Re: Alrendo Bravo
Verfasst: Di 21. Dez 2021, 22:24
Hello everyone. This is Connor from Alrendo or as you lot know me, the guy who has caused all the problems in this post.
First off, I would like to apologise in advance because I have to use google translate due to my poor German language abilities. I will post in both translated German and English in case there is something that doesn’t translate well.
*DELAY EXCUSES INCOMING, IF YOU DON’T WANT TO HEAR THEM, SKIP AHEAD.
So, the first thing that I should probably tell you lot is 2021 has been an utterly terrible year for starting a new motorcycles company. The bikes have been delayed for multiple reasons but they were completely out of my control. We have had a few pre-production models in China built pretty quickly in China at the end of 2020 but that was probably the last time anything has been built on time. I was expecting to receive my first pre-production bike in January/February but didn’t get it until May so I probably should have taken that as a sign of the delays but I was only thinking about what the quality of the bike would be like.
When I actually saw the bike, I was really impressed and it made me completely forget about the 3-month delay. I probably should have been a little less optimistic about the delivery times I was told by the guys at the factory but since this was the first time I have had to communicate delivery times to dealerships and customers, I just passed on the estimated delivery times I was given. I don’t know exactly how the factory came up with those dates but every time I spoke with my partner in China, the date would have changed. Although my 2 partners and I do have experience with electric motorcycles and scooters, this is the first time we were building something like the TS Bravo and there were certain parts of the bike that required a lot more trial and error with parts and suppliers than cheap, Chinese scooters. I think this was the first (and biggest) reason that there have been constant delays. Theres always something new that we had not thought of that needs a new design or an upgrade. Starting a motorcycle company is much harder than it looks.
The second reason is because we are still a small company and Chinese suppliers treat you solely according to the quantity we would order. Companies like Niu and SuperSoco buy 100k+ parts at a time so suppliers will do anything they can for those clients. I was actually told that these big scooter companies order enough product that when they negotiate, they base it off the cost of raw materials like the current price of steel and paint then just add a % on top and that works because of how big their orders are. We obviously are not in the position to do something like that yet. We tried to get around this by showing suppliers the bike and explaining to them how we were planning on selling high volumes and it worked with some of them so they were sold on Alrendo and were very helpful. The problem was that not all the suppliers believed us and had a tendency to delay our orders when they received these other huge orders. This then caused a chain reaction where we were stuck waiting for parts so we couldn’t order the next batch of parts from the suppliers who did see potential in the company which caused them to lose faith and also start favouring other orders. Most of the cheaper EV companies would just order parts from another company that could deliver faster (anyone who has experience importing Chinese scooters will have noticed different parts fitted on different batches) but we were not able to do that because it can seriously compromise the quality of batches when you fit untested parts. These supply chain problems were made even worse after Chinese New Year 2021 since the factories that didn’t have big orders from the big companies couldn’t afford to keep operating until they received enough orders. This caused them to simply close down operations for an extra month or two to save costs. I had no idea how fragile the supply chains were until covid. We have actually started manufacturing more of our own parts to avoid this in the future but this takes time and couldn’t prevent delays this year.
The final reason there are delays at the moment is the first batch of bikes arrived in mid-November and there were a lot of quality control issues. My partner in China did not get a chance to properly inspect the bikes and they were sent out with poorly painted frames and a lot of panel gaps. When I found out about this, I sent pictures to China and they delayed the batch they were working on to fix the problems. They have been disassembled and rebuilt using powder coated frames with the panel brackets relocated to improve the panel fitment. The guys at the factory are confident that they can get these bikes shipped next week. These are the test ride bikes going to the rest of the dealerships across Europe that are listed on the Alrendo.com website. My partner has taken full responsibility for the next batch of bikes because I am going to have to travel to all the dealerships next year and re-frame all of the bikes already delivered with a powder coated frame. I obviously cannot go on a repair road trip around Europe after every batch arrives. I know there is a lot of frustration when the bikes are delayed but its better to deliver a high quality product late than rush and deliver a bike with problems. I say that as a man who has been receiving angry emails asking “where is my bike?” for the last 4 months. I want them here more than anyone.
There is one bike sitting in my warehouse in Prague just now that is going to a dealership in Germany but there is a BMS wiring issue that has affected 4 of the bikes from this batch (problem unique to these older 16.6kwh battery packs). I was at EICMA this year and was hoping to get the bike diagnosed when I returned from Italy but on the 2nd last day, myself and a colleague tested positive for Covid so I could not go to the warehouse until I was out of isolation. In order to keep overhead costs down, I wasn’t even able to hire anyone to help me until a couple months ago and he also came to EICMA and caught covid.
So yeah, it’s been a tough year. Excuses over.
How things stand at the moment.
The guys across Europe that have working bikes at the moment seem to love them and I just heard back from our Dutch distributor who had one of is guys do a review. The only real feedback I’ve had so far is the range is exceptional. They took out a TS Bravo and a Zero SRS and the difference in range really showed on the long journeys. This should be the first in-depth YouTube review. There are only 15 bikes in Europe at the moment (3 are still in my warehouse) so I would expect no more reviews until probably February at the earliest.
I’m hoping this next batch arrive at the end of January. My partner at the factory has been overseeing the manufacturing to ensure a good level of quality control and once these bikes are powder-coated, all the problems from the first batch will have been fixed. We have also heard rumours that some logistics companies are allowing large batteries to be shipped by train again so if that is true, we will be able to reduce out delivery times by about 3 weeks but it may just be a rumour.
The next batch after that is arriving late February. If someone wanted to buy a TS Bravo, this is when you can do it. Our plan is to always have stock in Prague from Spring next year so fingers crossed. It has been impossible to just ship high volumes of bikes this year since we would literally be losing money on every bike. When you have very slim profit margins, paying $25,000 USD to ship a 40ft container just doesn’t work. Luckily, prices are already going down now so next year is looking really good.
If you guys have any questions, I’ll try to keep checking this forum.
First off, I would like to apologise in advance because I have to use google translate due to my poor German language abilities. I will post in both translated German and English in case there is something that doesn’t translate well.
*DELAY EXCUSES INCOMING, IF YOU DON’T WANT TO HEAR THEM, SKIP AHEAD.
So, the first thing that I should probably tell you lot is 2021 has been an utterly terrible year for starting a new motorcycles company. The bikes have been delayed for multiple reasons but they were completely out of my control. We have had a few pre-production models in China built pretty quickly in China at the end of 2020 but that was probably the last time anything has been built on time. I was expecting to receive my first pre-production bike in January/February but didn’t get it until May so I probably should have taken that as a sign of the delays but I was only thinking about what the quality of the bike would be like.
When I actually saw the bike, I was really impressed and it made me completely forget about the 3-month delay. I probably should have been a little less optimistic about the delivery times I was told by the guys at the factory but since this was the first time I have had to communicate delivery times to dealerships and customers, I just passed on the estimated delivery times I was given. I don’t know exactly how the factory came up with those dates but every time I spoke with my partner in China, the date would have changed. Although my 2 partners and I do have experience with electric motorcycles and scooters, this is the first time we were building something like the TS Bravo and there were certain parts of the bike that required a lot more trial and error with parts and suppliers than cheap, Chinese scooters. I think this was the first (and biggest) reason that there have been constant delays. Theres always something new that we had not thought of that needs a new design or an upgrade. Starting a motorcycle company is much harder than it looks.
The second reason is because we are still a small company and Chinese suppliers treat you solely according to the quantity we would order. Companies like Niu and SuperSoco buy 100k+ parts at a time so suppliers will do anything they can for those clients. I was actually told that these big scooter companies order enough product that when they negotiate, they base it off the cost of raw materials like the current price of steel and paint then just add a % on top and that works because of how big their orders are. We obviously are not in the position to do something like that yet. We tried to get around this by showing suppliers the bike and explaining to them how we were planning on selling high volumes and it worked with some of them so they were sold on Alrendo and were very helpful. The problem was that not all the suppliers believed us and had a tendency to delay our orders when they received these other huge orders. This then caused a chain reaction where we were stuck waiting for parts so we couldn’t order the next batch of parts from the suppliers who did see potential in the company which caused them to lose faith and also start favouring other orders. Most of the cheaper EV companies would just order parts from another company that could deliver faster (anyone who has experience importing Chinese scooters will have noticed different parts fitted on different batches) but we were not able to do that because it can seriously compromise the quality of batches when you fit untested parts. These supply chain problems were made even worse after Chinese New Year 2021 since the factories that didn’t have big orders from the big companies couldn’t afford to keep operating until they received enough orders. This caused them to simply close down operations for an extra month or two to save costs. I had no idea how fragile the supply chains were until covid. We have actually started manufacturing more of our own parts to avoid this in the future but this takes time and couldn’t prevent delays this year.
The final reason there are delays at the moment is the first batch of bikes arrived in mid-November and there were a lot of quality control issues. My partner in China did not get a chance to properly inspect the bikes and they were sent out with poorly painted frames and a lot of panel gaps. When I found out about this, I sent pictures to China and they delayed the batch they were working on to fix the problems. They have been disassembled and rebuilt using powder coated frames with the panel brackets relocated to improve the panel fitment. The guys at the factory are confident that they can get these bikes shipped next week. These are the test ride bikes going to the rest of the dealerships across Europe that are listed on the Alrendo.com website. My partner has taken full responsibility for the next batch of bikes because I am going to have to travel to all the dealerships next year and re-frame all of the bikes already delivered with a powder coated frame. I obviously cannot go on a repair road trip around Europe after every batch arrives. I know there is a lot of frustration when the bikes are delayed but its better to deliver a high quality product late than rush and deliver a bike with problems. I say that as a man who has been receiving angry emails asking “where is my bike?” for the last 4 months. I want them here more than anyone.
There is one bike sitting in my warehouse in Prague just now that is going to a dealership in Germany but there is a BMS wiring issue that has affected 4 of the bikes from this batch (problem unique to these older 16.6kwh battery packs). I was at EICMA this year and was hoping to get the bike diagnosed when I returned from Italy but on the 2nd last day, myself and a colleague tested positive for Covid so I could not go to the warehouse until I was out of isolation. In order to keep overhead costs down, I wasn’t even able to hire anyone to help me until a couple months ago and he also came to EICMA and caught covid.
So yeah, it’s been a tough year. Excuses over.
How things stand at the moment.
The guys across Europe that have working bikes at the moment seem to love them and I just heard back from our Dutch distributor who had one of is guys do a review. The only real feedback I’ve had so far is the range is exceptional. They took out a TS Bravo and a Zero SRS and the difference in range really showed on the long journeys. This should be the first in-depth YouTube review. There are only 15 bikes in Europe at the moment (3 are still in my warehouse) so I would expect no more reviews until probably February at the earliest.
I’m hoping this next batch arrive at the end of January. My partner at the factory has been overseeing the manufacturing to ensure a good level of quality control and once these bikes are powder-coated, all the problems from the first batch will have been fixed. We have also heard rumours that some logistics companies are allowing large batteries to be shipped by train again so if that is true, we will be able to reduce out delivery times by about 3 weeks but it may just be a rumour.
The next batch after that is arriving late February. If someone wanted to buy a TS Bravo, this is when you can do it. Our plan is to always have stock in Prague from Spring next year so fingers crossed. It has been impossible to just ship high volumes of bikes this year since we would literally be losing money on every bike. When you have very slim profit margins, paying $25,000 USD to ship a 40ft container just doesn’t work. Luckily, prices are already going down now so next year is looking really good.
If you guys have any questions, I’ll try to keep checking this forum.