(Pssst, start the video so you can listen as you read)

I remember finding Crash Industrial’s website during a google search. Immediately I thought what a bad name. It sounds cursed! I took a look at their website and products. Their motto was interesting:

“Crash is an international collective of designers, architects, artists, and craftsmen. They are furniture makers and curators whose aesthetic draws on the simplicity and solidity of Vintage Industrial design. Crash pieces represent a cross-section of the past and present.”

But their products were just items imported from India and China. So I don’t believe they were actually makers of anything, other than stories. So one day a a client calls (we’ll call them Google) looking for some crank tables. We gave them a quote and didn’t hear back, which is often the case. Then many months later we get a call from Google’s interior designer asking if we can fix some crank tables which they bought from Crash Industrial. Apparently, the crank mechanism would fail at random and the top would “crash” down! This was a major hazard for them and they removed the crank handles so people couldn’t adjust the height and get injured. After looking at the tables, we realized that they couldn’t be fixed, at least not by us. I felt bad for the client, and designer who specified the items.

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This scenario has played out numerous times for us. The client thinks our price is too much, they buy the other vendor’s product, then the product fails, and the client asks us to either fix it, or they trash the other product and buy ours. My Uncle used to say “buy once, cry once”. It can be painful to pull the trigger on an expensive quality product sometimes, but you may be better off in the long run.

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Now Crash has literally crashed financially and are out of business, leaving their previous clients high and dry. Their website is also gone. You can find remnants of them all over the net still. Like this listing on Houzz which shows the same junky crank table which failed for Google. Interesting how they claim it to be commercial quality and make it sound like it’s from Brooklyn. For $4,500, you could have bought a disposable table too. Screen Shot 2016-06-20 at 2.20.53 PM

I understand we all have budgets when it comes to purchases. Even though we want the Ferrari, sometimes we have to settle for the used Camaro. I recommend educating yourself on the company / item before buying. Look at reviews from various places and ask somebody you trust for a referral. My wife Sim taught me the latter of the two. And it’s helped tremendously! We also do that when looking for services like finding a great plumber. It seems like we can’t always trust companies to stand behind their products / services like we would expect.

Come crash into me, crash into me….