Gennie shifter going out of buisiness?

Just as an afterthought. I've got a Lokar Shifter in my car. I bought the adaptor so I could get rid of the button. Adaptor was about $20.00. Now I can use any knob I want. Looks and works well.

 

thanks for the 411,I didnt know they had a adaptor...............

 

This cackling henhouse thread is funny....

 

Brilliant observation.
One of the building blocks of life.
You have to wonder why so few figure it out.

 

I worked for Obsolete Ford Parts and Parr Automotive and will be the first to say that management can cause the down fall of a good company by not treating employees right, but the economy is killing a lot of rod shops. RBs Obsolete, Yearwood Speed and Custom, Rod Doors, are just a few. Also don't believe everything you hear.

 

Small business, sized for the market, low overhead, bought up, moved, higher overhead, maybe changed supply base to get the cost back in line (instead of addressing the overhead), which maybe created raw material delivery and quality problems, tried to grow the business more than the market would bare.

 

i told my dad about this and he asked if i could take him to reids shop, next to cwmoss in orange to get one for a car he is gonna be building since there going under. we get there and i thought what the hell i might as well get one too. this is the stupid part. i look and there is two different prices on the swan shifter so i ask the kid why and do i get it at he lower cost since i'm buying both. his stupid answer is i sell them at what there marked at. i said ok then i get them at the lowest cost he says like i said i sell them at what there marked at. so i say ok why the two different prices then his answer there two different batches thats why. my answer i'll buy it some where else then. my dad says he'll take his and goes to write him a company check so he can run through his books . kid says nope dont take checks.
i told him lets get the hell out of this place its damn joke. the guy could of made close to $400 bucks in two minutes for his boss but chose to be a dick.
and to top it off he was trying to sell me lokar says gennys jump out of gear.

 

who else sells them and has them in stock in the So-Cal area? i still need to get one for my dad's car. i live in the riverside area

 

As the guy who ran all machined parts for Tom Phipps, who created the Gennie Shifter, and was a good guy to do business with, I can tell you when Todd Gold bought the Gennie line, his first order of business was to cut out all Tom's vendors. Claimed the manufacturing was all brought "in house". Well, I think you can figure out what that means.

The shop who you tried to buy shifters from was not going to make anything close to $400 on two shifters. I gurantee you they would be doing good to clear $50 on 2 shifters. Still, the sales guy should be fired for loosing sales, especially in this economy. And after running a Gennie Shifter on my roadster for 15 years, the guy's comment about them "jumping out of gear'was pure bullshit. I would have walked out too.

 

i could see a personal check but a company check, come on. yeah i was just looking at the gennie site and this guy wasnt even gonna sell me everything. i told him i needed two complete ones and he tells me yup this is all you need now after looking at the website he wasnt even gonna give me the brackets to mount it to the tranny. good thing i got pissed and took off

 

This Sucks I like Gennie Shifters & when we could get 'em we sold 'em. The lack of product was another reason I did our column shifter , I'm not diggin Lokar & frankly I was over the wobbly stick . Shame to loose another company in our too small community though.I hope some takes up the gauntlet , there is a market for a good ,traditional floor shifter.

 

It looks like another classic case of "lets buy this successful and well regarded business with a great product that has a constant demand and see how fast we can run it into the ground.

I've seen two successful local manufacturing business go under because the management decided to go deeply into debt to build grandiose new facilities that all the sudden became a major burden financially when things slowed down and got tight.
Need a world class facility with a huge show room, and space to build just about anything. There is one available here. Lots of room because it was designed to build bus sized motorhomes in.

The big problem here is still that unless someone steps up to the plate and buys Gennie Shifter out and works at building a quality product with good service behind it we may have lost another favorite to greed and attitude.

 

The adapters are made by both Gennie and Lokar. Mine is a Gennie.

 

Well..... why don't you make some? Be a nice complament to your other great products!

 

Horrible customer service will bring any company to it's knees. I still don't understand why people don't understand the importance of efficiency and empathy -- it will get you everywhere (at least I think so). If you are too stressed to handle it, send your calls to another business that will provide the service your clients are expecting! Call Center Staffing

 

Completely agree with you. I hope someone steps up to the plate, soon.

 

Thanks for the complement but I have enough irons in the fire right now & I'm a "one man band" without any money man behind me. The keep small ,keep control & keep good quality is always on my mind.It takes a lot of investment to start a new product line which is something I don't have. I just hope someone can step in & buy Gennie Shifter if it becomes available for sale.

 

I wonder what it would take to buy it? Hummm.

Doc.

 

I like the sound of that thinking...

 

On a side note ... Did anyone else notice that the employee (on the radio show podcast) said he worked for "Genie" Shifter (as in Genie in a bottle)? ... I always thought the product was "Gennie" Shifter (slang for Genuine)

 

It is....always has been.....Gennie(uine). Old term from the 70's Resto-rod period. If it's a gennie, it's genuine as in real, non-repro etc..

Genie( as in genie in a bottle) shifter is one of those mis-pronounced terms that kinda grates on me.

 

Yeah, but wouldn't you think an employee would know how to pronounce the name of the business?? I didnt listen to it but that sounds fishy.

 

yeah i think someone did a hack job on the name and it stuck..i always pronounced it like Jenny..jenny i got your number 8675309..

 

It would be cool to buy a Genuine Lime Works shifter!

 

It's supposed to be pronounced like "Jenny"...

How come when these threads pop up, it's the same four or five people saying the same things, throwing the same poop from things that happened five years ago? Business is business, and things can happen with the finances in any industry. No one company is going to make every customer happy or do every single thing right. For every one person who got a bad shake or didn't get the "bro-deal hookup" they thought they would, there are hundreds who did not and are happy. They sell stuff every day. It's part of life. I do know Gennie has dealers that owe Gennie tons of money, I know they had problems with their supplier, problems with employees and finances, and I know things got tight with the money.

I also know that several employees who are now not with them had personal issues that also have to do with their leaving. Some cried, some blipped out, some stole, some had family problems, some had work ethic problems, and some just weren't compatible with the format. Building a business is like having a family of sorts. Yes there are going to be ups and downs, yes there are going to be lean times, yes people are sometimes not going to like every aspect, but the shifters are good, the products are good, and to say there isn't any passion is just silly...


Fact: Gennie is not going out of business, but it is moving to a new building in the suburbs because taxes for manufacturing in Denver are going up. That is the reason for the sign out front. The sky is not falling.... say what you want, but all these pages are for nothing.

 

A sign (for my salespeople) I have hanging in my office for 15 years.


"In one day Sampson slew 1,000 Philistines with the jawbone of an ass.

Every day ten million sales are killed with the same weapon."

 

unfortunately that seems to be a common complaint about that particular employee in that store

 

OK so if they are NOT going out of business, then who has them?

I spent a good part of the afternoon trying to find a GM low stick shifter and no one has them (or any other parts) and they also can't promise any delivery dates.

I hate paying for items that are going to be on backorder for 6 months or until the supplier gets their act together.
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Fixed your title for you
Fake stickshift maker going out of business?

 

BULLSHIT.
If you had listened to the podcast,it was from last month,not 5 years ago.
The problems have been ongoing for 5 years.
There are employees that have left recently that are still owed money and there are current employees there that are still owed back wages.
One of them told me a couple of months ago that at least if they go bankrupt,he will get paid.
Don,t you think people should get paid for their work?
Also,it seems funny to me that they can throw a big party but can,t pay wages.Seems their priorities are wrong to me.


RIP ED