(from JDM-Insider)
"Japan’s largest credit research company Teikoku Databank announced that automotive parts manufacturer Trust filed for bankruptcy on September 10th, 2008. Trust also known abroad as Greddy is reported to be approx US$60M in debt."

Ouch, but there's always a reason.

I saw this on a different forum. It doesn't suprise me one bit though. If people would stop buying knock off products, and actually support the companies that put the hard work and dedication toward R&D and quality, this probably wouldn't be happening. The question now is, who's next to go under?

do you think this means that all their shit will be on clearance or that its going to just get sold to another company so they make profit off os it?

I see like HKS going under with all the knock off stuff there as well

I agree but you can't tell me that a BOV actually costs them $250 to make. if they would have dropped their prices even slightly people would have forked over the extra cash for the brand name stuff

I paid $185 shipped back in 2002 for my greddy S.

even still, they can't drop it to $150 or even $160 to save themselves? That's just stupid. They could have started working with those china models selling their internals for the china housings

agreed. I ran a HKS knock off on my Laser, and it held the boost just fine. They say they leak at higher boost, but how many of use actually go over 20psi daily??

point made

HKS$250+ or HKS knock off$50 makes same sound, pretty much same internals, just NOT stamped

If you have a price at $180, people bitch. If you drop that price to $160, people will bitch. People bitch about price regardless, so the solution is to ignore the bitching, and price your products accordingly to required profit margins and overhead costs.

Manufacturing location is the difference. Most consumers can give a shit if you have a kid in Taiwan working for 35 cents a day vs. an American working in California at $80/day. When you offset the overhead expenses on labor to manfucture (excluding cost of materials), that's already a SIGNIFICANT difference.

Why do you think US Made Products cost so much?


In Greddy's case, the extra cost is offsetting the Research/Development costs. They had to spend a LARGE chunk of money to come up with that design for a blow-off valve and I'm sure wasted a lot of time, materials, etc. until they got it right. Once it was done, knockoff company A comes along, duplicates their work (with a SLIGHT change to prevent violating a patent) and sells that.

If I wanted to design a new CF hood, I know for a fact to CREATE a mold is approximately $10,000 or so, + design work for the hood, etc. If that hood sells for $500, figure $100 is going to cover the mold costs, $100 will cover manufacturing costs, and another $100 probably goes towards overhead costs (advertising, business license, taxes, warehouse space/lease for storage, etc.. leaving about $200 profit. That situation is a very rough ballpark assuming you sell 100 hoods at $500, meaning $50k in sales recoops $10k in costs.

We're talking about Business 101 and the basics to life.

well said, just like the NSX case, all that money you pay for is really going in to R&D. People can seem to understand that point on why they are paying so much for a Honda.

I understand basic business, but I don't know as much detail as someone who actually has their own business like yourself.

The question I have is, why do they have to make SO much profit from one item? From your example you would generate $50k in gross sales from 100 hoods which $200 from each hood is net profit. So you make $20,000 in net profit from those sales (just humor me for now we can talk about taxes later).

Now, If another company comes along and starts to sell the same hood, just slightly lesser quality, for a cheaper price why woudn't you want to slightly lower the price to drive sales towards your quality product? Most people understand they need to pay extra for quality and instead of making $20k net profit you only make $10-15k net profit while you work on a design that other person doesn't have and no one has ever seen before?

The actual point I was trying to make, in the case of Greddy, Aeromotive and HKS, is that many people are buying the knock offs and then replacing the internal components with the quality components made from the name brand companies. However, these name brand companies have chosen to not allow the sales of their components, only the sales of their entire product. IMO they are hurting themselves. So what if a person doesn't want to buy their entire product? They could probably come close to making up the loss in sales by maybe 60-70% by selling their components to fit in the knock off housing while they come up with something else innovative.

It almost seems to me like the kid down the street who takes his basketball and goes home because the new neighbor figured out his moves. By taking his ball home no one wants to play with him anymore because the other kids, who still want to play, will go by a new ball. Once they have the new ball the kid who took his ball home in a huff becomes irrelevant and forgotten. Now, if the kid with the ball would have just stuck around and passed the ball to the new neighbor everyonce and a while as he is working on new moves, eventually the other kids would figure out that the new neighbor isn't as good as they thought and wont pass to him as much. Now the kid with the ball starts to become more involved in the game. Yea, maybe he only gets 16 passes instead of 28 but at least he's still involved. Then when he gets those new moves right and starts showing them off it will put him back at the top.

I'm a strong believer that a business can't just sit on old products and hope the market will still be there. They have to adapt, and react to what is changing and going on. I can't even think of what the newest product was from Greddy other than a differently shapped BOV. Take a company like ECM tuning for example. They have been working on an upgrade for their V2 of DSMlink for 3 years now and there are still thousands of people who are just sitting on $200 ready to buy the upgrade as soon as it hits the market. Impulse/trend buying is driven by excitement and awe. Greddy and HKS just haven't excited the market as much as they need to. They just kinda hang out and say, "hey look at us, we make good shit. No, sorry its the same stuff as 10 years ago but its quality."

And as far as R&D, the costs definately are enormous but and I'm sure that by now they have covered the cost of developing the Type RS BOV, or the SSQV that came out like 80 years ago. It just doesn't cut it for me.

sorry, that was longer than I thoguht but another example of trend and impulse buying is that goddamn Blitz body kit for the eclipse. EVERYONE JUST HAD to have one when F&F came out. Now, everyone laughs at it. So if a company who primarily makes those kits just sits around and tries to sell them for the same price as when they came out they will go under because they are now boring, everyone makes them and they are not being innovative at all. If that same company develops other kits, or changes the kit to be more aggressive or stylish, or even abandoned it totally for another more popular product they would probably be doing very well because they are adapting, and being innovative.

I supported Greddy!!! got Greddy hard intercooler pipes and a Greddy RS BOV!!!!!! wish i could have gotten Greddy exhaust!

Greddy USA is still in business and is selling stuff.

TRUST, filed for bankruptcy