CorkSport attends Mazda events throughout each year which include some of the larger get togethers like the OCC Mazda Meet last May or Sevenstock in September. There are also smaller events like our local club Mazdas Northwest which has a monthly meeting. This is a chance for CorkSport to come out and meet our fellow like-minded Mazda enthusiasts. This is also a chance for us to show you, our customers some of our cars like the CorkSport project 2010 Mazdaspeed 3 and the RX-8.
With a new year coming up we are working on planning our schedule and are offering you all the chance to influence where we show up. So far we are planning on definitely attending Sevenstock XIII, the SEMA show in Las Vegas, various Mazdas Northwest events, Mazfest in SoCal, and RPNW monthly meets.
If you have a Mazda event you are working on planning in 2010 let me know about it. It can be local to us in Portland, OR or on the other side of the planet in Geneva, Switzerland. If you have an event or know of one that has Mazdas present let me know as I am open for suggestions. This does not mean that we will be able to make every event, but if we know about your event there is a much better chance of us supporting the event. Feel free to send me an email or a call me on the phone at 360-260-2675 with your suggestions and events!
It has become evident to us that a number of our customers want more ability to configure the color schemes and finish options on their intakes to match the look of their car or their personality.
Because of this, we have investigated the feasibility of making all of our intakes fully color and finish configurable and are planning a staged product rollout to facilitate this. A product rollout complete with actual hard dates that you can rely on.
Stage I: Black Silicone & Filter and Full Configurability. December 14, 2009
So starting…well…now, we have begun this transition with the rollout of black silicone couplers and charcoal-colored dry flow air filters on our Mazda3, Mazdaspeed3, Mazdaspeed6, Mazda 6, CX-7, CX-30, and CX-50 intakes. This brings us to three silicone colors (red, blue, black) for the Turbocharged MZR 2.3 DISI engines and two silicone colors (blue, black) on the MZR 2.0 and 2.5 Naturally Aspirated engines for the 2010+ model year.
Another option included in the first stage release of our fully configurable intake system is full configurability of your intake on our website. If you want black silicone, black MAF Housing and blue filter, you can choose that. If you want a red filter and a blue silicone, go right ahead. We’ll build it on the fly. We have gone through a number of lean manufacturing steps that will allow us to be agile and build our kit contents on the fly and retain our same day shipping capability for all stocked color capabilities.
Stage II: Color Anodized MAF Housings. February 10, 2010
In this stage we will be offering three additional MAF Housing colors (most likely Blue, Red, Gold) and two powder coat colors of turbo inlet pipe, which will be determined by your requests and polls on a number of popular Mazda enthusiast forums. Due to smaller batch quantities on the anodizing and additional process steps, we’ll be offering these colors at a small premium.
Again, we will still allow you full reconfigurability to an extremely granular level -if you want a Blue Filter, Gold MAF, Black Silicone and Black Powdercoated Turbo Inlet Pipe, we’ll do it. Seriously, if you want a Red Filter, Gold MAF, Blue Silicone and Black Turbo Inlet Pipe, we’ll do that too. And just like we have provided now, photos of these combinations will pop up as you configure them on our website.
Stage III: Full Custom Anodizing / Powder Coating and more. March 15, 2010
First off we’ll be offering powder-coated turbo inlet pipes starting with a gloss black and working into a number of other color coating options.
Additionally, this stage will allow you to fully customize anodize your MAF Housing in as many colors as we have access to. If you want a full blacked out intake with an emerald green, dark purple or titanium bronze anodized MAF Housing, we’ll get it for you (again at a reasonable premium depending on interest and volume). We’ll do our best to do small runs and keep what we can on the shelves based on polls and interest. Have a specific powder coating color? We can make it happen. We may also start anodizing inlet pipes (we’ll be switching 4043 to 5356 TIG filler rod for perfect anodizing results if we go that route).
Here’s an example of some of the anodizing colors we’ll have available:
We will also be evaluating silicone colors at this point -because we know some of you are dying for that Kawasaki Green Silicone with Purple MAF Housing to go along with your Bosozoku exhaust, zero offset wheels and stretched tires. Or maybe you just want a clean, all white intake to go along with your CWP Mazdaspeed 3. Honestly, we’ll have to hear from you on which direction to go, but I’m guessing white will be in demand.
There’s more…but if we told you, we’d have to kill you. We’re still aiming to keep this under wraps to some extent as we’ve got some really unique options on the table that we’re still getting samples of. As soon as our samples are in, we’ll be polling for interest and standard style options.
We’re doing as much as we can to provide the exact products you want, configured to your style and taste. To do so, we’re having to stretch our manufacturing agility and call on all of our resources through local machine shops and manufacturers to keep small batch parts on the shelves in a wide variety of options.
Again, tell us what YOU want to see on your car. Have a wild combination that you absolutely MUST HAVE for your car and willing to wait for it? We’ll be putting together a handful of case studies showing some of the more creative combinations for the roll out of the future options on these products.
An Intake for Every Engine August 15th, 2023CorkSport
Goodbye 323 GTX. Goodbye Cusco, GT Spec, Pedders, Autometer, Injen, Knightsports, KVR, RE-Amemiya, Mazdaspeed, and about 50 other product lines.
You may have noticed a recent news post announcing we are phasing out Mazda 323 GTX Parts. The 1988-89 GTX (in USA) was a great car for its time. Many owners have maintained and upgraded their cars to the point they are more powerful and better handling than some of the newest cars. A remarkable testament to the car considering it is over 20 years old!
Unfortunately, there just aren’t enough of them left on the road to justify further development and support. Sales have steadily declined for this car for many years. Ultimately, I think the recession was the last straw for us. Very limited inventory remains and we plan to remove this car from our catalog by the end of the year. To answer the most common question we’ve received since the official announcement last week: “Yes, a few parts will likely end up in our clearance sale”. To reflect on the most common comment we’ve received so far, “You Suck”; it is regrettable, truly. We don’t like it either, but it was ultimately our customers that made the decision for us.
We are also phasing out many product lines, as I mentioned earlier. Border, RE-Amemiya, Mazdaspeed, Knightsports, and FEED are venerable Japanese brands. They have always been slow movers for us, have long lead times for our customers, and sales volumes don’t support keeping parts in inventory. Japanese quality is exceptional, truly, and if you have the taste (and wallet) for these parts we are confident you’ll find a way to get them.
Brands like Injen, Centerforce, KVR, NGK, Unichip, Koyo, and Greddy have many products that are redundant to our own catalog. We are committed to making CorkSport parts the best value on the market but we don’t make everything. We’ve selected a few partners to fill out our product line. The remainders are being dropped from our catalog.
We’ll be launching a new approach to business early next year that builds upon our reputation for high quality parts at an excellent value and supported by the best customer service in the industry. This plan requires a commitment we cannot maintain while serving sales of other brand names. When you think “CS” will you think ‘customer service’ (pardon the lame humor)? We hope so.
There are no gimmicks here. We don’t trademark some odd spelling of a performance sounding words to trick you into believing your getting technology that is different from everything else out there. You are smart enough to recognize that sort of marketing. We could try gimmicks like free shipping but that means we inflate our prices to cover the cost (and thus it is not free to you) or we erode profits and have less opportunity to use them to serve you better. Better to know what you are paying for in my opinion.
Our goal is value. Price, quality, support before/during/after the sale, shipping, packaging, and warranty all go into the value equation. We are focusing our product line in order to offer better value to our customers through improved customer service and support.
After spending some time with a number of Motorsports Marketing minds at the SEMA show last month, we have been contemplating starting a CorkSport Contingency Program to help sponsor successful enthusiasts who are out there campaigning their cars in activities such as AutoCross, Drag Racing, Rally Cross, etc. The program would work similar to other contingency programs with decal placement requirements, sign up in advance and a schedule for contingency awards based on being enrolled in the program and achieving a specified goal.
With this in mind, we’re looking for your input. If you’re a racer and would like to see your sport be the initial run for our CorkSport Contingency Program, drop us a line and let us know.
Every year at this time, as the year draws to a close, we have an opportunity to reflect on the past and set some new resolutions for the coming year. For our business, I call this event SEMA. We wrapped up our annual visit a few weeks ago and now I’ll take some time to reflect on what we observed, learned, and have otherwise taken from the show to better position us to serve you.
First, what we observed, much of the same as in previous years albeit with a renewed optimism buoyed by the recovering economy; lots of tricked out cars (mostly exotics, Camaros and Mustangs). Compact performance seemed to take on a lesser role at this years show. This is certainly true with respect to Mazda. They didn’t have a booth this year or any formal presence as far as I could tell. I’m curious why Mazda did not participate. No matter the reason, it made for a less interesting show. Ford did an excellent job this year. You might expect this since they were the headline sponsor, but I was surprised. Their effort to appear as a financially strong domestic brand, separated from the troubles of GM & Chrysler, was enhanced by this strong showing.
I didn’t observe any substantial emerging trends in compact performance. Aside from the consumer electronics side of things, none of the new products really stood apart from the crowd. On the marketing side of things one clear trend has emerged in the larger industry, nostalgia based marketing. It’s based on capturing those warm feelings we have of when life was simpler and using them to motivate us to buy cars or upgrades for them. Or perhaps, if you buy a car that looks like your pops or some parts from a company that existed when he was a younger man, you’ll rekindle that connection you had as a young child when your father was working on his car in the garage. That’s the idea anyway.
We shut down our shop so that most of our staff could check out the show. What did we learn? Plenty. The seminars can be a great way to add tools to your toolbox. If you go to next years show, take some time out to rest your feet, and attend a seminar. We attended all sorts of seminars. One important point I recall from a seminar is that the brand paradigm has shifted. We no longer own the CorkSport brand. We share it with you. Out there in cyberspace, you do as much to build our brand as we do, perhaps more. This idea perfectly encapsulates how we approach things here. Check out this helpful tipbook, it is worth a look if you plan to go to SEMA next year.
We also learned from exhibitors. They are generally very willing to help and will give surprisingly revealing answers if asked the right questions. Some of the vendors participate in the seminars. This gives even more insight into the inner workings of those companies.
We took time everyday to reflect on the show as a group and record our ideas. As such, we took home lots of great ideas. Everyone loves video, we’ve already got a bunch of them here, and here . We got some great tips on how to make better videos and where to put them to make sure the most people see them.
How about our website? Are you finding what you’re looking for? We’ve largely received positive feedback on the redesign of our site. We learned about new tools to help us make sure you can find what you’re looking for.
We found several innovations in MAF sensors and manipulation of their signals to allow for customization. More and more cars come with these sensors now. As we push our MZR motor well past the 300 HP level, we’ll likely incorporate some new MA configurations. If successful, you’ll see these as new CS products next year.
The list goes on and on. We hit the show with a plan. We checked out the show as enthusiasts, learned some things about the industry and techniques to serve you better, and took home a long list of follow-ups. Whether you are a lifestyle enthusiast or performance enthusiast we think you’ll enjoy a trip to Las Vegas next year for the 2010 SEMA show. We’ll see you there.
– Jason
Final Reflections on SEMA 2009 March 11th, 2020CorkSport
