Zen Warrior/Triplette low-cost helm experiences?

[Stonekeep]

Who?

I believe that this is in referring to the whoever was running the Zen/Triplette booth at Pennsic this year.

After reading about the pattern-copying, I feel a little sheepish to own a bascinet and a gorget by them. At least the helmet was second-hand and dirt cheap.

Well, i know Andre (Ice) talked to me a little about this almost 3-4 years ago and Id take a bullet for that guy, so id sure stake my reputation that anything he says about that is 100% truth.

Theres been a few places who have purchased american and canadian armor (that was from good quality places) and shipped it overseas to India to be copied. As long as the armories over here are better quality (which hasnt been much a problem so far) , and as long as they use lower quality metal and stinking urine tanned leather (yes.... I was a saddle maker for years. i know what im talking about there) the guys over here can stay in business, AS LONG AS you guys dont buy that crap. If you buy it, and enough of you buy it, cause its cheap, then before long whatever india has to sell you, will be your ONLY option.

Have you not seen the American and Canadian armorers going out of business???? Have you not sat here on the archive and seen post after post of "such and such armory closing its doors... im taking no more orders, just trying to finish my backlog while i look for a job"
As a businessman, i should have ALREADY closed this armory down.
I had 5 employees and in january i fired ALL of them, and lost all of that experience and training time, and my secretary went from 5 days a week to now i only even NEED her ONE day a week.

The fact people,esp AA members, would consider buying overseas crap at a time when there local armories are becoming more and more scarce, means they have run the long term scenario in their minds yet.
Even at best.... when this is all said and done... your armor buying selections fromt he US and canada will be about 1/3 to 1/4 what they were two years ago.

I retract that because I am sure we are There right Now...

[wilmot]

"Well, i know Andre (Ice) talked to me a little about this almost 3-4 years ago and Id take a bullet for that guy, so id sure stake my reputation that anything he says about that is 100% truth.

Theres been a few places who have purchased american and canadian armor (that was from good quality places) and shipped it overseas to India to be copied. As long as the armories over here are better quality (which hasnt been much a problem so far) , and as long as they use lower quality metal and stinking urine tanned leather (yes.... I was a saddle maker for years. i know what im talking about there) the guys over here can stay in business, AS LONG AS you guys dont buy that crap. If you buy it, and enough of you buy it, cause its cheap, then before long whatever india has to sell you, will be your ONLY option.

Have you not seen the American and Canadian armorers going out of business???? Have you not sat here on the archive and seen post after post of "such and such armory closing its doors... im taking no more orders, just trying to finish my backlog while i look for a job"
As a businessman, i should have ALREADY closed this armory down.
I had 5 employees and in january i fired ALL of them, and lost all of that experience and training time, and my secretary went from 5 days a week to now i only even NEED her ONE day a week.

The fact people,esp AA members, would consider buying overseas crap at a time when there local armories are becoming more and more scarce, means they have run the long term scenario in their minds yet.
Even at best.... when this is all said and done... your armor buying selections fromt he US and canada will be about 1/3 to 1/4 what they were two years ago.

I retract that because I am sure we are There right Now..."

Thanks,
Stonekeep is correct, if all people buy is cheap Indian knock-offs then soon that is all they will be able to buy. When you buy from a professional armoury that builds it's own product you get;

1) People that know the product and how it is used
2) People who can custom build the product to your size/needs
3) People that stand behind the product and can repair it if damaged

Ronald

[Leo Medii]

And yes they are made in India from what I understand... India is getting better... slowly but surely. In fact I am sure in less then 10 years, they are going to start making pretty good stuff... and sadly, likely good enough to put a lot of munition grade armorers here out of business.

-N

From what i have seen,most American armories Have gone out of business... but I really think it has little to do with indian imports.
Most people dont want the quality of product made by someone making $30 a week. That figure may be high, but i have a friend making that wage in mexico right now and Ive been told the sweatshops in india are about equivalent.

In most products Id have to agree that sourcing a job out to someone making pennies on the hour would be a profit making industry changing occurrence, and would help to further the downfall of the US worker, but in something such as armour, where integrity is a part of the game we play, and with the average American buyer now standing up against foreign sweatshop practices and taking more interest in where their products are made and under what conditions, I think ten years is a little too early to figure we will all soon be closed.

I know a lot of people in Michigan who feel the same way. Outsourcing is great, until you are the victim of it. And I say so as a victim of it.

[Rhyance]

...but he's not exactly vitruvian man if you get my drift.

I love this place. You can't get jokes like that anywhere else and have people know what you mean.

[Iain (Bunny) Ruadh]

<snip> but please, if you are looking for well priced starter helmets, go to Red Falcon (Tim's a cranky old ^(*(*(&%^ but makes a great product for someone starting out and is a professional),or Ironmonger (Eric is to this day my best Flea Market find), and when you step up go to Icefalcon (best customer service anywhere) or to Master Cet (Great attention to detail and customer service that rivials IceFalcon), or Windrose (great selection of styles and a professional business with great customer service) and rumor has it that Bedford is going to make more hilts so if you want a Bedford hilt, buy one (or two) from him but make sure I get mine first or I will beat your ass into the ground <snip>

Coming in out of left field. But I often have people asking my opinion on various armourers (being a professional armour whore). I'd concur with Uncle Ronald's assessment for these armourers and the mere rumour that Bedford might be kicking out a batch of the good hilts gets me drooling (from an SCA fighter standpoint for general high end SCA backethilts, I do love Sir Steph's gear and custom hilts though). Put me in line for a couple on my personal gear and another half dozen or maybe an even baker's dozen and I know I could easily sell off the others with a tad of beer money/delivery tax.

As for the ripping off and shipping overseas ... well that's a complete shut down from my viewpoint. Getting permission, having it done overseas and then holding them to damn high quality standards is workable but most just ship it over and then try to resell the crap the Indi/Paki armours begin to backslide into. If you are going to have someone spend $150-250 of their hard earned $ ... why not get them to save up a little bit more and get something they can be proud of and has a damn good resale value. If they are putting 70% into it .. why not wait/push for that last bit and not worry about it. In the end .. ya get what you pay for ...

[Moog]

Definitely agree with this. Local armour is better quality, customized, and beneficial to the well being american armourers. Better faster cheaper. Pick one. I pick better.

[white mountain armoury]

It sucks to be copied. I had a customer place an order with me for something that was unique to my buisness, 3 days later she cancelled her order, several weeks after that she got my design from another armourer.
What can you do, just sally forth and keep making stuff.
I will throw in the towel eventually but right now I still enjoy what I do.
It seemed like for awhile I would make something new, a design not realy seen for the SCA and a few weeks later a couple specific folks would be offering the same thing.
Thats the nature of this buisness I guess.
I have alway tried to offer things not made by others that way we could all make some type of living from this.
When someone wants to be a roman legionare I point them to Clang, He has said he points kettle folks to me, we could both make either style but feel its good to spread the wealth.
Look how many people offer Sinrics Visored Sugarloaf, all he asks for is credit for his pattern and no when yet has done that.
Kinda sad.

[svonbaden]

Stonekeep, I'm not sure I deserved all that vitriol I just had dumped on me, but I'm guessing that it was because you're considering me to be A Representative of the segment of the buying public that's sending money to India and Pakistan. I'll forgive it on that basis. Please allow me to share my point of view as a consumer.

Oh, and I have bought stuff from you and likely will again, but I digress . . .

People that can afford and are willing to pay for the higher-end armor are going to buy from armorers of repute, not the outsourcing guys. I WANT those Grettir gauntlets that my brother snapped up at Pennsic for $600. I WANT that Shamrock Frisian that was $550. But you know what? My income won't allow it. We aren't all doctors and lawyers with unlimited discretionary funds to put into our hobby. We do what we can with what we have. I'm going to start socking away money to get those gauntlets by next year, but I'm realistic. Likely there will be some crisis that will steal those savings from me.

The helmet was $75 from someone that was quitting the game. I would have been a fool to pass that up given what I was wearing to practice at the time. Three Pennsics ago I had $40 to buy a gorget immediately. The Zen gorget was stainless and comfortable and cheap.

Now I've got a local guy I can go to for inexpensive armor. I wouldn't buy the Zen gorget had I known about the copying w/o giving credit, but now that I have it I'm not likely selling it off until I can get a replacement, right?

Remember that we're in a recession. Sure, some of the money that would be going to US and Canadian and (don't forget) European armorers is ending up going to outsourcers. However, when hard times hit, I imagine the first thing that SCA folk are going to cut out of their plans is that big-budget armor upgrade that they were looking to do.

Hell, how many times have we seen it right here on the AA in the last two years where some guy is saying, "I don't want to do this, but I need to sell my gear so I can afford X."? 'X' in this case being car repairs, rent, tuition or books, or some other necessity.

It might be attractive to blame outsourcers and their customers, but if they were to go out of business tomorrow, I doubt that most armorers revenue problems would suddenly go away.

Well, that took a lot longer than I wanted. There you have it - a poor boy's two pence.

[Agnarr]

Stonekeep, I'm not sure I deserved all that vitriol I just had dumped on me, but I'm guessing that it was because you're considering me to be A Representative of the segment of the buying public that's sending money to India and Pakistan. I'll forgive it on that basis. Please allow me to share my point of view as a consumer.

Oh, and I have bought stuff from you and likely will again, but I digress . . .

People that can afford and are willing to pay for the higher-end armor are going to buy from armorers of repute, not the outsourcing guys. I WANT those Grettir gauntlets that my brother snapped up at Pennsic for $600. I WANT that Shamrock Frisian that was $550. But you know what? My income won't allow it. We aren't all doctors and lawyers with unlimited discretionary funds to put into our hobby. We do what we can with what we have. I'm going to start socking away money to get those gauntlets by next year, but I'm realistic. Likely there will be some crisis that will steal those savings from me.

The helmet was $75 from someone that was quitting the game. I would have been a fool to pass that up given what I was wearing to practice at the time. Three Pennsics ago I had $40 to buy a gorget immediately. The Zen gorget was stainless and comfortable and cheap.

Now I've got a local guy I can go to for inexpensive armor. I wouldn't buy the Zen gorget had I known about the copying w/o giving credit, but now that I have it I'm not likely selling it off until I can get a replacement, right?

Remember that we're in a recession. Sure, some of the money that would be going to US and Canadian and (don't forget) European armorers is ending up going to outsourcers. However, when hard times hit, I imagine the first thing that SCA folk are going to cut out of their plans is that big-budget armor upgrade that they were looking to do.

Hell, how many times have we seen it right here on the AA in the last two years where some guy is saying, "I don't want to do this, but I need to sell my gear so I can afford X."? 'X' in this case being car repairs, rent, tuition or books, or some other necessity.

It might be attractive to blame outsourcers and their customers, but if they were to go out of business tomorrow, I doubt that most armorers revenue problems would suddenly go away.

Well, that took a lot longer than I wanted. There you have it - a poor boy's two pence.

....you wanna know why we are in a recession?

[svonbaden]

Hell, I thought it was subprime mortgages, but what do I know? Turns out it was a $40 gorget purchased three years ago and a helmet bought second-hand!

[wilmot]

"Hell, I thought it was subprime mortgages, but what do I know? Turns out it was a $40 gorget purchased three years ago and a helmet bought second-hand!"
Hi,
Most people on AA had no idea before this thread what was going on and now that you know, you will buy from Professional armouries when possible, I am ok with that as someone who grew up poor I totally understand and of course everything was running great before you bought that gorget and then all hell broke loose

Ronald

[LucasMaxwell]

Meh I have to send my money overseas.... there isn't much in the way of Professional Armorers in Australia. sure there are few people that do very custom work for occasionally. The rest are Indian resellers.

But I have bought US, Canadian and European and paid the extra shipping and currency conversion price. I really don't know how people can complain about the prices. And I am no rich man by any stretch.

[Agnarr]

Hell, I thought it was subprime mortgages, but what do I know? Turns out it was a $40 gorget purchased three years ago and a helmet bought second-hand!

No, it is the idea that we can get it cheaper if we make it overseas! Fuck that.
Buy American whenever possible.

[Stonekeep]

Svonbaden: Sorry if you thought I was talking directly AT you... I had noone in mind, nor would I ever try to call someone out publicly like that. If it hit home hard because you have some indian stuff I am sorry. Wasnt pointing any fingers.

The main ppoint I wanted to make was you (everyone) has recently lost about 2/3 of their choices in places to buy armor. Its up to the customers (of which you are a member of course) the Next time you decide to buy, to decide if you would be happy with having Only the option of buying indian and pakistani resold armor through an American middle man, or do you enjoy the options of buying from people here and the level of quality you get. Because you guys have already, this year, LOST the majority of places you used to be able to buy from.

If we play Devils advocate for a moment, and what the AA member stated above does come true, in ten years you will only have the options of a few catalogs of indian armor you have sittin by the toilet topick out your next sca kit. I was an armor buyer way before i was an armor maker, I bought some TRUE crapon ebay from a seller named Kings Lance back in the day. It didnt fit and was junk. He didnt make it nor could i return it. To think of that being my only option to buy armor is a rather sickening feeling...

[Stonekeep]

Svonbaden:

Besides... I couldnt point fingers at u for doing something I have done when i bought from that Kinga lance guy years ago...

When I got that crap in, and there was no way to make it work, thank God Someone bought it from me second hand so i could use some of that money to buy my Icefalcon kit.

I went on ebay to see a bp kit Ronald adveretised this week (so i could send it to pakistan LOLOL) but while i was there, I decided to look a while... I was three pages in before i saw anything that looked safe and normal for sca use. i clicked on it and whala it was Pitbull, and I said to myself... "makes sense"

[Stonekeep]

Meh I have to send my money overseas.... there isn't much in the way of Professional Armorers in Australia. sure there are few people that do very custom work for occasionally. The rest are Indian resellers.

But I have bought US, Canadian and European and paid the extra shipping and currency conversion price. I really don't know how people can complain about the prices. And I am no rich man by any stretch.

My Australian orders helped me pull through the winter months this year... Any one of them had been taken away and i would have had to start laying people off months before i did...

[Leo Medii]

It sucks to be copied. I had a customer place an order with me for something that was unique to my buisness, 3 days later she cancelled her order, several weeks after that she got my design from another armourer.
What can you do, just sally forth and keep making stuff.
I will throw in the towel eventually but right now I still enjoy what I do.
It seemed like for awhile I would make something new, a design not realy seen for the SCA and a few weeks later a couple specific folks would be offering the same thing.
Thats the nature of this buisness I guess.
I have alway tried to offer things not made by others that way we could all make some type of living from this.
When someone wants to be a roman legionare I point them to Clang, He has said he points kettle folks to me, we could both make either style but feel its good to spread the wealth.
Look how many people offer Sinrics Visored Sugarloaf, all he asks for is credit for his pattern and no when yet has done that.
Kinda sad.

I will be a sad panda if I can't my WMA armor fix every year!

[Tomburr]

I believe that the cheap, crappy India-Paki armor has a major market edge over the American/Canadian armorers through a strong ebay presence.

When starting out as fighters, my friends and I purchased our first helms and several pieces of armor from ebay. The helms were mostly trash. Our only other source was local marchantry(read sparse). We didn't know about most of the armorers who were out there at the time.

I think one major reason that the good armorers are hanging it up is because the India junk is getting eaten up on ebay, where most n00bs spend their time shopping. You have to understand that many of us don't have a group of active, participating fighters who can tell us who to talk to and what to look for when getting suited up. We had to figure it out on our own, or gain the attention of other experienced fighters and find out where they got their stuff. And I know you all can appreciate the necessity of offering affordable starter gear.

Point is, if you want to survive, and even overthrow the cheap knock-off crap, you've got to make it so that people(especially new people) don't have to come to you. If every armorer worth their anvil kept a couple of good looking, basic & affordable helms, elbows & knees out on ebay for the new kids to get a hold of, there'd be no real Indian competition. Just my two pence, FWIW.

[white mountain armoury]

Depends on the quality of your work, I have never sold any armour on E-Bay even though I listed some stuff, never even any bids, but have no issue selling from my site or from the classified here on the archive.
I tend to see e-bay as an outlet for indian junk, most armourers producing quality have a web site.
When I throw inthe towel it wont be for lack of buisness it will be because I just feel its time to move on to something new.
E-Bay wont get you custome anything be it custome fit or a custome shape and junk from India will never offer custome anything.
Armoureres for SCA gear come and go.

[Stonekeep]

Ebay is such a losing proposition for the most part... I can put an item on ebay and sit and watch it go offline with no bids and then pay them my $5 for the priveledge or I can simply list it on AA and watch the bids come in knowing the buyers on here almost always pay unless it just slips their mind.

I pay about $100 a month for my website whereas at one time i was paying ebay upwards of 500-600 per month.

Also, and this is the largest thing... If you take everything i make, then figuring in all the options on each item, I would have to post 5000 items a week to get everything out there that my website offers. Thats $25k

I have posted some spaulders on there recently and just sat and watched them go offline with no bids when there were no other spoaulders even on the listings... Made me think the sca for the most part has started to avoid ebay.

[Moog]

Hopefully people will spread the word for local armourers. I try when i can. ^^

[Stonekeep]

Hopefully people will spread the word for local armourers. I try when i can. ^^

We live by word of mouth advertising...

You try to do everyone right, and everyone you have done business with will recommend you. Like uther in the west. he bought a few odds and ends on auction from here from me. He apparently liked the product and service cause he came back to buy a rather pricey (for our armory anyways) full spring kit, PLUS i cant tell you how many people he has sent us from calif. Calif. orders alone have been significant in keeping us in business this spring and summer.

Thats just how bad it was this year.. I mean i fired everyone and still didnt have much work coming in.. I even opened a fishing guide business running two boats, because i figured this armory project was about to close and it was time to move on to another project. i think its starting to slowly pick up a little now though.

[Moog]

So Luther helps you out? That is really cool.

[Stonekeep]

So Luther helps you out? That is really cool.

If you removed three orders from AA members this year, Uther, Pollard, and Dafydd, and add all the people Uther and dafydd have sent to me during and afterwards, we would have closed already this year... That is a fact...

I flogged a dead horse for years getting this armory off the ground, but with the stock market crashing i lost a lot, and cant prop this thing up like i used to. So yea, word of mouth from guys like that is why we havent made an announcement that we have closed.

I honestly think things will start to get better and we have seen the worst, but i was saying that over winter too when i was telling my employees spring would come and orders would pile in to save their jobs...

[Moog]

aww. Well i hope you keep on hanging on.

[Ceawlin Alreding]

This has been a great discussion. I like it when an armorer starts seeing orders in little clusters of zip codes, knowing that they did right by someone and are gaining the reward of more business by word of mouth of happy customers.
There have been little "pieces" of this conversation since probably before I joined the AA and the topic comes up occasionally but this thread has been the live, double album with the fold over cover on this topic.
Local, independent armories rock.

[sha-ul]

So Luther helps you out? That is really cool.

If you removed three orders from AA members this year, Uther, Pollard, and Dafydd, and add all the people Uther and dafydd have sent to me during and afterwards, we would have closed already this year... That is a fact...

I flogged a dead horse for years getting this armory off the ground, but with the stock market crashing i lost a lot, and cant prop this thing up like i used to. So yea, word of mouth from guys like that is why we havent made an announcement that we have closed.

I honestly think things will start to get better and we have seen the worst, but i was saying that over winter too when i was telling my employees spring would come and orders would pile in to save their jobs...

I have tried to send more money your way,but you haven't returned my pm or emails

russell smith aka sha-ul

[Stonekeep]

I dont have any pms or emails from you

[Moog]

Some people have been having problems with pm's not being sent.

[Stonekeep]

Some people have been having problems with pm's not being sent.

For us,its always best to contact my secretary at stonekeep@consolidated.net if its a business question, because 80% of the time when i get a question on here i dont know the answer and have to refer them there anyways. Plus there are sometimes weeks in a row i dont log onto AA.

[AvM]

Stonekeep,
I'm sincerely sorry to hear that your armory is having troubles. You're one of the Good Guys, and I'll be contacting you this week about an order.

[sha-ul]

I dont have any pms or emails from you

I sent the Email originally on 7-14, I didn't get a response, so I sent you a pm on 7-28. it I believe you have read it, but may have canned it. I resent the email yesterday.

[Hrolfr]

Our group is in the middle of some MAJOR recruiting (2 college towns with NO SCA presence).

I am a warranted hw marshal in the Middle.

With luck, Mike at Stonekeep, Otto (cuz he's pretty local ), Cet at RFH and other makers of quality armor will get the business, not the subpar import crap off eBay (not your stuff tho ARMOUR ERIC ).

Between myself and the next groups GKM, we can outfit nearly 6 noobs and us both be armoured up, so there is little rush to buy Indy/Paki stuff.
(yeah I'm an armour whore).

I will look at ANYTHING they want to buy and caveat that odds are, they can find something better, for roughly the same or little more.

I WANT to support our armoring community, and other than the stuff I made myself, I can say that all my armor has come from members of this forum.

Just my 2 pence

[Yvette]

Just wondering... Many of you have noticed that new people have some problems finding there local armours... Have any of the Armouries ever considered advertising in local Kingdom News Letter or asking to be linked from your local kingdom web pages - maybe from the A&S area or if they have a Fighting Info area to give people more options to find you. I know in the area I live there are lots and lots that know of Lord O'Quinn but in the area (40 minutes away with few fighters) I actually play out of we have only recently found out about his great armour. Just a thought from someone that is glad to encourage purchases from local artisans.

[Lorccan]

Regarding eBay & new fighters -

This really drives me nuts! I know that we always try to offer new fighters advice when they want to buy armour, but we don't push it on them. We wait for them to ask, because it doesn't seem right to shove it down their throats when they first show up. Maybe that's a mistake, though. The people who get screwed the worst almost always seem to be the new ones. I can't tell you how many times somebody has shown up to practice all excited because they just bought something from eBay that is overpriced/ill-fitting/badly made/dangerous to fight in/an inferior knockoff of a reputable armourer's work/as medieval as a microwave, or just placed an order with an armourer that we all know is wildly unreliable (Hammered Wombat, etc).

I can certainly see how eBay is not the best venue for most real armourers, but Tomburr has a point: it's more visible, by far, than any other place selling armour, anywhere. It is a great venue for people selling cheap shiny crap. That doesn't mean that everyone should sell there, but it does mean that the ebay sellers have first crack at many new armour customers.

I understand that shopping is fun, and that we don't want to scare off the new fighters with armour horror stories, so how do you get them into their own armour the right way? They tend to be inspired by the best kits on the field, which are usually too costly for them to buy right away. If they're interested in making their own, we can usually help them out without too many missteps. How do we get them to stop and check with somebody who's been around the block before they click the "buy crap armour" button?