| BAK-RAK-YAK the bak-rak Blog 27/10/2011 bak-rak can mean different things to different people Chatting to a mate who works in PR and he offered to send us a couple of photos he thought might make good advertising for bak-rak. We think he may have misspelt bak-rak to get here. We will
7/9/2011 Chinese don't do lasering One of the reasons we found the Chinese quality was never right is because they do not generally laser cut the steel profiles that go into a bak-rak. In China the general process involves making up stamping tools and then using a large press to stamp out the steel profile. This is up to 12mm thick plate. Stamping done well can hold dimensions to around half a millimetre - but this goes off as tools wear. And holes generally have to be oversize to allow for tool wear. The laser cutting we use now for UK manufacture will hold dimensions to around a tenth of a millimetre and this stays constant on all batches. The latest lasers will cut thicknesses up to 20mm. 1/8/2011 Price is not always right The bak-rak system was originally made in China. But we got fed up with the mediocre quality control and huge batch sizes, so took the decision to move most of our production back to the UK. The prices went up as a result.. but we are supporting UK manufacturing and the products are better- and allow us to improve them on an ongoing basis. The exception to this is the base clam and outer castings. for which we own moulds in China and the investment casting process is very labour intensive - so the Chinese cost advantage is huge. Unfortunately the cost of these parts has nearly tripled since we started and the batch we are just ordering are even more expensive. We have chosen to swallow the cost increases on the majority of our kit as the castings are not a major proportion. However the uni-rak is exceptional as the castings are the major part. so the price of that has had to go up to cover the new batch of castings... sorry!!! For several years we have been selling our base-raks to John Ginnel in Ireland. He makes a fine glass-fibre dog box that sits on the base giving a good way to carry a couple of gun-dogs. We have tried to interest our British customers in the dog box at around £400 it is cheaper than most European contenders - but to no avail. We recently got a
flier from one of our Spanish competitors - Urbeni who do the dog box
you see on the right . This sells for around 700€ and obviously has a following in Spain. Our Greek agent also does his own dog box for the base - this is plywood and flat packed. This sells for around 200€ and is also a good seller. Do all these
European countries have a different view of dogs? We suspect there is a
market
20/6/2011 Competitors are NOT Beating us .. yet! Since we invented
bak-rak, some of our competitors have been busy. However we are sure
that none of them offers the same flexibility of operation or modular
range of accessories. We would, grudgingly, admit that some of them are
better looking than a bak-rak. We think..... designed by stylists - not
engineers.
We like the look of the Thule Easybase - but it is powder coated mild steel and only carries 60kg for the same price as our stainless steel G4 base-rack that carries 130kg. Their box is very big (it can be mounted onto a base-rak) but at £270 it needs to be magic! Funnily enough the Thule Easybase saw the light of day the year after lots of Thule engineers spent an age on our stand at Automechanika show in Germany. Was that a coincidence? The Westfalia
Portillo is a bike rack that also mounts a box - but the bike rack is
£239 plus £280 for the box it is in a different But we are biased so go and look at their web sites and make up your own mind!
Last week we were in the Lake District and took the opportunity to visit one of our customers, Rob at Lakeland Segway (http://www.lakelandsegway.co.uk)who uses bak-rak to transport his Segways. We took Rob's introductory tour and had the most fantastic fun. The girls were very doubtful to start with - but they loved it too. To go forward you just lean forward to stop or reverse - lean back to turn lean sideways. An incredibly intuitive control system that you learn in seconds. Great value too at £35 per head - but a Segway for £5000 is not cheap.. Would still like one!! .. Isn't technology wonderful!!
1/6/2011 Chasing the Technology Social Media.. Facebook, Linked-In and Twitter .. We are starting to get bak-rak properly onto all of these. So we can get our message out to our many supporters. And we now have a QR code for those of you who use such things . Admire this !!! For those of you who do not follow such things the QR code can be viewed with a mobile phone camera and with the right free 'APP' translates into all our contact details which you can then text to yourself or anyone else. Expect to see more of them around. With the wonders of Google a further APP allows you to find local prices for a QR coded product to see if the offer you are looking at is worth buying.. Isn't technology wonderful!!
18/5/2011 Dogs don't like to be left out.
14/5/2011 . Boxing battles with suppliers We continue to battle to get a decent option for an aluminium box. We can either find big, beautiful and expensive which sums up the US made box we have offered for the past couple of years. Or smaller than the optimum - typically 500 deep and 500 wide but with a more approachable price. The plastic box we offer is robust and well designed - but doesn't offer as much space as many people would like. So we go on hunting while offering the current range - but even then we struggle for delivery - the US box is not available for another 5 weeks ..."awaiting a shipment" . The box we are now offering is a reasonable compromise. 1200 + wide but 500 square section for £149 is about as good as we can manage. Made by the Chinese though!
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| Contact Details - Tel: LO-call Tel 0845 00 33 4 55 fax 0845 00 33 55 3 e-mail sales@bak-rak.com
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bak-rak tow-ball mounted carrier for anything - from bikes to bins |
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l
for a dog box in UK - just needs to be to the right hunting, shooting
fraternity who use dogs. Would you put dirty gun dogs n the back of your
white leather fitted Range Rover.. probably not!
cost realm to any bak-rak kit. With a carrying capability of 45kg it
doesn't seem like good value to us.
Segway
is a personal transporter with two wheels and a gyroscopic stabilisation
system. 
