First of all let me state, for the record, I am an ardent patron of MARES products especially thier Airtrim Dragon BCD. I absoloutely love the thing. Anyway, now that I've got that out of the way: Mares has been having all sorts of trouble with supplying thier retailers with thier more popular equipment .., like the Dragon Airtrim for instance. I have sent more than a few freinds over to by the vest after trying mine and they've all been told "we can't get them right now". Furthermore, I own the Mares Nemo sport watch/computer and the download interface for the watch has been unavailable almost since the first day the watch was introduced! The irony of it all is that I purchased the Nemo sport because the Titanium version of thier regular Nemo wasn't going to be available for months (to the best of my knowledge the date I was told it would available from Mares has come and gone, and still no watch/computer. Good thing I didn't wast me time waiting on that one, huh?)! As if that we
I suspect that the LDS was growing a little frustrated with the service that they, as dealers, where getting from the factory. So, MARES FACTORY REP, please take note of this and pass it on to your superiors..... Stop advertising crap that you can't even supply! You have a first rate product but you can't maintain this behavior and expect people not to get a little frustrated! I do have some "brand loyalty" but your dangerously close to sending me elsewhere.
Hi Rob,
Long time no chat. If I remember correctly we had some communication in the past. I would like to respond to your post. First of all I would like to thank you for your brand loyalty, and I am also very glad to hear you not only like your bcd but also have referred your friends.
Those of us in the sales side of our company would love for nothing more, than to be able to say we have an endless supply of our products in the warehouse for our dealers. This would be the perfect sceneario for the customer and our dealer. Of course the cost of maintaining this inventory would probably be enough to sink our ship. So we are then committed to forecasting each and every one of our more than 1000 SKU's not including thousands of parts (every month sometimes more often). I can say our inventory level is higher than it has ever been. The delivery and efforts from Italy to the U.S. is better than it's ever been. Our process of forecasting is better. We are also growing (this is good), but sometimes strains will occur with growth. One step taken is to build an entirely new production facility to focus primarily on bcds. This will be up and running soon.
While we are not 100% perfect, we are IMHO very good. Do we have a couple of holes? Sure. Do we make a mistake every now and then? Sure. Do we do our best to make sure our customers and dealers are happy? Absolutely. I find it unfortunate that you have chosen a couple of the products we are a little behind in. If I had to accentuate the positive, it would be, at least we have a product that is in greater demand than we anticipated.
As to the Nemo Sport download, they will be in our U.S. Warehouse within 1 months time. I agree that we should not market something we haven't been able to deliver. I am not sure what the challenge with bringing this interface to market was, but these things come up, and sometimes the website is not the 1st thing to be updated. We will try to do better here.
As for the Nemo Titatnium. I am not sure when you were trying to purchase it. It could have been when we were transitioning into the new Nemo Excel. This would explain the length of time that we were out of this product. I just returned from our office in Italy, and saw the investment we've made in the computer category, as well as the process of manufacturing these computers. We test every single unit, we do not batch test the computers. This takes time. There is so much human handling of these products, it actually surprises me that we are not out of product more often.
Rob, at the end of the day we are all trying very hard to keep you and our dealers happy with our products and brand. I think our participation on this board, is one example of this. I hope this lengthy explanation offers some insight into the situation, and I / we appreciate your support and would like to keep you as a brand loyal customer!
I have been absolutely DYING to get my hands on a Dragon AT, only to be told that it's on backorder and my dealer has NO IDEA when Mares is going to be sending them some more. I too am a Mares fanatic, IMHO they make outstanding equipment, but after a month now I am getting a little too frustrated
1011ster,
Thanks for your patience. Obviously I am not in greece so I can't tell you what their inventory levels are like. I hope your LDS took the time to call their distributor and ask. Most of the time we are able to have finite dates as to when products will be available to the dealer. Allowing a little wiggle room for customs etc..
We have positive inventory in the Dragon AT sizes XS - Med., XL by end of month, and we are still waiting for confirmation of Large. Maybe the distrubutor in Greece will have some sooner, they are obviously much closer to Italy.
Thanks for everyones support. Have fun and dive safe!
Best,
