- Sorry.
Ah, yes, remember 2019.
You could walk into a store.
You go to aisle 12, grab your toilet paper without issue
maybe a, you know, like Uncrustable.
Then you could walk over to the bread aisle
and pick from 72 different brands of bread,
all with their various value propositions
on why their bread was best.
It was nice. The consumer had options.
You could get a Lunchable, ham and cheese is the best, Gels.
And finally, it would be good.
You could bump into an old friend on the way through
you know, give them a handshake, right?
Watch your, you know, talk about nothing.
Life was just good.
Then you could go home. You could make some ramen.
You could have your little ham and cheese Lunchable
and you could restock the old TP,
before jumping into the garage to work on the car
that's just been collecting dust,
like your parents' elliptical.
Life was simpler, a little bit, back then. Alright.
Nowadays, not so much. Okay.
Nowadays, it's like the follow-up game
without any of the fun music
and more depressing NPC characters
that just judge you for anything that you do aside.
And, product availability is harsh,
just about everywhere, including bread.
I don't know why bread has to have a supply chain shortage
but, yet, here we are with shortage of bread.
I don't want white bread. I want wheat bread. Okay.
I'm Alex. @Alex.Fi on Instagram.
And today we're going to talk about
the same thing that's happening to bread
as it's happening to aftermarket suspension.
Okay. We're going to be talking about
why aftermarket suspension parts are about to disappear
or why they may already be gone.
Bread.
Now, I actually I have a comment section for you guys below
to say something about suspension parts,
but really I need you to let me know
if you believe in ham and cheese Lunchables
or turkey and cheddar.
Trash.
Let me know which one you guys think is better
in the comment section below.
And welcome! I'm Alex.
We started making these videos talking about wheels, tires,
suspension for your car, and made a big Mac-sized gallery
where you can enter in your year, make and model to
see what other people have put on their car.
Essentially taking the question game
out of actually finding what fits.
And it's pretty nice.
There's like a bajillion cars in there.
That may be a little bit of an exaggeration
but, if you guys are looking
for aftermarket wheels, tires, or suspension,
you kind of want to figure out what looks best on your car.
You should go over to fitmentindustries.com/gallery,
enter in your make and model,
and go see what other people have ran.
And if you looking for wheels, tires, or suspension,
you can pick them up at fitmentindustries.com, as well.
I need a Fitment Industries shirt that
that's all it says everywhere.
I want those cool Supreme jackets,
but not $9,000, just 12.
Suspension parts disappearing.
Why would it happen?
Okay. It's not like the tire situation,
which we talked about before,
which you saw very small blip in production
back in early 2020,
which caused the equivalent of the phantom traffic jam.
If you guys have ever heard of a phantom traffic jam,
it's actually a very cool like idea,
which is very, very true,
which caused a lot of the traffic jams
that you and I know today.
And what essentially what that is, is, you know
where someone cuts across a multiple lane highway
and creates a stop and go traffic,
because the initial breaking
done by the one angry person that just got cut off.
That kind of happened entire production in early 2020.
There was a small blip. It caused a backlog.
And then that backlog really never got through there.
Tire companies are still barely getting out
of the snake of that entire thing.
But, that's not inherently the case for suspension.
And if you haven't been out there before,
you may recognize that
some wheel, tire, and suspension brands
aren't really doing the best
in terms of keeping things in stock.
Suspension delays have gotten longer.
Wheel production has gotten longer.
Getting access to things overseas has gotten harder.
So, why?
First off, while tires did experience a tough hit
in 2020, because it was tough,
but because of the quantity of the competitor space
and the fact that tires were made,
quite honestly, literally everywhere,
the biggest issue that you saw was mostly just a blip.
Okay. And the most notably
you saw it either on the highest volume product
or the cheapest tires on the market,
because of margin related reasons.
Super popular tires, like the 595,
won't be back for some time.
And our highest pedigree tires, from even like Michelin,
saw a little bit of a blip in terms of production,
which scared our very own track enthusiast, Lars.
Look how scared Lars was.
Look at how scared he is.
But, because of the volume of brands, you know,
and because of the wide variety
that a lot of these tire companies can offer.
And the fact that they have production companies
literally all over the world,
they were able to diverse. They were able to cut up.
They were able to move production around
and really get it moving again,
in a relatively short period of time.
The world had noticed, shrugged,
and moved on to a different brand, maybe,
for their purchase in 2020.
But they're coming back
to the brands that they know and love in 2021.
The only brand that you're probably going to
want to stay away from, that's really having a tough time,
is the Federal 595. Okay.
It's kinda like a red P hat.
It's just not, it's not easy to get to,
and it's not available anywhere.
So, you're just going to need to get over it
and find something else.
Delinte D7, great option.
Vercelli Strada, also great option. Okay.
Suspension though, isn't in that game,
because suspension isn't as big as you think.
The suspension companies that a lot of us know and love,
actually get a few crucial components
to all of their kits from the same few places,
in either Taiwan, Thailand, Vietnam, China,
and even here in the states.
The actual production source, the supply chain sources,
are much smaller than the supply chain sources
from like tire companies and tire manufacturers
around the world.
Some of the most common components
would be the oil inside the actual coilover,
the damper component that actually helps bleed
the oil or viscosity through.
And, the actual valves that are inside the shot.
Now, I don't want to go all Disney on you.
And just because they get all of their components
from a shared resource doesn't inherently mean
that all of these brands carry the same product
or that they're the same quality, because they're not.
You can have the same bread, ham, and cheese,
but how you make it
is what makes it a good ham and cheese sandwich.
But this caused an exaggerated lag on the availability
of products across the suspension brands.
Because, some of those components and competitor's products
are actually almost exactly the same.
You have 10 brands looking for one piece
versus tire companies needing 10 pieces
from 10 different sources for 10 brands.
It was a little bit less of a constraint.
And that was one of the big things
that started to plague suspension
much earlier on than tires.
But that was the problem then, Alex.
What about the problem now, Alex?
Well, hold on there, bud.
Because, it's not just about the availability
of raw material and raw product.
Now you actually have to get it, like,
you have to get it here, you know?
Like, in this location, right?
And here's a fun example.
A shipping container, and this is true,
a shipping container from China last year in January
cost about, right about, about $3,000 - $3,500,
give or take a couple of hundred bucks. Okay.
This means you could stuff a hefty chunk of junk
into a big box and get it to a warehouse for about $3,500,
give or take all your taxes and things like that.
For simplicities sake, we'll say 3 to 35.
Nowadays, that same exact container,
if you wanted to go bring in a bunch of stuff,
would cost you $15,000.
That is an insane amount of money
for nothing more than a shipping container.
And most of the times,
companies could pass this along to the consumer.
That's what they would do.
They would raise their map prices
and they would give the pricing to you.
And you've already seen that with wheel companies.
And the water level continues to raise for wheel companies.
That's why you see sometimes prices continue to climb.
But again, there's so many
wheel and tire companies out there,
that there are different pricing tiers for the most part.
And, you're not going to see these shifts
by a ton of enthusiasts.
Because, if pricing on wheels go up 20 bucks,
it's really not going to sway most people from buying.
Tires going up $5 here, but going down $4 here,
isn't really going to change a whole lot.
Suspension, on the other hand,
because there's not as much tiering that's happening
in the pricing components of suspension companies,
meaning there's only 2 or 3 in a cheaper brand,
there's only 2 or 3 in a mid-tier brand,
there's only 2 or 3 in a high-end brand.
You get a lot more competitor space
and you get people that aren't willing to pay more.
For instance, raising a set of 10 coilovers
from that standard $1400-ish price
into the $500-ish price
to account for a shipping container price increase.
Not saying that's going to happen.
Official disclaimer, in case anybody's watching.
But if they did, there's nothing really else
in that price bucket at the new $500 mark
that a consumer would be comparable to.
They immediately begin being undercut by other companies
like Megan, Raceland, and other entry-level brands,
which you don't know the names of, but they're on eBay.
So you're going to buy them and they're $100 cheaper.
But, if they don't raise their pricing,
they're likely not going to even make any money at all.
Like ever, because the cost is probably like $400.
You see the price increase.
You're going to ultimately buy something else.
Only to find out that when you go somewhere else
to find a different tier or cheaper suspension company
you're going to find out that they're out of stock too.
Because they haven't brought anything in from overseas
because the cost of shipping containers are also too much.
You see where I'm going with this?
A lot of times you're seeing these companies
either choose to not bring in stock
because shipping is too much.
You go to buy them, they're out of stock.
Or, they raise their prices.
You don't want buy the raised price, so you don't buy it.
Then you don't have coilovers.
And that's, that's literally what's going on.
And there isn't much slowing down.
There's some fantastic companies out there
that have done a properly good job staying on top of this.
And there are some that are coming out on top
with good inventory, good availability,
and good shipping time.
And that's because they are staying on top of this
and letting us know where their production is at.
Because then we get to share that with you on the site.
However, there are others, who may or may not be named,
which don't actually talk to us
because their CEO, CFO, CTO and CMO,
are out there making coilovers with spare parts
from a 240 that they found in the back 40
to fulfill a suspension order from June of 2020.
Don't you fricking dare spill my coffee, foot.
In those cases, we only find out
when they finally spill their beans on our desk,
that we need to tell you
that they actually just don't have any stock.
They were just pretending to have stock.
Either way, suspension companies
are in a really tough predicament.
But here's what you can do to avoid a lot of this junk.
Because, ultimately, if you want to pick up
a set of coilovers, you need to be able to do that.
First and foremost, the most important thing to remember
is that quite honestly,
if you're going to see something out of stock here,
you're going to see it out of stock everywhere.
It is a supply chain everywhere issue, okay.
It's just the thing that's happening.
But, the more price competitive you are
with a coilover, generally speaking,
the harder the availability will likely be right now.
Meaning, entry-level coilovers are going to have
a little bit more headache than mid-tier,
when it comes to potential unplanned backorders,
longer wait times, and general lack of communication
from the manufacturer.
Because it's a cheaper brand,
you're going to get more volume,
they can't talk to every single person
that's looking for help to figure out where their stuff is.
Whereas a mid-tier, you don't get as many customers.
You have a little bit more space.
Supply chain equals out. It's a whole thing.
If you've got the change and you're saving,
I would recommend going into
the mid-tier suspension component,
where inventory generally speaking is healthier.
A thousand dollars or so should get you in a right place,
right now in the market
where supply and demand are somewhat balanced.
Now, you're going to find a lot of suspension companies
also in that right around thousand dollars piece,
which I think is the best place to be.
Now that's not to say you can't go more entry level.
I'm just saying that right now,
it might be a little bit more tough.
Even though we do have $400 ones available.
They just, they move really fast.
But small companies are having the hardest time right now.
So try to stick with the big boys,
when it comes to brands, for at least a little bit.
KW, BC, Fortune, Higher Tier Teini,
Function + Form, D2, Airlift, Eibach,
and their subsidiary brands, are usually the best way to go.
Really try to stick to the ones
that you know their name from.
If you found a random brand on eBay,
stop it and don't buy it.
Because, ultimately, you're probably just
going to be really, really angry
when you find out a week and a half later
that there actually isn't any availability
on Q3, 74R coilovers. Because there won't be.
I don't know who that is. All right.
Pair the purchase with other stuff.
That's a big one too.
I know, it sounds weird, but we've always said it.
Even when I had less facial hair
then when we were doing like air and coilover installs,
we always wanted to talk about you guys also going into
and doing bushings, doing control arms,
ball joints, CV axles, and all that good stuff,
also with your suspension installation.
And also just to see if other things
needed repair or upgrades as well.
And the chances are, is that if you're installing
coilovers on a 25 year old car,
that other stuff needs attention too.
So when you pair the good old suspension purchase
with a few of these other smaller items
and you experience a potential delay,
you actually won't be as mad
because you spent eight hours on Sunday trying to install
a sway bar that just won't go in,
and you really don't need to have
a coilover installation the very next day.
I know it sounds odd, but it's kind of like
when you get bread at a supper club before your main course.
They're not doing it
because they want you to really enjoy the bread.
They're doing it so you have something to do
while they spend like 45 minutes making your food.
Now, you want to match, but truly,
having other things to do with your car
while you purchase something that you may even know
is going to take a couple extra weeks,
does make the time go by a little bit quicker.
Okay. Then only waiting on the phone
and checking your tracking number every other day.
It doesn't happen often, but it does happen.
Honestly, I never thought this would like stay for a while
but then I tried to buy a refrigerator
and now there's a refrigerator shortage.
How is there a refrigerator shortage?
What, what is shorting you to make a refri-?
I just.
All right. Some suspension companies
will make it out of this weird, insanely expensive time
to be in business.
It is a really odd predicament
and this will sort itself out
over probably the next 8-12 months.
But, shipping costs are going through the roof.
Raw materials are the equivalent of a purple P hat,
and houses are cheaper when they're when they're made
with concrete right now, than wood.
If you guys want to see something nuts
go check out the price of lumber. It's absolutely insane.
But it is the time that we live in.
And, while some suspension companies or parts may disappear,
because they just won't be able to survive
this whole supply chain and shipping nightmare.
Others can and are thriving.
And you're gonna want to stay to those brands,
especially the ones that are in stock and on the site,
because that's where you're going to have
the least amount of issues or problems, just saying.
But what do you think?
Will it ever calm down or will it not?
Let us know below.
And, if you're looking for aftermarket wheels,
tires, or suspension, be sure to hit us up.
Specifically suspension, the stuff that's available,
it has accurate shipping information, is on the website.
So if you are trying to look around and source around,
I'd highly recommend hitting us up.
I'm Alex from Fitment Industries.
Let us know what you want us to talk about next
and let us know if you have any questions,
in the comments section below.
Otherwise we will see you later.
Peace.