A friend of mine **** King started building peddle cars and Speedy Bill bought a couple of them and told **** that he was going to make them himself and sell them. He copied ****s design and sold the simple cars that I think are still available in the catalog. There was nothing **** could do about it. **** went on to build high end peddle cars to this day on an individual basis. https://www.bing.com/videos/rivervi...om/channel/UCsfK1CwE5Dk5w5JIkAJJABQ&FORM=VIRE
I'm a little unclear on the point you're trying to make here. The way I'm reading it is as though you're saying that Speedway stealing designs is fair because some of those little guys wouldn't have made it anyways because of too much demand, so no harm done. But I ***ume that's not what you're meaning to communicate? If someone has a good product but can't keep up to demand, that would be a great opportunity for Speedway to purchase the product or produce something similar but not the same. Then again I guess you don't get that size without being a bit ruthless. I spent 40 years in the speed equipment industry doing advertising and marketing. In the 60's and 70's I put out press releases to all of the major car magazines with copy and a photo of a new product for the WHAT'S NEW sections all the magazines featured. If a couple of those releases appeared in HOT ROD, CAR CRAFT and POP HOT RODDING, the mailman would get a hernia delivering inquiries and the guy working out of his garage would be deluged with inquiries. If a Speedway saw it and ordered a thousand widgets and the guy could only produce 250, chances are Speedy Bill offered to buy the guy out. Unfortunately, the guy's ego got in the way and Speedy would figure out a way to manufacture the widget in Lincoln. True story: A header maker told me that he made some headers for a couple of ramp trucks and mileage improved 15%. I ran some ads in a couple of RV magazines and the inquiries were over whelming. It was impossible to meet the demand and threats of law suits came in weekly. It took a year to get things calmed down. After the client sold the header business, he ended up opening another shop that only built custom headers for RV's! I've never condoned the ripping off of products by the big guys. Just explaining that there are different cir***stances that create the appearance of a rip off. Final thought; I had a client that had the term PAT PENDING cast into every product they made. He said that the pattern maker's name was Pat Pending and he signed his work.
This has nothing to do with Speedway but the 70's Datsun 4x4 trucks. I guy from town, Longview-Kelso Wash. designed and built a four-wheel drive setup for the new two-wheel drive pickups. he used new pickups which he bought from Datsun and new jeep 4x4 parts and machined adapters and made parts to complete the trucks. He then sold the trucks thru Datsun in their dealerships, and they had a Datsun warranty. If you drove by his shop, there would be 50 plus Datsun trucks lined up waiting to be converted. The story go's that Datsun offered him a million bucks to sell out his business and when he refused, they quite selling him Datsun pickups and just did the conversion without him.
You speak the truth. I’ve never had a problem with any circle track suppliers. They definitely want your business.
My problem with Speedway is that they don't have any good deals in their "Garage Sale" section anymore. About 10 years ago, I bought a set of 3 3/4 X 3 5/16 Offenhauser pistons (including rings, pins, and locks) from them for $100. Built my 258' flathead around them and they're great! The last 5 years or so, 10% off a headlight with a big dent in it is about all I've seen. Oh yeah, and size "S" and "****L" T-shirt's.
Actually no. Nearly every tool I've tried from hobo freight has been trash. If it didn't stretch or break right off it was sloppy and rounded bolts. And you're ***uming I went in there immediately hating on them. Got it *** backwards. Went in to give them a try. Very little there besides what I mentioned and tool boxes that aren't icon junk are worth messing with
And you're only ***uming it's unfair. I've lost enough blood from trash hobo freight stuff that it's more than fair
You read all of this. You saw the receipts. You saw the pattern. You watched a small business get flattened and intellectual property treated like a free buffet. And your response was… “Add to Cart.” Ugh... I'm gonna hang up now.
So you say "If a Speedway saw it and ordered a thousand widgets and the guy could only produce 250, chances are Speedy Bill offered to buy the guy out. Unfortunately, the guy's ego got in the way and Speedy would figure out a way to manufacture the widget in Lincoln." I mean... If someone has a good product but can't meet demand, that's their business to screw up. It doesn't sound like it was that guy's ego that was getting in the way, if it's as described. Described that way it sounds like Speedy cared about money over people. Of course I wasn't there, so I'm just attempting to interpret what you're saying.
Supply and demand. That works in normal growth, but if there is difficult growth or big money wanting to affect the normal fluctuations (Diamond supply for decades, or hard drives this year), the big guy wins. Oil "crisis" anyone?
Most of you will never experience what a few of us have. Work hard, develop a product, market a produce than have it poached out from under you. It's an experience you never get over. My life has went on, and the rest of my business flourished. There's a higher power looking over most of us and will determine the final outcome.
Innovators, producers, and talented people get ****ed over in the business world every day, but that doesn't make it right. Every time someone tells me in my business that " people will pay for quality", my suggestion is to compare the size of Walmart's parking lot to the parking lot of a business trying to sell only quality products. Being self employed for almost 50 years, unfortunately I make **** money, but I'm 100% with Krylon and Ryan, and will pay more from the company/source that I think earned my business. There are principals involved, in my humble opinion.
I've been there and done that. Many years ago I produced an automotive product. One of our local marketing companies saw my product and wanted to sell them "for me" but they wanted 200 of the product in stock for immediate delivery. I did not have the ability nor the resources to produce that number of the product, so the story ended, or so I thought. I did produce around 50 of those items over a few month span. About a year later I was pretty surprised to find the product I was producing for sale, on the shelves of the local marketing company. Of course I contacted the company owner concerning my produce (with a different name attached). The owner looked me in the eye and told me he bought the product off the open market and really liked it. He told me searched for a patent but couldn't find one. Since he bought it on the open market, and no patent exists, the product is considered an open market product and can be reproduced by anyone. A simple call to the Government Patent office confirmed the fact. A product has to be registered with design and engineering drawings submitted to the patent office, where the request has to be verified through research to prove an existing patent does not already exist before a patent number can be ***igned. The patent process has to be started before the design enters production. (Patent pending is for production and marketing to begin before the research has been completed). If the product is on the market for more then a year before the patent process reaches a certain point, the product becomes an open market design and can not be patented by anyone. Even if a patent is issued, a product redesign that results in an improvement can over ride the original patent. This was going on for 100 years before Speedway ever did it. Its the chance you take if you decide to produce anything in this world. Your ignorance or disagreement about the way things work does not effect how things actually work. It was the very reason the patent office was first created, but it didn't take long for lawyers to over ride that system. Its is also why many products are no longer patented, a "new" design of a product that is under a patent can easily byp*** the complex system that was intended to protect the original product design.
Yep, it's a dog eat dog world out there. And it's usually the bigger dog that wins. The way things are set up in the justice system it doesn't always come down to right or wrong. If you have the resources to outlast the opposition you will mostly come out on top. Little dogs beware.!!!
One time he called me to ask how my order was (time/condition) and how the parts were. I was dumbfounded and didn't believe it was him at first, he convinced me it was really him and continued on to ask me about what I was building and if there was anything they didn't offer but I needed. Pretty cool experience.
Woody: Hey Mr Petersen, how’s it going? Norm: It’s a dog eat dog world out there, Woody, And I’m wearing Milkbone underwear!
I'm all in favor of your ethical stance, but what do you do when Walmart/Speedway is the only source for what you need?
Honestly? Keep looking, reuse old stuff, change direction. I'm talking about important stuff. Don't buy anything mechanical from WM, or anything with a power cord, or moving parts. No exceptions. I know which corners are cut on some things, because of my work, and they sell stuff that shouldn't be on the market, from both a quality and safety standpoint, and nobody in that company gives a ****, as long as people fall for price only. That's all I'm gonna say, this is the HAMB. I got a lot of stories, but not for Ryan's place.
We got to realize that's been the plan for the last 50 years people we elected regulated us out of compe***ion and companies outsourced our jobs for cheap or slave labor from other countries. We have been running against the wind ever since.
And that is vague enough that some companies will copy a product do a minor change, call it improvement and get away with copying the product. I mostly buy name brands from Speedway, one of the great advantage is the free shipping, buying from 4 or 5 suppliers because none carry or make everything that you need can add hundreds of $ just for shipping. Lately I've seen their price going up on a lot of the stuff they're selling, it's getting close to cancel the advantage of the free shipping. Anyway it's almost one year I didn't buy anything from any US suppliers for political reasons despite the low $.
I reread this thread and the comments about Hot Rod Works and it begs the questions- How much money did Hot Rod Works make off their deal with Speedway? How many people only know about them because of Speedway? Furthermore Speedway is an oval track parts dealer too! Oval trackers have been running open drive Q.C.s since the 1950! Halibrand and Frankland both offered open drive Q.C. kits long before Hot Rod Works was formed. Speedway could have used any number of sources to develop their open drive kit.
@mad mikey Just asking Q -T was it used first in H-R ing Land speed or Arena dirt racing ? & I think somewhere in this thread seen that Summit racing dropped Speed Master parts because of what S-W accused of stealing designs I think I seen some where that NHRA promoting SpeedMaster parts Company sponsorship & its all over JFR cars I have not had my hands on there parts By pic I seen cheap knock offs , So are parts cheap , I definitely would not run their Aluminum heads, even on stock Application !! That one part I feel need to be Brodix, Dart , AFR ect.
[QUOTE=" Ryan, its not 2014 anymore. .[/QUOTE] It’s also not 1964 anymore. But I am very grateful that we still have the HAMB
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