Sherrill Price Increase

NickfromWI

King of Splices
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I heard a rumor a few days ago that a few arborist retail places that we know might be increasing price on plastic goods (rope!) by as much as 25%.

I saw this on sherrill's website today:
 

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If every one pays me like they are supposed to maybe I can buy a spool of climbing line before that happens. I'd be set for years.
 
Luckily I have enough rope to last me the 2 more years I will be in this business.
 
Maybe I should sell my chipper, use the money to buy up spools of rope and then turn around and undercut Sherrrill's new raised prices?

Has anyone heard if the other companies are going to follow suit? I am poor right now but I need rope and a new saddle.
 
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  • #8
The original rumor I heard said that price increases would be at baileys, sherrill, wesspur, and bishop. I didn't think anything about it...until I saw sherrill's banner on their site.

If people ever want to go in on a spool of rope, if there's splicing involved I could go get the 600' from bishop and chop it, sell it and ship it to folks. It might save a few bucks along the way. And I could pick up other things for ya at bishop while I'm there, if you wanted me to. I go there occasionally as it is.

love
nick
 
I've played around with lots of new ropes but I think I may just get a spool of the Safety Blue HiVi. I'm just not that fancy in my tastes.
 
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  • #11
Buzzzline is not for me. It is a beefy line, if you like that. It is an orange TrueBlue. 12 strand ropes don't' stay very round under load...but maybe that's not a big deal.

It feels solid when you climb on it.

love
nick
 
I was never a True Blue fan. It seemed to cut or fray to easily. Nice and soft though.
 
I'm getting a lot of phone calls about this over the last week, and all I can say is that I don't know about any price increases coming down the pipe here at Wesspur. Not only has nobody said anything to me about this, but I also can't think of reason why we'd have to raise prices. All of our manufacturers are doing as much as they can to absorb cost increases, and so very few increases have actually been passed along to the retailers. Could be this is just Sherrill.
 
Tobe needs more walking around money. :drink:

He now has investors to answer to. it can be tough having people outside the co. dictate what gets done. I hope they dont raise their prices out of reach, it would good for Wesspur though!
 
Indeed I love fishing, but these days limiting it to bass with tree buds. Attached is one with Scott Prophett (Portawrap coinventor from Atlanta) in NC recently.

Geez Louise. You guys ever had that competitor who doesn't simply underbid your price and move on, but goes out of their way to deliver petty untruths to good customers in an attempt to undermine precious relationships?

The fact is that Samson (headquartered in the same state, correction, same city as aforementioned truth dodger) and Petzl (among primary suppliers) distributed notice 2 months ago to ALL resellers of their products. Below is cut and paste documentation for your review;

________________________________________________________________

June 12, 2008

To our valued customers

In the last several months we have been hit with rapidly escalating raw material and freight prices. These increases are driven by rising energy costs and the continued weakness of the US dollar. The following table illustrates the change in costs over 2007:

Dyneema - 16%
Nylon - 10%
Polyester - 16%
Polypro - 16%
Freight: - 10-15%

As a result of these increases we will be implementing a general price increase of 9%, effective for shipments on or after August 1st, 2008. You will receive new price lists shortly.

Our goal with this price increase is to recover the majority of our direct material and freight cost increases. While we have also experienced wage and overhead cost increases, we continue to offset these increases through manufacturing efficiency programs such as lean manufacturing. As a result of these programs we have been able to offset wage and overhead cost increases for the last 3 years with productivity improvements, allowing us to only pass on material and freight cost increases beyond our control.

We appreciate your continued support. If you have any questions please contact your sales manager, our Customer Service team, or you may contact me or any member of our management team directly.

Sincerely,
Tony Bon
President

___________________________________________________________________

Subject: PETZL - Price Changes effective July 1, 2008

Greeting Petzl dealers,

The turbulence of the economy, rising materials costs, and soaring petroleum prices have affected all of us. The US Dollar has lost significant ground against the Euro recently hitting an all time high of $1.60 to €1, which has dramatically impacted our cost of goods.

While we have always strived to hold prices for the calendar year, with great reluctance, we find ourselves forced to increase prices of certain items (see attached PDF) effective July 1, 2008. We aim to have the new price list to you by mid June 2008; these new prices will be effective until December 31st, 2008.

We will honor all orders already in our system at Spring 2008 prices. Orders placed after the date of this letter and scheduled for delivery after July 1st 2008 will be invoiced at the new prices.

We are committed to providing you with the best possible products and the best possible service and hope you will understand why we have to make these changes. We value and appreciate our relationship with Sherrill Tree.

If you have any questions please don’t hesitate to contact me directly.

Michel Goulet
manager - work & rescue division
Petzl America
________________________________________________________________

I should grace room for belief that the responding employee of aforesaid company doesn't receive communication about significant and highly unusual cost increases (first we've seen like this in over 20 years!). It's exactly similar to tree service employees not hearing about the high or escalating cost of gas, a chainsaw, chipper or truck they're assigned to operate. Oh well, life's too short for such politics. I've got to get back to my masters now.

Hope you guys are prepared for other inflation making its way down the pipe. Here's one from this morning's news:

http://www.usatoday.com/money/economy/2007-04-30-econ-survey-usat_N.htm

Cheers all!!
 

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I called up Wesspur today and they say that Sherrills complained to Petzl that Wesspur was selling below the suggested retail price and now they raising their prices under threat of losing Petzl products.

While I understand that everything cost more now and prices are going up, you'd think that each company should be able to chose how much it marks up items above the wholesale price. Sherrills seems to be using its size as a lever against Wesspur in an anti-competitive way. I wonder if Bailey's is big enough to stand its ground or if they've been threatened too.


I appreciate you posting in answer here Tobe and look forward to your side of the story.
 
I couldn't comment if a call was made as obviously I wouldn't know.

If Wesspur agreed to MAP or otherwise supplier fixed pricing then tried to undercut those adhering to the agreement, it would seem Wesspur was in the wrong, using "hack" tactics.

If your state required you to collect sales tax, you did it but your competitor didn't, how would you be in the wrong for reporting them?


MAP/fixed retail prices aren't that uncommon in other industries, Nightforce is an example.
 
I think Wesspur was just trying to stick to their advertised price until the next catalogue went out.
 
So in our hypothetical, that still leaves Sherrill following the rules and Wesspur breaking them.

And then that puts Sherrill in more of a bind when someone asks for price matching.
 
Well I couldn't say as I do not know what their original agreement with Petzl is. By your logic though, Sherrills broke the rules by maintaining catalogue prices until today as they should have raised their prices just as soon as Petzl did. They've been willfully underselling their gear since the wholesale price went up.
 
Staying with the hypothetical, it's plausible the MAP agreement was for the current stock, thus as Sherrill sold out of the current stock, prices would go up. Or, Petzel could allow them to set a time to change over prices, or give them a month's grace to change over.


Either way, so long as Sherrill is at fault, all is well in the tree world. Death to the big companies!
 
I don't have problems with big companies as long as they practice fair commerce and do not use there size push smaller company's around. Don't get me wrong Carl, I am willing to be wrong about this. What I have said is based on what I have heard and my personal impression of the situation.
 
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