Hello Jason, it's always a please having you chime in on things with your spin on things. Since you are talking about being candid lets drop the bs and be straight forward about what your wrote and since this is a public forum put it in a manner that everyone actually understands what is being discussed, so.... starting with #1.

#1 A small startup company (Ascendency Racing)finds a new product that is designed by someone else (JVD). They take this product to the top selling aftermarket product in that category in the US. This company also uses its own money and time to promote the original product throughout the world lining up many Distros with contacts they know in the industry.

Then comes along a more well known company (Werks Racing) that received the clutches because the first company asked the MFG to send their driver one because they wanted to sponsor said driver.

*****So if I'm understanding this correctly you are saying that I received a clutch because you asked JVD to send a clutch to someone that you wanted to sponsor lol! Can you please explain how I would get stuck in the middle of that? I would think that if you wanted to sponsor a driver the normal way for this to happen would be for you to contact them directly, see if they are interested and if so send them one your self since you are in the US rather than have a manufacturer in Europe ship one half way around the world!*****

Then big company (Werks Racing)uses its might (I will not say what I was told) ****please feel free to, I'm quite curious and have nothing to hide*** to get that same MFG to go against the agreement they had with the first company (Ascendency Racing) as far as sole rights to distribute in North America because the MFG is scared (For some reason) that the bigger company (Werks Racing) will send the product to say for example China to have it copied or maybe to Italy.....

How does this relate and how do you feel about the bigger company (Werks Racing) moving in on the smaller one (Ascendanccy Racing) with those tactics?

**So since you asked I'll give you my honest opinion on things. First if you are being told that someone got threatened etc then that is BS, unless your watching Wall Street the movie or something that stuff does not really happen. Second I've never ever heard of a company needing to be "forced" to make money. The reality of the matter if you want my candid answer is that if someone manufacturers a product they are free to sell it to who ever they want to. If they choose to sell it to 2,3 or 15 different companies that it their prerogative and frankly if you have an issue with that then you should man up, stop whining about it and go talk to the company that makes the products. The ultimate decision for a manufacturer to want to sell to multiple players has nothing to do with me, that is a decision that the company that makes the product decides on and is usually based on production capacity and whether or not the original company (in this case yours) is buying enough product to satisfy their volume requirements. So maybe you just needed to buy more?

In any case this is no different than the OS, Mugen, GP scenario that others talk about. GP has an exclusive for the US for OS engines. Mugen contacted OS about selling their engines, OS says we cant sell you OS engines because we have an exclusive with GP but if you are interested and the volume is there we can make a unique OEM product for you which is what they did. Was GP happy, probably not but the product had was different and both companies were smart enough to keep a stable playing field and not start undercutting each other to destroy the market. Something that I will add I made an effort to do also here in the US. We came out with a unique enough product that if you did not continually draw attention to it most people would not even realize that it came from the same facility. Second my predominate interest was in the export market for the product but knowing your activity here in the US and having to offer my stuff globally I purposely set pricing high enough in the US so that dealers would only be able to match your pricing, not undercut it (because I was not trying to push you out), something that I again did not have to do. You had been selling these for a while and had created a good demand for your product so I felt with the matched pricing, people would then have the option to just purchase whatever one they wanted without any financial incentive to go either way. You made the decision to drop your pricing within a week or two, something that you will note that I have not even matched because frankly I think my pricing is fair and frankly I could care the least about what you are doing.


#2 I think Mr. Fioroni brought this up in another forum and I can quote it but that would take too much time. What about the Centax Clutch.... Isnt the Fioroni the origional? Also cooling heads... Wasn’t Fioroni the first one to start drilling them? If I recall these are two things that one company (Werks Racing) took credit for designing or making first then Fioroni Corrected them with factual release/design dates?

****First of all I'm not even sure what any of this has to do with you but to address it again the Centax clutch was not developed by Fioroni, if I'm not mistaken that was developed by Serpent in the '70's or 80's. You are referring to our Power Clutch which is a simplified centax style clutch system which Fioroni has claimed that he was the originator of. My response to that is frankly I do not know. At the time and we are talking 2002 or some time like that Fioroni (the brand) was imported by GS Racing and I was looking for a quality manufacturer to make aftermarket cooling heads for us which lead me to Vittorio who was a friend of Alberto Picco (who's engines we were the US importer for at the time). Vittorio agreed to make aftermarket cooling heads for us which we subsequently sold for several years under the Werks brand (does this kinda remind you of what I talked about in #1?). During the entire time that I was buying aftermarket heads from him we were selling the Power Clutches (which we were buying from another company in Italy) and not once did he mention the fact that it was a copy of anything he developed (and if anything I believe that in one meeting in Italy he might have mentioned that he offered/had one also but we were getting them from the same source so there was no point in him quoting them). Also his importer in the US had never marketed nor sold that type/style clutch system at the time that we introduced ours either. About 2-3 years afterward they did start selling them in the US but I assumed that they (Fioroni) were just buying them from the same source in Italy as we were. So....nothing shocking, underhanded or dastardly in all of that is there!

Now on to the cooling heads and drilling lightening holes in them. Yes as I have also already mentioned in posts before (and I see that you actually took the time to dig up the post by Vittorio lol, you should have also posted by response if you wanted to be fair) Fioroni was that first company to lighten aftermarket cooling heads which were heads that used to sell for $60-$80 a piece! What I claimed (and the only thing that I have ever claimed about this) and is indeed true is that we were the first company to provide lightened cooling heads on our standard production engines. That is right out of the box, you take out your motor and the cooling head is lightened. No one had done this before because the cost to do so was simply considered too high. I took a gamble and spent the extra dollars to get it done on our engines and now everyone does it and it effectively also put an end to aftermarket cooling head business.

So that now addresses all of that, on to #3.

#3 Last one was credit for Carbon Clutches and Multi Weight flywheels... Hmmm Think I have emails from 2009 April asking for these things.. 3 Different weights to be exact.

***Ok, you claim to have sent some e-mails in 2009. It's 2011 and you are still waiting on some of the stuff it seems that we were able to get done in a matter of a few months. What exactly does that show?****

Again, Please understand my candor when asking these questions but it seemed like your first post was the Pot calling the Kettle black.


Jason

***No the pot calling the kettle black is you coming here and questioning me about how I conduct business especially in regards to the clutches in #1 when you just did exactly the same thing (with your recently released Technopower Based Engine) to Tony Newland who is (or I should say was) the Technopower Importer that also supposedly had an exclsive for the US. The difference between you and him is that he handled it with a bit differently in that he did not attempt to run your company though the dirt by making stupid posts talking about and questioning everything that "the other company" (code for your company) has done and stood by what he felt was the appropriate response which was to drop the line.

You might learn something from him and rather than cry out about being wronged maybe what you should do is look at how you are conducting your own businessin the first place. I don't spend a lot of time following what you guys are doing but it does not take a rocket scientist to figure out that it is probably not a good idea for you as a manufacturer to sell directly to consumers at a price lower than your dealers are. It's never a good idea to undercut your dealers because if you do why should they even bother carrying your products in the first place? Think about it....

Secondly if you have something to say to me about what I do, be direct about it, drop the "other company" nonsense and say what you have to say. It's a little difficult to sorta kinda half drag someone through the mud so if you are going to do it, at least do it right.

Third, after all of this posting you will note not a single point in your post(s) has anything at all to do with taking a product to Taiwan and having it copied so nothing that you even said no matter how polite your tried to be about it had anything to do with what was being discussed. If you have a beef with me, the way that I do busines or anything else feel free to pick up the phone and call me but in all honesty I think up until now I have been rather respectful of your company and making sure that I did not undercut you on the clutches or anything along those lines, something that I can not say that you did with Tony when you priced your engine what around a hundred bucks below his..... For the rest if you have anything else to say to/debate with me please start a Werks/Ascendancy debate thread or something so this one does not get locked.