Tourstriker Planemate

[Ty_Webb]

Did anyone get a shipping email yet? This batch were supposed to start shipping yesterday I think.

[nando]

I received this email.

Tour Striker Customer,This message is to confirm that your order is ON SCHEDULE.

Our last email was a bit confusing. Your pre-order of a PlaneMate is ON SCHEDULE for a January ship date.

If you have any questions, please contact [email protected] It Solid!

[ohakim82]

I'm in the Jan 8 batch (ordered early Nov), and have not received an email confirming it has been shipped. Hopefully it is on the way and they have just been too busy shipping out PlaneMates to send an email!

[Jose c.]

09/30/19 order date,nothing yet.

[vietnameeh]

I am dying waiting for mine as well lol. I was excited about the last two emails before reading them thinking it was tracking info, but instead it just says on time and/or next batch is February  LOL

[dasams]

Although the website estimated Jan 8th as the ship date, the 12/27 email said that "We expect to begin shipping orders the second week of January. " Which begs the question: When does the second week start?

[Stanks]

This would be the second week. Give Martin a call. See if that expedites your order

[vietnameeh]

Their instagram was bombarded by everyone asking where their order is (come one give them a break LOL)

but his answer was soon, it sounds like they have them in hand but its taking a whole lot of time to put the shipping labels ( I assume he meant shipping labels, all I read was labels) on them

[glk]

Yep, he told folks that he'd gladly accept their help putting labels on thousands of boxes in a reply today.tourstrikergolf@first_to_the_bait it’s actually happening now. If your not busy, drop by. We have thousands of boxes to label?

[Tdpalme2]

Be very careful getting one of these! They are a great training aid but I have broken 2 connectors. They are now not allowing me to receive a replacement connector and they’re making me pay $40+ just to get another one. Also this does not lay the shaft down for you automatically. It does help the cause but you can still swing over the ball with the band being relaxed. It is a great training aid to warm up with, however it does break easily and isn’t built to last.

[Coy M]

Just curious, did you go through the protocols or go directly to full swings?

[Jonlewis031]

You sure you’re connecting them correctly? Big end with the clip opening facing down on rail side? I’ve had zero issues with mine, but I let a buddy borrow it and it came back with a broken clip. I assume he didn’t take the time to learn proper setup. It’s still functional regardless, but there’s definitely a very correct way to hook into the bands.

[Krt22]

Yep, zero issues with mine. But it's also not an automatic hacker to tour swing aide. There is a reason there are instructions and well detailed protocols

[Stanks]

Very very interesting new points of view in the past little bit.

[Jonlewis031]

 

Did you do just as the video stated? I.e., do this particular movement 30 times ..... and done for the day? Or do you do it more than 30? Or after the 30, do you hit balls for fun or take a bunch of swings without the Planemate?curiosity killed the cat for me. I had been running through the protocols sans the PM so once I got it in hand I just had to try everything to feel the difference. (It’s night and day, don’t worry) I basically allowed myself an initial ‘have fun and try it all’ day where I just ran through all the protocols and tried out half swings with short band.

I will say overall now, I use the PM in my house without a ball way more than I use it at the range. Drilling feels with it and getting the ghost arms effect is awesome and does NOT require a range session.

Did you follow it exactly as far as one-protocol-per-day? Or did you do the first 3 protocols on Day 1? Or repeat Protocol 4 for 3 straight days? after the first day of experimenting, I started from the top the following day. The first week I averaged about two protocols a day, and I would always start out with protocol one and do the reps through each protocol until I would get to a new one, then I would focus on the new one for the rest of my time. I wouldn’t necessary do all 30 reps for Protocol 1 if I was going to start Protocol 5 that day, but the idea was to build on each day before adding in a new element.

After you went through all the protocols, which protocols do you review and repeat?Reviewed all of them! I wanted to do them right. Now that advanced protocols are out, I would recommend using those to review your form.

one hand drills (protocol 2) and the relocation form (protocol 3) using a ball from a tee at the range were my favorites initially. The right hand only is big for stall/flip and the relocation with a teed up ball creates a ton of rotation. Now I typically just work through 1 - 5 with enough reps of each to get through my checkpoint feels.

Did you play or take full swings at the range while going through the protocols for the first time? Is that counterproductive? If you did it anyway, what were your results like?I tried hard not to, but curiosity won... Watching Martin Chuck hit those smooth perfect form 3/4 shots in the full band videos makes you have to try it! Reality is the results were pretty mediocre unless you take their advice and tee the ball up. Your body is much happier to rotate when it isn’t having to worry about ground contact.

I would say you gotta do those full swings with a ball just to fail and learn what your body is trying to do to hit a ball so you can work to correct it. I didn’t tie myself up into a knot with the bands until I tried to hit balls- then when you hit a shank and flip, you immediately realize the work you’re going to need to put in. It’s embarrassing to be wearing the PM at the range AND hitting shank fats, but when your handicap drops like crazy and your ball striking goes through the roof, you really stop caring how it looks!

[GolfChannel]

If you notify them they will send replacement clips free of charge.

[dslatt33]

 

 

I can feel it coming in the air tonight, oh Lord

And I've been waiting for this moment for all my life, oh Lord

Can you feel it coming in the air tonight, oh Lord, oh Lord...........

[lchang]

Thanks for sharing!

[fpyle3]

Still no word on shipping for the January group (I purchased in early October). This is very frustrating, as I cannot imagine which component of this relatively simple device has caused a months-long bottleneck. I do not believe Tour Striker artificially created a shortage to create buzz, right? That would be incredibly misguided. For me personally, I will never purchase another product from this company -- and this is coming from a golfer who uses the Smart Ball and Tour Striker pro 7 iron and sand wedge extensively in practice.

[Stanks]

Guy. Re-lax. Chill out. Go play a round of golf and practice all the aspects of the game that the planemate won’t help you with. That’s sad.

I'm in the group with you waiting for my confirmation shipment. But damn

[Krt22]

In my semi-professional opinion as a product designer.I think in general tour striker is still largely a small business, where they design, test, and develop locally and then rely on CMs over-seas to do the final fabrication. I'm guessing this model has worked fine for quite a while, because they simply never had large enough volumes to create real issues (even then, I do remember smart ball shortages). Given their volume, I'm guessing their main goal is to keep on hand inventory relatively low, which again has yet to cause a major issue.

Enter the Planemate. From seeing the device, the packaging, and where it was sent from, it is quite obvious the parts are being made over-seas, shipped to the US (perhaps as piece parts, who knows), and then packaged/sent from their local address. Despite a huge spike in demand, they likely still were at the mercy of CM doing the work in terms of lead time. Even 10,000 units is tiny in the grand scheme of things to a CM, so they could have sat in a queue just to start production. Given the view failures of the clips, I would not be surprised if there was a minor redesign of that component as well, which would further increase lead time to make the new molds, qualify the process, etc.

Parts finally arrive in the US, big backlog, gotta print and ship a bunch of boxes, big enough to cause further delays, likely not big enough to warrant adding additional full time staff as once these first initial batches are out of the way, given demand will likely subside some.

Unfortunately the modern gotta have it right now feeling in the market-place brought on by the likes of the logistical giant Amazon makes surviving as a small business very difficult. So do they fire all their local staff and contract everything out at the expense of jobs and margin, or do they hope to get past the initial growing pains and further improve their production efficiency?

[hurley999s]

They’re not a large company

While obviously they thought this was good enough of an aid to bring to market, as a small company it would have been foolish of them to contract their manufacturer to produce 100k of these at launch. What if it didn’t sell well?

Well, the PM took off - really took off more than any aid that I can remember. So as a small company, they then had to figure out how to produce enough to meet demand.

Not as easy as turning to the manufacturer “ok now I need 50k of them in 3 weeks” - first, you’d need the cash to pay whatever upfront fee the manufacturer needs, then you need to make sure there’s proper QC, then you need to actually need to fulfill these orders. Not to mention, can their manufacturer even handle such an increased load? If not, it’s not as simple as just going to another factory to have them do it, and certainly not a quick option either.

Easy to do as a large company with major infrastructure to handle, but you can imagine the logistical challenges for a small company to tackle this. So they stuck with the batch order business model for the time being. I don’t know what’s so surprising about this if you just think about it from a business perspective.

[fpyle3]

Valid points from you both @Krt22 and @hurley999s. Look, perhaps I was a bit strong in expressing my frustration and I do not mean to flame a small company. As I mentioned, I use several of their products quite consistently in season. However, charging my credit card in early October and now apparently missing the target shipping date has not made for a pleasant buying experience. I guess lesson learned on this particular business model, of which I know now to avoid in the future. Thank you again for your thoughts.

[GoGoErky]

They are a small operation plus have a teaching business with clients. They offered for anyone to go help them stick shipping labels on the thousands of boxes they have. Also iirc they said second week of January they would start shipping and not all would be shipped the second week of January

[hurley999s]

I hear ya and I’m not suggesting you shouldn’t be frustrated because I likely would be also had I not gotten in on one of the early batches in July. Just giving a little context here for understanding so it can be less frustrating.

[ohakim82]

Lol, I don't really care as long as they ship out by next week. But asking people to provide free labor to ship out the resistance bands and belt they paid $163 for months in advance is adding insult to injury. If that is really the bottle neck then it should be easily solveable by offering to pay some college students or whoever off Craigslist $20-30hr to do it.

[glk]

Note the emoji - he was joking.

[GoGoErky]

It was probably more in jest than actual offer due to the number of people impatiently waiting for their order and they were trying to make a point that we are a small business with little to no staff and have day jobs too.

They sent emails saying orders are on schedule but way to many people want their stuff yesterday.

[IZang]

Question if anyone has experience with both PlaneMate and the Tour Striker ball: If i'm just looking to stay more connected and turn a bit more, could my needs be sufficed with the ball or should I drop the cash for the PlaneMate?

[stingerfade]

This 100%

wr all get it you’re small and didn’t know it would be this popular but could’ve had a plan in place to get a system in place when they arrived at your facility.