afternoon, and as of today they're sold out again. Glad I pulled the trigger on this batch. Those are good problems for a business to have, they just lead to different, better problems, like how to ship all this stuff they just sold in record time.

I have to agree with being spoiled with 1 and 2 day shipping, being an Amazon Prime member.
But my problem wasn't getting my parts, in fact I had to tell MetalTech and others to hold off on shipping since I had to wait 3 months in YotaMasters queue JUST to have them START working on my rig and then the work took several more months to complete. Small shop and very popular with the Toyota community down here in So. Cal.

 

[sleeoffroad]

Did I miss the 3+ weeks for in-stock product part?

It is stated on the check out page that lead time on LTL freight orders is 2-3 weeks from departing our facility. I know it is not ideal but we are working as best we can to get that lead time lower. Once you get the package you might see why it takes us more time than the average shop to get packages out.

 

[prerunner221]

@sleeoffroad, I'd be happy to take a set of sliders anyone is complaining about the wait time on. I hadn't seen this post until today and was just asking about these on Facebook. One of your guys let me know they all sold out over the weekend (of course) but I'm definitely in for the next batch, just have to know if I just order on the site understanding they are back ordered or if I have to wait until they are actually in stock. Either way, very excited for your company to be stepping into the GX realm. Looking forward to seeing a nice American made rear bumper.

 

[r2m]

@sleeoffroad, I'd be happy to take a set of sliders anyone is complaining about the wait time on. I hadn't seen this post until today and was just asking about these on Facebook. One of your guys let me know they all sold out over the weekend (of course) but I'm definitely in for the next batch, just have to know if I just order on the site understanding they are back ordered or if I have to wait until they are actually in stock. Either way, very excited for your company to be stepping into the GX realm. Looking forward to seeing a nice American made rear bumper.

I agree with prerunner221 that I too am glad that Slee is moving into the GX models! I've been following and using their products since when I had my 100 series and they had "Yellow Bus" and their solid axle swap on 100 series Landcruisers!
Albeit, I haven't purchased a lot, but I'm always checking out their web site for anything new and interesting!
Great company!

 

[sleeoffroad]

@sleeoffroad, I'd be happy to take a set of sliders anyone is complaining about the wait time on. I hadn't seen this post until today and was just asking about these on Facebook. One of your guys let me know they all sold out over the weekend (of course) but I'm definitely in for the next batch, just have to know if I just order on the site understanding they are back ordered or if I have to wait until they are actually in stock. Either way, very excited for your company to be stepping into the GX realm. Looking forward to seeing a nice American made rear bumper.

You will not be able to order if they are not in stock. You sign up with your email and as soon as the items go in stock on the site, the emails are sent out.

 

[Washingtontaco]

Christo since you are on here answering questions, why don't you have more GX product to offer? I realise that the LC for all years is popular but between the GX here and Prado everywhere else it would be nice to see a Slee front and rear bumper for the GX especially the +2014 models as they are selling well!

Get Jackson on that engineering stuff!

 

[r2m]

Christo since you are on here answering questions, why don't you have more GX product to offer? I realise that the LC for all years is popular but between the GX here and Prado everywhere else it would be nice to see a Slee front and rear bumper for the GX especially the +2014 models as they are selling well!

Get Jackson on that engineering stuff!

I think Christo needs to buy a GX460 for himself as a project truck, THEN we'll start seeing ALL KINDS of mods for our rigs!
Come on Christo, what's $25,000 for a nice GX460 to a guy of your means??? Heck! All the mods are nothing but net material and labor!

 

[sleeoffroad]

Christo since you are on here answering questions, why don't you have more GX product to offer? I realise that the LC for all years is popular but between the GX here and Prado everywhere else it would be nice to see a Slee front and rear bumper for the GX especially the +2014 models as they are selling well!

Get Jackson on that engineering stuff!

We are prototyping as fast as we can. Right now the 200 is taking most of our time together with small parts for all models. Eventually we will get to the GX models for more parts. Just not promise on time right now. We have access to both GX470's and GX460's in the company, so not shortage of trucks, just time