Begs the question - how do you sell your bats then, both in store and online?
This discussion was never about how we sell bats. It was to address the mind numbing rubbish i see posted (and said away from the forum) fairly regularly.
As an example, in a sales context. A customer walked into the shop in the Summer (he is a good example of the type of person we see regularly) and declared he wanted a bat that weighed 2'10 as he has always used a 2'10, blah blah blah.
I lined 10 bats up that i knew all weighed 2'10 and asked him to tell me which 3 weighed 2'10. He couldn't decide, took him twenty minutes and eventually could only say for sure that there were 2 that he thought were 2'10. I then flipped the tables entirely and got 10 more bats out, all of which were either 2'8, 2'9, 2'11 or 2'12 and asked him to tell me which ones were not 2'10. He picked out 4 and was confident the rest were 2'10. One of which (a 2'11) he purchased.
Pickup/feel/balance/whatever we want to call it, is subjective. A bat is a weight, and indisputable number. My only point in the whole topic is that 'this bat is 2'10 but feels 2'8' is a ridiculous statement, because when that same person picks up a bat that actually weighs 2'8, they are likely to declare that it feels lighter, which does beg the question, what does the 2'10 feel like then?
Bats feel light to certain individuals, they feel heavy to certain individuals, and just sometimes that certain individual gets a bat that is just right,
for them.Whats even more hysterical is when i see people try to go into minute detail with the number that their bat picks up. 'This is 2'11 but feels more like 2'9.5' - WHAT?!
Online is another ball game entirely. Bats are generally sold online by their weight. I have noticed handles get skinnier and skinnier recently and to me this can only be to save weight in order to satisfy the online demand for bats at 2'8. Of course this comes at the detriment of pickup compared to the same bat at the same weight with a thicker handle.
If someone contacts us then i will of course give my opinion/knowledge on a certain bat and try to provide something that suits the customers needs. Our extremely low return rate when it comes to undamaged items is hopefully testament to doing a good job. We also have regular customers on and off the forum, who trust me entirely to get a bat that suits them, i've sourced enough bats for all of these chaps to know exactly what they want. One particular guy wants bats that feel absolutely horrible to me when i select them, bottom heavy logs of old crap is what they feel like, but he loves them.