With all of the craziness going on with The Ring presale and upcoming Rio Koi presale, we’e been without a GUMA update for a while!
The Good:
The shoyoroll GUMA store has had some cool stuff in it, like this wallet.
I don’t use wallets, though. I used to. But I was guilty of a nasty case of the “George Constanza wallet.”
Please tell me somebody else is guilty of this.
Also, the best part of the GUMA membership has revealed itself. While I still think it’s totally ridiculous just to have to pay for the privilege of then paying again for an item, I think that the headache that the membership has saved people in buying the most recent gis has been really nice.
It was really excellent that GUMA members were given the privelege of the Comp Lite and Uniblue gis. I just hope they come out with the other 8 gis that Shoyoroll projected for the 2012 year.
The Bad:
The comp lite gis were sold at the beginning of June. I jokingly wrote an email to a friend saying:
It says 6-8 weeks. But that might be ETA without adding in time for
customs and them to ship to us. So I would guess 2-3 months =o\
As it stands, it looks like we aren’t going to see these things before 10 weeks since purchase. Which stinks if you were planning on wearing one to all of the various IBJJF opens.
Overall:
The entire GUMA Membership package plus the 10% off and getting to buy every single gi without any headaches is really starting to make this membership worth it.
{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
It seems it could go both ways, I mean you paid around 400.00 or so for GUMA right? I can’t recall the actual price, but you got the 1751 gi free (169.00) ok. Then you got to preorder your Ring and Rio Koi (let’s say 50.00 value-no headaches), then you are supposed to have access to members only gis and other merchandise (value of 100.00 but still unavailable). So, if its a one time fee you will get your value back over time but if its yearly then you really didn’t get the value you should have unless like many members are doing you are reselling your gis on Ebay or your a friend or distrubutor of the SYR guys and have extras for sale. I like the idea of the GUMA model but to really take advantage of it (at least from the customer point of view) the company needs to be more mature. This is why you will not see all the promised gis by year’s end. Isn’t it the case the the SYR guys just moved to a dedicated location and Vince started giving SYR his full attention? I think we forget that SYR was just a side project for a long time and now is becoming an actual business while still trying to hold on to what made them special. So, overall I don’t know if GUMA at this time was worth it, but hey; I could be totally off base. What do others think ?
Yeah. I definitely agree Mike. I said something similar in one of my first updates. It’s really only worth it if you plan on buying a lot of SYR merch throughout the year.
I hope that members are compensated in some sort of way should only a small fraction of the 12 promised gis come out by year’s end. Maybe extending the membership or something similar.
I would totally buy that wallet
*wink* if navy skies is on the way