Dear all:
We wanna say thank you very much indeed for ALL your comments, the positives and the not-so-positives, as they'll help us to improve our job in the future.
We would like to give some more information about our small company IXO
, and also answer some comments or questions you write here.
1) We use only carbon fiber prepreg, vacuum compacted and cured in oven. This it's today the most expensive and technologically advanced composite material in the world at the moment, the same used by Koenigsegg, Airbus or Boeing, also ALL teams of F1 cars to build their pieces.
2) It's extremely hard and difficult to produce. Also, the dust produced when cutted or polished, it's one of the most carcinogenic products existing in the world, this it's the reason why we use a very special protective clothes, like astronauts ! Working under this conditions it's terrific heavy and hard.
3) We use to cut all our products just diamong tools, on a very expensive CNC machines, with a tolerance of just 0,001 mm. They are simply perfect.
4) In the pictures that appears one hand, it's just to show that it's a fingerboard, not a skateboard (as we produce either skates in carbon fiber). The hand belongs to my son of 12 years, and he don't have yet too much skills as fingerboard rider, sorry for it.
5) We produce all our pieces with a very long and carefully craftmanship process, involving vey high skilled tecnicians, which spend hours and hours doing the jobs without any hurry, with calm and care for the details. This calm and care it's exactly what we intend to show in one of the videos where we show how we manufacture our pieces. This it's the reason why we selects a calmy piano song, and few lights on the scenes, to remark that ours it's a artisans company, not a big multinational organization.
6) We never care for the price of our products, we just put the price tag in the end, after to manufacture the pieces, we see how much it's the cost. As we're totally alone in the CF manufacturing world of this special pieces, we don't care for any competitor, as less in the longboards or shinpads business, as we are the only manufacturer producing a 100% carbon fiber decks, with nomex
honeycomb core, so we don't care too much for the price. Also, as small company, we don't have capacity to produce tons of nothing, we aren't interested in selling hundreds or thousands of units. We sell very few of them, but for very very selected customers, that became friends and love their items, and we care of them as NO company in the world does. Just as example: the longboards have a full 6 years warranty period, during it, we recall back to our factory all longboards , once a year, during the winter period (when not in use), to review all of them, repair (if needed) and polish, painting back again as new one, totally for free. Not even Rolls-Royce do nothing similar to this.
7) It's "expensive" a deck that will last all your life ? It's almost imposible to break them, you can't do NOTHING with your hands to break them, not like the wood ones, that are very fragile. After 2 or 3 wood decks broken, your CF deck seems to became cheap, isn't it?
While all wooden deck manufacturers just drop on a plastic bag the deck, or some plastic box, or cartoon box, we ship all our products very carefully boxed in a black foam and a nice black box, perfect for a luxury present. This cost money also.
9) We don't use any griptape in the pictures (we know it), because obviously we wanna show the carbon fiber fabric and finishing, and allow customers to apreciate with how much fine quality the deck is done.
10) And NO, of course NOT any of our products are "made in China". We produce everything in the northwest coast of Spain, in Vigo. We hate China quality, it's just a crap. We will never ever produce or buy nothing from China, forget it. Even the molds we produce for ourselves, using aluminium T6 (aerospace grade), and our own CNC milling machines. In the case of the titanium screws we send with each longboard or skateboard, we bring them from USA, of grade 5 titanium. All other materials like carbon fiber prepreg (USA, from Umeco Group), varnish from duPont
(Switzerland) or nomex
core (USA from duPont
also) comes from the best and well know brands, nothing from China.
11) Yes, our CF shoehorns are the perfect sample that the most simple object, normally forgotten in the deep of a drawer, could became a work-of-art simply manufacturing it with the best materials available, and a lot of care for the finishing. Just as sample: the hardware which close the suede bag, it's made in pure silver. We don't expect to sell as much shoehorns as IKEA, but ours are quite different. 40 units of one model will be sended next week to one of the most exclusive hotels in Dubai, with the logo of the hotel engraved in each piece. This pieces will be placed in the suites rooms of such hotel (cost of 25.000 dollars per night to sleep there), where a shoehorn from IKEA would be "strange" as less... The customers of the Peninsula Hotel in Hong-Kong, which are transported from the airport to the hotel in a fleet of 14 dark green Rolls-Royce, fing our shoehorns in their rooms...
This are just some examples of why we produce such items. We don't expect to sell one of them to a teenager of 16 years, but this isn't also our target market, we know it.
This it's the video which shows how we work:
https://vimeo.com/73560240And some reports and reviews about some products here:
http://footballfashion.org/wordpress/2014/03/30/ixo-pro-carbon-fiber-shinguards/http://www.footy-boots.com/worlds-most-expensive-shin-pads-ixo-38167https://vimeo.com/89841327More information could be found on our Facebook page here:
www.facebook.com/ixo.ingenieriaKindest regards to all of you
IXO
Team
