Is there a "real" us warehouse?

[dray]

Is there a real US warehouse? address?
Last I heard they would take 5+ weeks to arrive.

Anyone know first hand?

Why would shipping take sooo long from US warehouse?

The problem being if anyone orders from China and had problems with an item shipping alone would break the bank.

[ahend]

I ordered a system on June 1st and received a notice from Philip Yao on the 2nd, stating that the US warehouse is currently out of stock and more units are enroute via sea container. He said the shipment will take two weeks, and to figure a third week for order processing and delivery inside the country. I’m completely fine with that. The timely and apologetic response I received was most appreciated. I’ve got plenty of research to do yet anyway.
When I put it all in perspective, the cost, presented kit quality and completeness, shipping delays, and potential ordering confusion, it still adds up to a great opportunity to get involved with the technology. In the grand scheme of things, a US based warehouse is not that important to me.
As my relationship with Golden Motor progresses, I hope, and look forward to having the same outlook.

Andy
   

[dray]

Thats the problem.

I have don't alot of research and everyone says "alll" the Chinese companies "say" they have a US warehouse.
That it is all untrue and if you have a bogus hub you are screwed.

There is no address on the website, no one has any first hand knowledge.

I had to drive 2 hours north to buy a couple of the wilderness energy kits for $450 each. But I am looking to buy a few more for friends etc. But if you get a bogus hub you are screwed, will take 3-4 weeks to ship to china + cost of shipping then another 3-4 weeks back.

I wouldnt mind buying kits from golden but I want to know that there is an actual warehouse and a phone number. I don't want to get stuck with bad unrepairable or replaceable junk.

[myelectricbike]

In that case maybe Wal-Mart has what you need. Wal-Mart Electric Bikes

[dray]

Way to go smart ass..

I am looking for a real solution.

The e-bike kits are alot of fun (weather permitted). But as with any product buying crap is just that. Crap.

Without any real knowledge of a company here in the US why don't you just send me your $$ and I may send you a working model or maybe not. Take your chances.

Dollars are not the issue. As with any consumer you and the rest of us are trying to get the best that we can for our dollar. Why pay $1200 for a bionix hub kit that simply has a different winding?

But then again why send $175 to a company that is represented by a smart ass like you?

That is not how real business works. Real business works with mutual trust and mutual benefeit.
What that means so that you might understand it is that when the business has been completed both parties walk away with a feeling of gain.

But keep up the good work

[myelectricbike]

If you're not yet ready to take a chance maybe you need to stick with training wheels and stay away from motors.

[dray]

Thank you =)
We were working on buying 320 kits through Philip Yao but you have made our decision to go with a non smart ass company. Gru Bee Inc. I will forward the message to him.

Keep up the good work

[myelectricbike]

I suggest you follow the original advice you gave everyone else in your first post.

Neither I nor Golden need a whiner or a Troll to cause needless and endless problems over one kit much less lie about 320 just to see how much of a discount you can get.

[OneEye]

dray,

I'm a bit confused by your posts.  You suggest you were working directly with Phillip Yao to order 320 kits and start to act as a distributor of the kits in your area (through your construction company, correct?).  If you are serious about becoming a retail distributor, you can buy a single kit to test the quality yourself, and then work out the details with the company about warranty support, warehousing, shipping times, etc.  This message forum isn't going to help you much with those details.  Here is a good place to get user feedback on how they like the kit, what they don't like, personal experience, etc.  It might be a good place to find out what different users have done or have had to do if they were shipped a bad kit or something like that, but since the forum is new and doesn't have that many users on-board, that information is less likely to be here.  The forum doesn't seem well suited to work out larger support issues for wholesale/retail distribution, etc.  Those are for you to work out with a company rep.

Having a "warehouse" in the US is actually a pretty cheap thing to do.  Depending on the volume of product the company moves it can be anything from a large distributor style traditional warehouse, to an oversized self-storage rental with an attached 1-room office.  Watermelon on the instructables.com website said recently that a shipment of hub motors has arrived at the west coast port, so should be arriving at the warehouse to be shipped soon.  You might try contacting him to see who his company contact is.  Then you can discuss your concerns with the company directly.

Overall, it doesn't seem like a great idea to make business decisions based on your impression of one user in a user forum.  "myelectricbike" hasn't made himself out to be an official company representative, just a user (and perhaps distributor?) who is very active on this forum.  Admittedly you two haven't hit it off very well, but you must also admit your posts have been somewhat leading and derogotory.

Ah well, such is the internet.

By the way, how do you like your Wilderness Energy kits?  Did you get the brushed or brushless ones?


-Mike

[dray]

I drove up to Rolling hills estates to PEV? bike store.. All they had was half of a  kit. They said it was the brushless version which was what I was looking for. But on my return home I found it was brushed version BD-36. But I went and bought batteries etc to try it out.

With 3 12v 12ah batteries it is waay to heavy in my opinion and the max milage is around 13 miles. with speed up to around 22 mph.

So yesterday I ordered a Crystalyte 408 and contacted Sanforce in China for bulk nimh batteries. I was also lucky to find Gru Bee intl. They are direct importers located in Oklahoma. Don Grube did alot of research and legwork and has since moved from Oklahoma to China. His main warehouse is still in Oklahome and hes a pretty cool guy that has designed all his own brushless windings manufactured in china.

Yeah we have a Construction Company www.drayconstruction.com, a cabinetry company, and we also do political fundraising. Last year I bought 3 cnc machines so the company doesnt really need me around, meanwhile we have 2 offices, one in Santa and one in Costa Mesa, Ca.

The Santa Ana office has 3,000sq feet of office space and 3,000sq feet of warehouse space. I am dedicationg 1,000sq feet of each to the hubs.

The manufacturer of the NIMH batteries is a fairly good price 36V 13 MA for $200 per pack in quantities over 100.

I have a Taiwanese friend and we are each dedicating $20k to try out selling hubs. I did 2 trips to Shenzhen and one trip traveling from Beijing all the way south to Shanghia last year looking for a fun priduct to import.

I really wanted to import the 80cc 2 cycle motor kits, but they are too loud and also the EPA is now forbidding it.

So at this time I am still waiting on the BL-36 (brushless version) and waiting on the Crystalyte 408.
I am not looking to invest in high end, but instead somewhere in the middle, a good strong 36v 350-500w hub kit and lithium batteries.

With the FOB and 100 kits at a time I am looking at around $14k give or take depending upon who I go with

And  Nimh batteries 36V 13ah with charger and padded soft pack at close to $25k

But it will be a fun venture

[OneEye]

Well, best of luck with the venture.  I hope you can get the answers you need directly from the company.

-Mike

[myelectricbike]

Thanks OneEye. Your posts always provide enough detail so everyone can see the light.

My interest in being a distributor arose more or less so I would not have to pay another distributor a commission for depleting his stock. My role as a dealer originated from being a very happy owner who experienced a few technical glitches along the way and saw an opportunity to help other owners and then customers avoid the same glitches I experienced as well as to learn about any glitches they experienced which I might avoid. That is in fact what this forum is for.

Selling kits is not a money making enterprise for me. If you read the product liability agreement then it becomes clear that this kit is not a toy even though not regulated by the Department of Motor Vehicles in the USA as the result of US Senate SR1156. I want to be sure that  everyone who buys a kit from me knows that the bike they put it on must be treated as a motor vehicle even though it is not. This is not some kind of game to fill my pockets with money in exchange for littering the highways with dead or injured bodies and painting the highways with blood. The reality is that more people died on American highways during each year of the Korean, Vietnam, Iraq I and Iraq II wars than were killed in combat during the same year. We do not want or need any profit monger distributors and dealers who are only out to make a buck and then try to blame everything on the company’s or the product’s fault when their first customer gets killed.

Another reason is Crystalyte (according to a Canadian Crystalyte dealer) only sold a total of 10,000 kits in the USA and Canada last year. Another thing is that as a distributor you must agree to serve company orders and dealer orders as well which means accurately projecting how to divide your order of 336 kits according to configuration type. Otherwise you may end up spending more on shipping to exchange kits with other distributors than your profit will allow. 

Thanks again OneEye for helping to straighten this guy out and to send him somewhere else.

[dray]

Sounds very complicated 

[myelectricbike]

It is very complicated. Ebikes are fun but their power and top speed are limited by law which suggests that safety is no issue when in fact safety is number one. I never wore a helmet on my motorcycle for the three years I road 40 miles a day back and forth to college. I was super lucky to have survived the fall I took three weeks ago and the main reason I did is because I was wearing a helmet. My legs are still bloated and swollen. The fall convinced me to get a trailer. The backpack only weighed in at 60 lbs and the extra lead acid 12AH battery for lights at eight lbs plus the other three for the motor. An SUV cut me off at an intersection and I lost just enough momentum and speed that my balance was lost. I could not stop my fall into the street. The weight of the backpack and the bike kept me pinned in the road as tires whizzed by my head. I could not reach the backpack buckles because the straps had my arms pinned. I finally managed enough strength to unlatch one buckle and slid further out into the street from the backpack batteries and bike. Several people turned around after I was up and offered their help and a passing cop even went looking for the the SUV but the real problem is that I did not know that to much weight can be deadly on any kind of bike.

After the fall $472 for LiFePo4 battery pack plus $85 or $159 for the charger sounded really good but its the 12 lbs that sounds like too much. Its have the weight of lead acid but still the equivalent of nearly 6 liters of water. And mounting stuff closer to the axle for a lower center of gravity only makes an ebike harder to control since gravity is less able to help you lean quickly to one side or the other. If you stick around you'll find out that it is not the quality of the kit that is the problem but the lack of knowledge on the part of the owner.

With the added weight and power of a motorized bike safety and not fun or profit for an ebike salesman had better be the number one issue and I haven't even mentioned the necessity of a heavy duty frame. If you want to sell kits put everything else but safety - meaning fun and/or profit - out of your head so you will not be tempted to wrongfully advise a parent that their kid is not still too young to ride an ebike on the street.

[OneEye]

Glad you survived your fall, myelectricbike.  I've been told by my motorcycling coworkers there are two kinds of riders: those who have taken a spill on their motorcycle, and those who are going to.  I wonder if the same is true of bicycles/e-bikes.  A number of places promoting bicycle commuting make the claim cycling is safer than driving.  It has always made me ask myself if that is normalized on a vehicle-mile basis (or more to the point on a passenger-vehicle-mile basis), or if they are simply comparing gross numbers.  Most decisions on highway/road safety improvements are made on an accidents/deaths per vehicle-mile basis because it is considered to be a more rational comparison.

There is certainly a reason the law includes a 16 year age requirement for the bikes.  Do you recall if SR1156 included the mandatory bike helmet provision for e-bikes, or is that just covered under state law in most places?

-Mike