Weathertech Floor Liners ?

[vietkid_2006]

Post #18 above.

Thank you, not sure how I skipped over that lol.

Submitted!

[Mike1357]

Sent in my request message. Hopefully this will pan out.

[CyborgGT]

I've been wanting these as well, and the price honestly isn't bad at all considering how much abuse these are supposed to be able to take. People on here pay more for less in the name of OEM/JDM optional parts, so why the hell not? E-mailing them now... my only worry is that they think all this copy-paste messaging is spam.

[Jarrett]

I'll call them tomorrow to raise that concern and to just put a bug in someone's ear.

[deevergote]

If they say they need more requests to make it happen, I'll take it to Facebook. I feel we'd get a far better (and more mature) representation from the people here, but if sheer demand is what they need... I think we can make that happen.

[Jarrett]

Alright, I spoke to a representative at WeatherTech today and was given some bad news. The rep said that they will need 3000 requests before they go forward with the approval to create these mats. Her rationale was their upfront expense in tooling. I don't know if these figures are true, but it's what I was given.

She says that the tooling process costs roughly $75,000 and the materials, storage and marketing are additional to that. Do I buy it? No, but if that's their policy, what can we do?

Any suggestions from anyone else?

[cb9love]

Alright, I spoke to a representative at WeatherTech today and was given some bad news. The rep said that they will need 3000 requests before they go forward with the approval to create these mats. Her rationale was their upfront expense in tooling. I don't know if these figures are true, but it's what I was given.

She says that the tooling process costs roughly $75,000 and the materials, storage and marketing are additional to that. Do I buy it? No, but if that's their policy, what can we do?

Any suggestions from anyone else?

Full boycott of their product for any other vehicles, same thing you always do when a company tries to play hard ass.

[H311RA151N]

Alright, I spoke to a representative at WeatherTech today and was given some bad news. The rep said that they will need 3000 requests before they go forward with the approval to create these mats. Her rationale was their upfront expense in tooling. I don't know if these figures are true, but it's what I was given.

She says that the tooling process costs roughly $75,000 and the materials, storage and marketing are additional to that. Do I buy it? No, but if that's their policy, what can we do?

Any suggestions from anyone else?

It was a good idea and we tried.

I just bought a set for my truck and am planning on some Weathertech in channel visors in the near future.

[CB7NWDD]

Okay so now we need somebody with a 3D printer, a CB7, and some extra time...

[deevergote]

Facebook it is!

[CyborgGT]

Can't automotive upholstery shops create this kind of thing? I was planning on having the cargo/trunk area of my wagon re-done in an Element-like rubber for junkyard runs and the like anyway.

[Jarrett]

WeatherTech make a trim-to-fit cargo mat to fit that purpose. It has an area bordered by a raised lip within the area of the mat to protect against leaks from going too far away from the center of the mat.

The more I think about it, though, the more I think this was a lost cause from the beginning. How many did we realistically expect to purchase as a group? 50? Maybe 100 over the course of 3 years including the Facebook crowd and fleetw00d's fleet. Let's say we purchased 100. At the going retail rate of $110.00ish for a set of front mats that would amount to $11,000.00 worth of income to them. That's not a lot in terms of developing a new product. This isn't something that they would be doing one-off 100 times like a fabricator or machinist would do for a group buy. This is them retooling a manufacturing process. So, do I think it's as bad as they said it was? No. But I still think we're out of reach at the moment.

[johnbordumb]

Really sucks to hear. I can't buy that it would cost them $75k to manufacture. But as you said Jarret, we probably only come close to $11k in product demand. I'd assume that's only around a third of their real cost to manufacture.

Looks like we move on to something else now. Do we know of any other vehicles with a floor pattern close to what ours would be?

[CB7NWDD]

I have my interior stripped out of my coupe, I'm tempted to make a mold of the floor by cutting the carpet off where I want the mats to end and them spraying them with flexible bedliner. Anybody know of a product I might use to make the actual mat out of once I have a mold? I'm from Oregon and I can totally do this Nike status with a waffle iron and some rubber... But I wouldn't mind some other ideas.

[motohead623]

sorry to bring this back from the dead, but just did a little bit of research into these and it doesn't look that hard to recreate; in small batches, here's what's needed:

Mold: WT CNCs their aluminum patterns, but a hand-done piece wouldn't be terribly difficult to do. It WOULD be time consuming, though. Probably take a couple tries to get it good enough.

Actual manufacturing process: Weathertech front mats have a polyethylene core sandwiched between thermoplastic elastomer, while the rear is a single layer of thermoplastic elastomer. The three-layer adds a ton of complexity, so for argument's sake, let's stick to considering a single-layer for now. The material is heated and vacuum-formed into the patterns. Sourcing the same material, it could probably be done in a large enough oven. I can't see it needing more than ~400 degrees.

If you guys are really serious, I can figure all of it out. Obviously, the final product wouldn't be the same quality as Weathertech, but that's kind of a given.

Any thoughts?