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Why are Baker Boys brands now releasing holiday 2020 catalogs, stocked up and selling out? When other brands are still trying to fulfill summer catalog orders?
I’m definitely stocking up in case shit hits the fan this winter. Best case scenario, production comes back to normal and I just don’t buy much gear this spring.
I was wondering this myself. I have had some Baker boards in the past and they were good quality. They all had a stained top ply and middle ply, some also had a stained bottom ply.
When I recently went to the shop and looked at a few Baker boards, they only had a stained top ply. A few boards had no stained plies. I may be wrong but BBS/Generator Usually has 2-4 stained plies (depending on brand) for the pro quality decks and 0-1 stained plies for the price point boards such as the Real Renew decks.
Are they getting more boards than other bigger brands right now because they are going with the easier to manufacture decks? Regardless, at about $5-$8 more expensive than other brand's boards with what is clearly a cheaper to manufacture process, I put the board back and moved on.
They could be really good at forecasting and had summer gear ready to roll before all this covid gear shortage really started throwing everyone on their heels. An while others were scrambling to get summer gear out, baker winter gear was already on production lines.
Maybe they have another wood shop that they are supplementing with as well.
Maybe they are making game time decisions in order to get boards faster. I deal with a lot of production vendors in my day to day. Coloring veneers takes time, let alone more than one color. Maybe they talked to BBS and were told they could get boards in hand months sooner by skipping the coloring stage, knowing there is a shortage.
Maybe they are paying a premium or a "rush charge" to skip ahead of other companies. So while some of their decks maybe lacking the colored plys they still paid top dollar to rush the order through production. Which would warrant price staying the same.
Has it been confirmed that stained plys add to deck strength? Or is it just a nice touch companies started doing to be "premium"?