LeSving wrote:
The problem with optimizing for profit, is that you have to go after a different market. You have to do like CubCrafters. Down scaling, increase quality, increase price. Go after the market segment where people are willing to pay for a “certified quality” factory built non certified aircraft.
That brings with it a different set of risks. If you go high cost and low volume then even a small downturn in orders is enough to kill the business. Also any individual (single customer) manufacturing issues become extremely expensive to rectify. Van’s doesn’t have a profit problem (anyone can calculate a margin) it has a cashflow problem. It also has (with the QB kits) a cost risk problem, in that it has inadvertently baked a significant future cost (shipping back and forth to the Philippines and Brazil) over which it has no control into its pricing.
It’s sad because it’s fundamentally a good product in high demand and all it needed was a responsible hand on the tiller, rather than folks who were prepared to try bold ideas (with unknown consequences) as silver-bullet solutions to problems that can be be mitigated (maybe not wholly solved) with well-trodden paths found in any number of business case studies. If you’re trying to invent something then sure, go ahead, break the rules. But operating a business with a good product and a big order book, that’s not a place to break the rules.
I recall early in my career hearing a C-suite guy from the company I was working for going on about the need ‘burn the backlog’ – i.e. turn orders into cash. That’s what Van’s failed to do initially, and instead of using tried and tested business techniques (increase price to keep a lid on demand, put a stop on orders and use a waiting list, slim the product line to focus on that which moves quickest) they tried to speed production via a risky method and then took the even riskier decision to just chuck the laser cut parts in with the rest and treat them as equivalent. Then they ignored customer complaints for about a year, by which time the problem was at an almost-unmanageable scale. Then when they acknowledged the problem earlier this summer, they went about it in completely the wrong way. What should have been a “mea culpa, we’ll put this right” exercise quickly became a farce of trying to defend the indefensible, throwing good money after bad, and finally blaming customers who wanted no more than what they contracted and paid for. That last part was the final straw: people lost trust and stopped sending them money.
It’s just straightforward bad management and bad decisions over a period of a couple of years. It shouldn’t have happened.
@LeSving is stuck on the idea that because people don’t want to install cracked parts into their aircraft that somehow a builder assist program would bring LCP aircraft closer to being a certified airplane. When in fact the QB kits are one step closer to a certified aircraft and currently is Van’s biggest problem. If Van’s had a builder assist program with LCPs how would that have changed anything?
People are not suddenly demanding higher quality than was available 2 years ago. This is not a case of builders expectations suddenly changing. This is a classic case of grossly overselling manufacturing capabilities and cutting corners to meet demand.
gallois wrote:
Isn’t it an oxymoron to say that what builders want these days is a ready made factory, homebuilt? At a huge costs.
Well. What they want is a new aircraft. The only certified aircraft today that has any traction to speak of is the Cirrus. People want an aircraft they can show pictures of and say, look, this is my aircraft, and people will go wow. You cannot do that with a Cessna or Piper that looks the same today as when grandpa was young 
A Cub is probably a weird example here, but it’s more like a modernized MG roadster where all the class is kept and even enhanced, and the fun riding is pumped up even more. If the certified aircraft production state was different, thing would also be different.
Graham wrote:
rather than folks who were prepared to try bold ideas (with unknown consequences) as silver-bullet solutions to problems
Again, punched holes (all the way up to the correct size) was in it’s time exactly this kind of solution, pioneered by Vans and few others in Italy. The problem was exactly the same. How to speed up kit production while increasing accuracy. Laser cutting (up to correct size) is in principle nothing different. It’s equally madness structurally when looking at it with traditional aircraft structural glasses. The only difference is that a punching machine is a very simple thing, only one way to do it. A laser cut hole is a process where the exact trajectory is of major importance, and there are literally countless ways to do it wrong. Sonex do not punch holes for this very reason for instance. They laser cut holes, but undersized holes, and every single hole has to be up-drilled by the builder. It could be they punch some holes in a few sheets (don’t remember), but they also have to be up-drilled.
The -7, -8, -9, -10, -14 and -12 wouldn’t exist today if it wasn’t for punched holes. The silver-bullet solution obviously has worked well over several decades.
It’s safe to say that in in hindsight, laser cutting was a bad idea. But as an idea, it’s no “worse” than punching holes all the way up to the correct dimension. If done right, it would have worked just fine. Today that idea is bogged down and killed by “internet experts” and angry customers with good help from Vans themselves not having proper control of the guys operating the laser.
Graham wrote:
It’s just straightforward bad management and bad decisions over a period of a couple of years
I disagree. Vans idea has always been to serve the building community with an array of different reasonable priced kits that are easy to build and flies like nothing else. It’s a true vision in there. It has never been to run a super profitable business (why would you even start with aircraft kits if it was?) That looks to be changing now, and the old vision will probably be tossed. The new Vans will for sure be more according to your liking, but this will be felt on kit prices and the number of different kits. There is no other way to do this if they are to continue.
Anyway, lets rather wait and see how it turns out. It’s just that CubCrafters has the recipe that will let Vans to continue with kit production for decades to come. That recipe is good for people that want a new and cool aircraft (and has the money), but it’s useless for the traditional kit builder community that has kept Vans going all these years.
RV8Bob wrote:
is stuck on the idea that because people don’t want to install cracked parts into their aircraft that somehow a builder assist program would bring LCP aircraft closer to being a certified airplane
You know what. It’s no mystery to me your posts are being deleted at VAF.
Peter wrote:
How can prices go so high? This is mostly sheet metal. I buy “aviation” aluminium sheet and it costs peanuts.And with no certification, they don’t need to do anything with it. No internal paperwork, no QA. They need to do no more than if selling outdoor furniture.
As you’ll be aware, it’s not a case of putting some pieces of aluminium in a box… For what you’re getting, the kits are really cheap. Firstly they are quite complete, and there are many custom components such as weldments. Someone also has to pay for R&D. Vans has over 100 employees. They also have quite extensive customer support (although that seems to have fallen apart just now…)
An RV7 kit for example is $33,600, or $51,300 for a quickbuild.
A Kitfox kit is 50 grand and doesn’t even have covering. It’s the same price as a QB RV! Kitfox is less work to build, but it shows how cheap the Vans kits actually are.
LeSving wrote:
Well. What they want is a new aircraft. The only certified aircraft today that has any traction to speak of is the Cirrus. People want an aircraft they can show pictures of and say, look, this is my aircraft, and people will go wow.
I don’t think that’s true at all. Many (probably most) Van’s customers want to build an aircraft. I know I certainly do.
You can scoff and say it’s not real building these days because the holes are pre-punched and you don’t have to mark and drill them all yourself, but it’s still a non-trivial endeavour.
LeSving wrote:
It’s just that CubCrafters has the recipe that will let Vans to continue with kit production for decades to come.
Van’s has run out (or is running out) of cash – it’s not a profitability problem. Abandoning their current products, switching to a high cost product and soliciting new orders for that product is the just about the worst thing they can possibly do. What they need to do is work out a way of converting their high levels of inventory (much of which they can’t ship because it’s laser cut) and their order backlog into cash.
@IO390 they’re certainly not shipping out laser cut parts anymore. That doesn’t mean they don’t have them in their possession.
What they almost certainly have in inventory is a large number of completed QB assemblies – fresh back from the Philippines and Brazil – that are full of laser cut parts, but which ones who knows.
They are presumably too valuable to scrap, so I’m guessing they’ll have to embark on a programme of inspection and parts replacement so that they can eventually be shipped to customers.
I’ve just placed a parts order (for new ailerons), everything is in stock and I called them to confirm. Fingers crossed it gets shipped. Placed on personal CC so I get the protection.
