Castle moving sale

I didnt get a shipment notice when mine shipped out

[Thomas Porfert]

1520's have been added back to the motor sale page. Turns out we had more stock than we had previously realized. Plenty of motors left over after the initial rush; I can't give out exact numbers, but at current rates I would expect them to last until at least the end of the month.

Thomas Porfert
Castle Tech Support

[Semi Pro]

Originally Posted by Semi Pro

im still waiting on my outrunner any idea when the will ship?

here is my order number 2142-1189-4010

it must be bad news because i keep getting skipped by thomas

[Mmirage]

Originally Posted by Thomas Porfert

1520's have been added back to the motor sale page. Turns out we had more stock than we had previously realized. Plenty of motors left over after the initial rush; I can't give out exact numbers, but at current rates I would expect them to last until at least the end of the month.

Thomas Porfert
Castle Tech Support

First of all let me say that I'm just as happy with this sale as you guys, but something IS going on for sure....

I just find it pretty hard to believe that out of the blue they just found a box full of 1520's sitting in a dark corner of the warehouse...
On numerous USA and European RC-forums big and busy topics are active about this Castle-sale. Some of these guys ordered pretty serious. So regarding this info Castle already must have shipped hundreds and hundreds of motors all over the world.

Did you hear on CNN the popemobil in the Vatican is now powered by a a couple of castle 1717's ?

Seriously, probably lots of (overseas) LHShops before the sale not stocking Castle bought big time as well.

When the sale started I just thought nice deal from Castle, but now that "overstock" seems to be far from vapourized after about two weeks there just must be more behind this sale !

Add the fact that the RC-market and ebay will be absolutely flooded with quality motors for a long time now and no living human being on this planet is going to pay 200 bucks for a 1515 anymore, EVER!
So these will join the sale soon or stock were low already before the sale.

Castle mentioned the word moving-sale a couple of times, but thats not a very good reason eitherl. If you stack up 1000 motors in their (correct;) boxes you would need a room of maybe 10 by 10 feet and i know for a fact that prices per square feet in Kansas are not that high... Moving them can be done with a mini-van. No big deal as well.

So, whats happening here???
Are they making a statement towards sites resellers like Hobbyking?
Fighting out a big conflict with Mr Neu?
Increasing brand popularity big time? They have made just HUGE profits on the motors the last couple of years and now decided to pump up sales volumes?

OR.......

They need unlimited R&D money for something BIG that is gonna come in the RC world ? Some Chinese guy perhaps showed up at Castle's CEO desk and offered him a design of a revolutionary (brushless) motor with 99.9% efficiency and 10% of the production costs of a NEU/Lehner/Pletti ???

Who knows....

What are your ideas?

Let me finish this post with stating that this post is obviously NOT intended to criticise Castle's sale by any means. They are doing just an excellent job in providing RC enthousiastic people like me very nice goodies for a descent price and providing just excellent after sales service as well.
Just wanted to speculate a bit.....

[pinkpanda3310]

They wanted to flood the market with big motors ready for a big esc (aka hvmmm)

;)

[BrianG]

Conspiracy theories much?

Seriously, I think it's a combination of finding items boxed away during the move and a liquidation of motors that never quite took off (hence the no-support statement). As far as not buying a Neu motor, don't worry: IIRC, Neu gets royalties (or whatever it's called) on every motor sale.

I don't know if it was an unintended consequence, but this sale may just squash some sales for the CC knock-offs you see popping up.

The only thing I think Castle should have done differently is maybe give the dealers (like Mike) the $60-$70 deal and let the dealers in turn sell them for a small profit. They would most definitely have charged more (like $100 or so), but they would still have sold like hotcakes. And shops like RCM are geared for selling small quantities to consumers, so the shipping snafus would probably have been avoided altogether. Not to mention it supports the dealers. Just my $0.02...

[BrianG]

Originally Posted by pinkpanda3310

... for a big esc (aka hvmmm)

;)

I thought it was going to be called the "omgwtfbbq"?

[pinkpanda3310]

Originally Posted by BrianG

....and a liquidation of motors that never quite took off (hence the no-support statement).

If they offered the newer motors in a combo they might have moved more.

[pinkpanda3310]

Originally Posted by BrianG

I thought it was going to be called the "omgwtfbbq"?

That did cross my mind

[bruce750i]

Lots of people can't/don't solder on new motor plugs. What current and future Esc's fits all these motors right out of the box?

[BrianG]

Personally, soldering should be a requirement in this hobby. That said, these motors come with bullets already soldered on the motor, and incude a pack of matching female connectors. I believe these motors will plug right into a MMM.

[Thomas Porfert]

Basically we had $10's of thousands of dollars in inventory that wasn't turning over at an acceptable rate. Whatever the cause for the low sales volume, low demand, they weren't made as combos, or lack of information about what they could be run with, we would rather put those dollars into something that will turn over quicker and have in stock something that is in higher demand.

The reason for the mistake on the 1520 quantities was lack of coordination between departments before the sale and me being a little trigger happy. As you can see with the hiccups with the 1717 and the 1512's in 1520 boxes, some things just didn't go the way we had hoped. With the 1520's, I saw in QuickBooks (the program we use to invoice and ship items) that there were less than 20 in stock; so I had the webmaster pull them from the site right then and there because I wanted to have a few spares for mistakes or out of box failures.

It turns out that there were a few hundred more that had not been turned from MySys (the program we use for inventory). Items have to be moved from MySys to QuickBooks to be processed for orders or repairs. I didn't have access to MySys, so I didn't know how many 1520's we actually had. I acted a little too quickly without checking the proper system. (In the old building I could just trot over to the warehouse and check, but that's a loooong walk in the new building ) I would have rather have pulled them and put them back up, than to have dozens of people order a 1520 and have to tell them it had to be canceled.

So there really was no ulterior motive, nothing dubious or any deeper reasons for this sale. We simply had a lot of motors overstocked and wanted to put those dollars into something more useful. We just kind of tripped over our own feet a couple of times during the process.

Thomas Porfert
Castle Tech Support

[KniteWulfe]

Originally Posted by BrianG

Personally, soldering should be a requirement in this hobby. That said, these motors come with bullets already soldered on the motor, and incude a pack of matching female connectors. I believe these motors will plug right into a MMM.

I haven't gotten any female connectors with any of my motors. Would have been nice though.

I totally agree about the soldering though.

[Nard Cox]

Originally Posted by BrianG

Personally, soldering should be a requirement in this hobby. That said, these motors come with bullets already soldered on the motor, and incude a pack of matching female connectors. I believe these motors will plug right into a MMM.

X2 on the soldering. Sometimes I see comments on a Dutch forum of guys that don't want to solder so they let the LHS do it. Typing this reminds me a thread like this not to long ago here on RCM, but it's in the FREEZEr now

Did you get a set of female plugs with it? I didn't .. no biggy though :)

no females for me either :) just a pinion i have no use for ;)