Kessler email address?

[David Kirk]

I've written the good folks at Kessler twice about having a board built and have not heard back after two weeks or more. This has me thinking that I have a bum email address.

Does anyone have an address they know works?

 

dave

[charliechocolate]

The contact form at http://www.kessler-swiss.com/en-US/contact-2 has always worked for me.

[jburk]

office@kessler1.ch

has worked for me. 

[Buell]

He was on vacation for  a couple of weeks (at least) and seems to be slowly digging out.

 

[David Kirk]

Well gents I'm not having much luck. I've tried every email address given and so far nothing.

Hmmm?

 

dave

 

 

[dredman]

5 minutes ago, David Kirk said:

Well gents I'm not having much luck. I've tried every email address given and so far nothing.

Hmmm?

 

dave

 

 

Get a Thirst from Mark... mdm6665@hotmail.com www.thirstsnowboards.com

my .02

[David Kirk]

Within 5 minute of my post I got two separate, and seemingly unrelated replies, telling me I needed a a Thirst. Some very effective advocates for the brand hanging out here.

dave

[BLOODTYPEZX10R]

Standing by David.

[David Kirk]

I've been in the ultra high end custom bike business for 30+ years and have been marketing my work online for the past 20. At the risk of sounding like a jerk I want to say that in my experience heavy handed gorilla marketing on enthusiast forums will backfire all day long.

dave

[Buell]

Recently it took Hansjuerg a while to get back to me and I have purchased two customs from him in the past. I finally just sent an email through the contact link asking him to confirm if he had gotten my emails. He wrote back and said yes, he was out of town for a couple more weeks. About two weeks ago he wrote with a few questions and I responded. I haven't heard anything else. He will get to it.

Email is an imperfect system. Maybe you are getting caught up in spam filters? Maybe try a phone call during his business hours?

I assume you have checked, but could Kessler replies be in your spam folder?

 

 

 

[David Kirk]

1 minute ago, Buell said:

Recently it took Hansjuerg a while to get back to me and I have purchased two customs from him in the past. I finally just sent an email through the contact link asking him to confirm if he had gotten my emails. He wrote back and said yes, he was out of town for a couple more weeks. About two weeks ago he wrote with a few questions and I responded. I haven't heard anything else. He will get to it.

Email is an imperfect system. Maybe you are getting caught up in spam filters? Maybe try a phone call during his business hours?

I assume you have checked, but could Kessler replies be in your spam folder?

 

 

 

Thanks.....I'll give him more time and will give a call if need be.

Email is imperfect for sure. I do about 98% of my company business through email (most of my clients are overseas or in much different time zones) and it takes a concerted effort on my part to stay on top of it. That said it's easier to do that compared to having customers call in the middle of the night so I'm pretty motivated.

Thanks again.

dave

[barryj]

On 5/9/2018 at 3:00 PM, David Kirk said:

have not heard back after two weeks or more.

Wow.......... two weeks and no reply!     Not very impressive customer/client relations from firm as big as Kessler.   They must be pretty confident in their  product that losing a few orders/sales is no big deal.    

Even Bruce (a one man show) at Coiler responds quicker than that!

You would think they would have had auto email reply "on vacation" turned on...........

[Buell]

2 hours ago, barryj said:

Wow.......... two weeks and no reply!     Not very impressive customer/client relations from firm as big as Kessler.   They must be pretty confident in their  product that losing a few orders/sales is no big deal.    

Even Bruce (a one man show) at Coiler responds quicker than that!

You would think they would have had auto email reply "on vacation" turned on...........

It is not a big company. The only people I have ever had contact with at Kessler, starting with my first call 9 years ago, is Hansjuerg Kessler himself and another person who coordinated my payment. I am just a freecarver. I would expect racers are his top priority.

[Jack M]

1 hour ago, Buell said:

It is not a big company. The only person I have ever had contact with, starting with my first call 9 years ago, at Kessler is Hansjuerg Kessler himself and another person who coordinated my payment. I am just a freecarver. I would expect racers are his top priority.

Agreed.  I started my custom order by using the contact form on their website.  Hansjuerg himself responded from office@kessler1.ch.  When it came time to pay, Jonathan Jenny got in touch.  There have been vacations happening there recently.  I got an auto-response from Jonathan.

The elapsed time from custom order datasheet submission to board delivery was less than 2 months.  Wicked decent for someone with no FIS or Olympic hardware.

[bobdea]

Two month lead time on a custom board that’s generally regarded as the best thing that exists sounds good to me....... 

[bigwavedave]

18 hours ago, Buell said:

It is not a big company. The only people I have ever had contact with at Kessler, starting with my first call 9 years ago, is Hansjuerg Kessler himself and another person who coordinated my payment. I am just a freecarver. I would expect racers are his top priority.

Thought I'd relate this tangentially related story, that may or may not relate to difficulties in communications with Kessler.

At the last NorAm race at Buck hill I rode up the chair with a coach who told me about the time he visited the Kessler "factory"  several years ago.  He was in  Switzerland for some races, and decided to take delivery of a custom 162 in person. He said the only way to get to Kessler's small workshop was by tram or gondola to a small mountain top village in the Alps.  Located in an old wooden structure in a remote  mountain village---I can't remember all the details, but was left with quite the idyllic image of a place to live and work.

 

[David Kirk]

1 hour ago, bigwavedave said:

Thought I'd relate this tangentially related story, that may or may not relate to difficulties in communications with Kessler.

At the last NorAm race at Buck hill I rode up the chair with a coach who told me about the time he visited the Kessler "factory"  several years ago.  He was in  Switzerland for some races, and decided to take delivery of a custom 162 in person. He said the only way to get to Kessler's small workshop was by tram or gondola to a small mountain top village in the Alps.  Located in an old wooden structure in a remote  mountain village---I can't remember all the details, but was left with quite the idyllic image of a place to live and work.

 

That reminds me........

In about 1979 I was getting ready to leave high school and was racing BMX at a high level and working at a local bike shop. Life was pretty good. I was also into skateboarding big time and this brought me to snowboarding. I had one of the first gen Wintersticks (it broke) and then bought a Burton Backhill and loved it. I saw that the Burton "factory" was only a few hours away and really wanted to see how the boards were made so I wrote the company a letter asking if I could visit.

I got a prompt reply letter from a guy named Jake and he said I should come out and see the place and that I could spend the night with him at his place and we could get some riding in. I was 16 years old and drove over into Vermont and met Jake Carpenter at the production shop. It was a deep dark hole-in-the-wall with bare lightbulbs hanging from the ceiling, a bandsaw, a 55 gallon drum of polyurethane and a silkscreen set up. He showed me how it worked by making a board while I was there......grab the prelam deck (made by Uncle Wiggly in Canada) and trace a line onto it with a sharpie and cut it out on the bandsaw. Sand the edges of the cut on a big sanding drum, drill a few holes, silk screen the logos on it and then dip it into the barrel O' polyurethane and hang it to drip off and dry. There were huge cones of cured poly on the floor under the drying boards from the runoff. I was picturing high tech machines and obviously that wasn't what I saw.

We went riding and had a great time and I spent the night at his place. He was house-sitting as I was staying at the place where he was crashing. He left at some point as he had a date that night and got back in in the middle of the night.

We rode the next day and had a great time again and I enjoyed hanging out with him. At the end of the day I had to drive home and he asked if I might want to come work for him over the summer and get boards ready to ship in the fall. I thought of standing in that dark room covered with sawdust and poly-goo and told him thanks but no thanks. I had a good paying bike shop job (more than min wage!) and was taking my racing seriously and thinking i could make some money racing the bike so I passed.

To this day I'm not sure if passing was the smartest or dumbest move I ever made.

Fun memories.

dave

[bigwavedave]

1 hour ago, David Kirk said:

That reminds me........

In about 1979 I was getting ready to leave high school and was racing BMX at a high level and working at a local bike shop. Life was pretty good. I was also into skateboarding big time and this brought me to snowboarding. I had one of the first gen Wintersticks (it broke) and then bought a Burton Backhill and loved it. I saw that the Burton "factory" was only a few hours away and really wanted to see how the boards were made so I wrote the company a letter asking if I could visit.

I got a prompt reply letter from a guy named Jake and he said I should come out and see the place and that I could spend the night with him at his place and we could get some riding in. I was 16 years old and drove over into Vermont and met Jake Carpenter at the production shop. It was a deep dark hole-in-the-wall with bare lightbulbs hanging from the ceiling, a bandsaw, a 55 gallon drum of polyurethane and a silkscreen set up. He showed me how it worked by making a board while I was there......grab the prelam deck (made by Uncle Wiggly in Canada) and trace a line onto it with a sharpie and cut it out on the bandsaw. Sand the edges of the cut on a big sanding drum, drill a few holes, silk screen the logos on it and then dip it into the barrel O' polyurethane and hang it to drip off and dry. There were huge cones of cured poly on the floor under the drying boards from the runoff. I was picturing high tech machines and obviously that wasn't what I saw.

We went riding and had a great time and I spent the night at his place. He was house-sitting as I was staying at the place where he was crashing. He left at some point as he had a date that night and got back in in the middle of the night.

We rode the next day and had a great time again and I enjoyed hanging out with him. At the end of the day I had to drive home and he asked if I might want to come work for him over the summer and get boards ready to ship in the fall. I thought of standing in that dark room covered with sawdust and poly-goo and told him thanks but no thanks. I had a good paying bike shop job (more than min wage!) and was taking my racing seriously and thinking i could make some money racing the bike so I passed.

To this day I'm not sure if passing was the smartest or dumbest move I ever made.

Fun memories.

dave

Sounds...not so  idyllic ...but, yea, that's funny, I remember reading about that Burton guy when I lived in Vermont back in the 70's ...invented a new sport---surfing on snow with plywood boards, what a crazy idea.

but, back to the Kessler email saga...

[David Kirk]

In the FWIW department......I've yet to get any response from anyone at Kessler even after writing to every address they have listed or that was shared on this thread. I also filled out the "custom" form on their site and got nothing in return.

It seems obvious that they do not worry about turning away work.

dave

[David Kirk]

I just heard from Kessler so the ball is rolling..........

Thanks all.

 

dave

[David Kirk]

Just a quick follow up.....

I was in touch with Mr. Kessler and he and I traded a few notes and he was very helpful in guiding my choices in the board design. I was excited for the process and for having a new slalom board next fall. At some point during this process he went silent and is not returning my request to doing business with him. I can think of no reason for this. The silence leaves me to assume that he has enough business and doesn't want to deal with someone on the other side of the big pond. Who knows.

I guess I'll move on and work toward doing business with one of the fine board makers in North America.

dave

 

[Corey]

By chance, are you using a Hotmail or Yahoo email account?  My Yahoo account gets pitched randomly by spam filters.  

Can't go too far wrong with the local builders though!  

[David Kirk]

27 minutes ago, Corey said:

By chance, are you using a Hotmail or Yahoo email account?  My Yahoo account gets pitched randomly by spam filters.  

Can't go too far wrong with the local builders though!  

No....nothing like that.

Mr. Kessler is for sure getting my notes....he's just not responding to them.

dave