Why Do We Keep Buying High Priced Unfinished Gloves???

[keeperton]

10 hours ago, coopaloop1234 said:

I still can't figure out which area you're referring to lol. 

The only durability issue I had with my GT sets was the blocker face on my GT1 Senior cracking near the end of my time with it. My GT2 set was already on order. 

My GT2 set faced better shooters and more ice time. So take this information however you will. 

Here is a fancy chart that circles the "edge of the fingers" in red that would be fit to put on the TGN Instagram.

[coopaloop1234]

9 hours ago, keeperton said:

Here is a fancy chart that circles the "edge of the fingers" in red that would be fit to put on the TGN Instagram.

Found TGN's alternate account, no wonder I'm confused, there's no binding there.  

Well I haven't had any issues there myself nor seen or heard too many stories of other people's issues either. I'd ask @ThatCarGuy as he's probably the Warrior user here that puts it through the most work, but I don't think he's ever mentioned any issues on his G6. 

So yes? 

[ThatCarGuy]

2 hours ago, coopaloop1234 said:

Found TGN's alternate account, no wonder I'm confused, there's no binding there.  

Well I haven't had any issues there myself nor seen or heard too many stories of other people's issues either. I'd ask @ThatCarGuy as he's probably the Warrior user here that puts it through the most work, but I don't think he's ever mentioned any issues on his G6. 

So yes? 

Never had the fingertips split on any of my Warrior gloves before. Even my G3 that had some intense finger curl

[CamWardFan]

On 2/6/2024 at 9:24 AM, xmikex32 said:

link?

The Warrior blocker came from Perani's, the catcher came from The Hockey Shop in Vancouver. Great sale prices on 6.1 E +'s.

The Brian's gloves are pro level and all white, only used for pickup for a few months, I'm cleaning off the puck marks and will sell them either direct or through my Sideline Swap page (Steve Knickerbocker)

[CamWardFan]

On 2/6/2024 at 9:01 AM, Puckstopper said:

This is why I'll always buy in person or order custom.  Unusually the guy building custom orders is a little more experienced than the guy building retail orders.  After all, the new guy has to learn somewhere, right?

I know you don't want to hear this, but it comes down to cost.   These are handmade products and it takes time and training to learn the craft of doing it properly. 

• Time and training cost money. 
• Retention of staff you've invested in training costs money. 
• Failing to retain those staff members and starting the cycle over costs more money.

Adding cost to a product that you already charge more for due to low volume of sales and relatively high complexity to manufacture is a non-starter.   Unfortunately, there's just no world where every glove can be 100% "pro quality" perfect.  As mentioned earlier, there's the experience of the builder, and for every glove to get the pro treatment on the break-in machine you'd either have to increase both staff and machines, or push out lead times.  Neither of these options are palatable.   Small companies like Vaughn and Brian's would be gone, and CCM/Bauer would look for cost savings by reducing the number of lines offered.   The other option would be to increase retail price further, and you're not alone in feeling like those costs are already unreasonable.

Honestly, I do think a lot of these companies lost valuable employees both in the manufacturing and management spaces during COVID.  The pro level gloves I saw on the shelf pre-COVID were really starting to show improvements in consistency and feel right out of the box.   I went to a couple stores last weekend and almost everything on the shelf felt worse than expected.  So I do feel your pain to a degree and sympathize that you got a glove from an extreme end of the bell curve.  But honestly, that's what I think happened here.  You got the worst one that came out of the factory that month and it sucks.   

I understand what you are saying, but to me that's still a poor excuse for sending out a not ready to play product.  Those costs you are talking about are inherent to any business that wants to put out a quality product.  As a business, you need to find a way, not depend on your customers to do half of your job themselves.  We as customers just have never demanded that the product we receive be finished and ready for use, and without defects like poor lacing or assembly.

The VERY LEAST they could do is make a final inspection of each glove before it leaves the factory.  We aren't talking about a massive amount of gloves, and each glove would only require a minute at most to inspect for quality.   This should NOT be too much to ask for the current price we are paying........

 

 

[keeperton]

1 hour ago, CamWardFan said:

I understand what you are saying, but to me that's still a poor excuse for sending out a not ready to play product.  Those costs you are talking about are inherent to any business that wants to put out a quality product.  As a business, you need to find a way, not depend on your customers to do half of your job themselves.  We as customers just have never demanded that the product we receive be finished and ready for use, and without defects like poor lacing or assembly.

The VERY LEAST they could do is make a final inspection of each glove before it leaves the factory.  We aren't talking about a massive amount of gloves, and each glove would only require a minute at most to inspect for quality.   This should NOT be too much to ask for the current price we are paying........

 

 

My "zinger" here is: and yet CCM is still in business. Their large social media marketing pushes backed by their existent capital likely benefits them a lot.

[Puckstopper]

9 hours ago, CamWardFan said:

I understand what you are saying, but to me that's still a poor excuse for sending out a not ready to play product.  Those costs you are talking about are inherent to any business that wants to put out a quality product.  As a business, you need to find a way, not depend on your customers to do half of your job themselves.  We as customers just have never demanded that the product we receive be finished and ready for use, and without defects like poor lacing or assembly.

The VERY LEAST they could do is make a final inspection of each glove before it leaves the factory.  We aren't talking about a massive amount of gloves, and each glove would only require a minute at most to inspect for quality.   This should NOT be too much to ask for the current price we are paying........

 

 

You do have options.  You can buy custom, request extra break-in time and pay more.   Personally, I prefer to do the break-in myself to ensure that it's done to the shape of my hand and done the way I prefer, but the option is there to pay more for a premium service.   Overall the pro level gloves produced by most companies ARE game ready with significantly less work that used to be needed.  

The fact that you had an awful experience doesn't mean that your experience is typical.  I submit that your issues demonstrate one end of the extreme, and were compounded by the choice to have the glove worked on by a 3rd party instead of spending that money shipping the glove back to the MFG for repair/replacement.   I get that the 3rd party guy made a bunch of statements that support the need for his services, but my preference would have been to have the people who designed and built the gear be the ones to determine if there were issues.   

Again, not trying to diminish or blow off your experience, it sucks and I don't blame you for being frustrated.   But I do feel like you're making a sweeping statement out of a single data point.  

  

8 hours ago, keeperton said:

My "zinger" here is: and yet CCM is still in business. Their large social media marketing pushes backed by their existent capital likely benefits them a lot.

I'll admit that CCM gloves are probably the best example of his point.   They're not great and the ones I tried on recently felt worse than the EF4 and Axis gloves that we got in back in the day.  But he's talking about Brian's, and almost every single one of their gloves I unwrapped were butter smooth, and the worst Brian's pro level glove I can think of was still better than anything by CCM/Lefebvre.  He absolutely got a lemon glove, but it doesn't mean they're all, or even mostly, bad. 

Edited February 9 by Puckstopper

[coopaloop1234]

3 hours ago, Puckstopper said:

 

I'll admit that CCM gloves are probably the best example of his point.   They're not great and the ones I tried on recently felt worse than the EF4 and Axis gloves that we got in back in the day.  But he's talking about Brian's, and almost every single one of their gloves I unwrapped were butter smooth, and the worst Brian's pro level glove I can think of was still better than anything by CCM/Lefebvre.  He absolutely got a lemon glove, but it doesn't mean they're all, or even mostly, bad. 

I'm nothing but a big hater for Lefebvre gear, mainly gloves, but even my ccm premier 2.9 catcher (senior, offshore) glove was easy enough to break in correctly and to have very little issue bringing it into a game. 

I saying that, it was still one of the worst gloves I've had for break in time and effort needed, but, it was still pretty benign in the overall picture 

[ArdeFIN]

17 hours ago, coopaloop1234 said:

I'm nothing but a big hater for Lefebvre gear, mainly gloves, but even my ccm premier 2.9 catcher (senior, offshore) glove was easy enough to break in correctly and to have very little issue bringing it into a game. 

I saying that, it was still one of the worst gloves I've had for break in time and effort needed, but, it was still pretty benign in the overall picture 

I made a dig-into for Premier 2.9 and I hate the CCM/LeFebvre gloves even more and mostly because they are so stiff. Difficult to close and even more so when you try to open wide. I don't like to hit the T to something (blocker?) to open my glove. That is why I make my gloves soft enough to operate with hand inside only. Not all of them have become fantastic and I've gotten rid of them later on as I don't like to use them so why hold them either.

I still argue that most of the build problems with overseas gear are from the layers designed awfully wrong and when the holes are so much off from where them should be there is no gear builder anywhere who can make it work well without modifying something. I have shown my findings in the mod projects and how I've added new holes to the "right" places to make everything work better. Brian's for some reason isn't really good in having the holes lined up properly. It isn't the most difficult job in new glove design.

Yes, letting in so much lace that you can do the lacing as planned helps somewhat, but then the glove isn't properly built and that will lead to other problems later on when the glove gets used.

Warrior glove design is really good in that overseas aspect and I can't really see any need to lace the gloves as they are done by others who all copy the same basic design. Though recent models are laced so that the inner laces don't come through the face but I don't know if that benefits anything to the operating of the glove. Vaughn (and Simmons and who else copied or was it Vaughn who copied) had similar "Warrior" type of design in their V3 7000 glove. That glove is really smooth and soft and protective. And that glove is really easy to add extra protective layer(s) without sacrificing to the stiffness.

Edited February 10 by ArdeFIN

[arr]

Out of 30 goalie gloves in the store, only one—the Bauer Mach—was easy to close. However, it was only available in solid black, which I didn't want to buy. But come on, most of those gloves are like pieces of wood. Why do we need to break them in, especially when they cost so much here in Europe? For example, a Vaughn glove or blocker usually costs between 400 and 500+ euros. I researched all of this and ordered a custom Miklin with an 80-degree break, and it's so nice—it feels like wearing mittens as a kid.

I believe they could start to make them easy to close as goalie glove guy can make. Meaning manufacturer also can make the same.