The Ries Tripods business status thread

[Drew Wiley]

Certainly not the Ries I once dealt with. But again, who knows what the season and its significant weather there this year has brought to them in terms of even office slowdown or backlog? It's a pretty small company. Keep us updated, however. For example, the local company here I worked for here, for 40 years, shuts down three weeks straight at holiday season. That was sure a nice added benefit to we workers; and the time off was paid. It's a common practice in lots of machine shops too, since getting supplies in, and sending things out, can be difficult mid-winter, even here on the West Coast. Then its cold and flu season too. ... Not making excuses, but just factoring some common sense variables which might or might not apply in this case.

[r.e.]

Not making excuses,

That's precisely what you're doing. Your excuse three posts up, being countermanded by the basic facts, now you've concocted new excuses. These aren't even the first times that you've invented excuses in this thread. And I mean invented. They aren't based on facts. You just make them up out of whole cloth.

It illustrates what I said in post #106 to another customer who complained about Ries:

Your experience is not unique. I'm aware of discussions via personal message and e-mail, involving credible people, about delays, communication and construction. People are reluctant to say anything in posts. Some of the posts in this thread show why.

How many complaints do there have to be before you stop manufacturing excuses?

[r.e.]

This just came to my attention. On October 10th, Ries (Spencer) acknowledged that there are problems and said that it's fixed them. See the quoted e-mail in the post below. None of Ries's e-mail explains the experience that Svein describes in post #107.

Received the following e-mail from Spencer today!

Very exciting to hear this!

“Dave,

After your last email showing the issues with those screws I had a coming to Jesus moment. Ries Tripod Needed Leadership.

1. Fired our contractors that we were using to make the brass nuts and screws.
2. Bought another CNC Machine.
3. Brought in 2 Master Machinists to train my folks how to properly machine all of the hardware.
4. I also brought in a Sigma 6 expert to show how to recognize issues and improve our products.

You were not the only customer that had some issues with our products. We are contacting all of these customers and making it right.

We will always stand behind our customer service. We have stumbled recently after we had a flood but we faced our issues and will continue to improve.

I am sorry that these issues took this long to fix, but I believe we are there.

I am sending you, today, 2 new complete screws USPS Priority mail.

The new screws come with a newly designed brass nut and are made by us in house. The screw has been improved by eliminating the press on collar and replacing it with a tapped collar that can accomodate custom thread lengths. Again, made in house by us.

Please, if you know of any other issues, please let me know. Ries Products come with a full lifetime warranty. We will always be here for you.”


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Drew Wiley]

First of all, r.e., I spent decades dealing directly with many manufacturing companies, all the way from CEO's to technicians, from some of the biggest manufacturers to small machine shops. Every one of them encounters delivery problems in the long run. Right now it's particularly hard due to both the recent covid shock wave as well as poorly thought out blanket tariffs. Even auto makers are way behind due to shortfalls in their own supply chain. So I have a little more sympathy for small shops possibly trying their best on a limited budget when even big manufacturers and serious start-ups are held back by chronic shortages in qualified labor.

Finding subcontractors for nonferrous castings is far more difficult than it was two or three decades ago. Much of that has all gone down the drain into cheap import junk alloys. Few people want to work in shops anymore, even though the pay in many of them can be high (but perhaps not in such an esoteric niche as wooden tripods, where labor turnover might be a problem).

Yeah, I'd be annoyed too at the lack of communication, and would hound them if necessary. But all kinds of specialty things take quite a bit of time to deliver. Apparently Ries has been unable to build up a surplus of inventory ready to ship out right away, and has to respond to orders one at a time. But everyone outright condemning them without inside knowledge is likely to end with yet another extinction of what has been exceptionally useful to photographers for decades. Do you want to be stuck with only carbon fiber and aluminum options? It reminds me of those who bad mouth Kodak or Ilford over film manufacture blips, when there really aren't all that many options left.

So I'm not giving excuses, just a dose of cold water reality. All kinds of parameters have changed for all kind of businesses. Lower demand, increased overhead, and a much poorer labor pool to choose from, less capital available, and maybe an impending heart attack for the supervisor in charge (literally). It ain't just Ries.

What would I do if I didn't already have my own Ries tripods and was in a hurry? Well, I happen to have a decent shop, and would just make my own. But not everyone can do that.

[WBYonder]

I ordered an A-100 tripod and an A-250 head from Ries at the end of July. They said that it wouldn’t be ready for about a month or so, but it took a while longer than that, delivered in early November. Along the way, I called them several times and didn’t have a problem reaching them, and was told about the issues delaying my build/delivery. While I didn’t like the delay, they were alweays straight-forward with me, and I was very happy with the tripod and head once I received them. I admit, I was a bit nervous with all the talk on this thread about the quality of the tripods they are currently making compared to “the way they used to be”. I haven’t used an older Ries tripod, but I don’t feel like I got an inferior product in any way. Overall, I’m glad they took the time to make it right and I like the product I got.

[Drew Wiley]

There are all kinds of issues right now in the availability of properly cured hardwoods too. The whole industry is in a slow recovery after the pandemic, and portions of it will probably never recover. You can't use just any stick of maple. I once did make a replacement Ries leg of my own. But gosh, if I couldn't do it myself, the company I worked for had all kinds of industrial woodworking machinery, and I could get almost anything done for free. But now even they have staffing issues. All of us who once held down the fort have either passed away or retired, and along with us, most of our knowledge and experience left too.

The big hardwood competitor on the other side of town has even given up its hardwood distributor name, and now is just calling itself a woodworking center. It's either that or back to ransacking highly endangered rain forests, and illegally importing. There's no shortage in domestic maple or walnut, but finding the right cut and cure at the right time in manufacturing volume can be a serious issue. And it takes serious capital to stockpile it, when furniture and cabinet makers can fetch a far higher profit on their end product, and while tech gazoolianaires can buy up a huge percent of it for sake of their of their ostentatious homes and yachts.

[r.e.]

I have ordered a tripod head from Ries. It was paid mid December. I have heard nothing from them, except an autoreply confirming the payment. No delivering confirmation. I have tried to contact them via their home page, mail and by phone without getting in touch with them. Have you similar experience with their service level? - or any idea on how to get in touch with them
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Svein

Further to the post four above, Ries has acknowledged that there's a problem and says that it has taken steps to rectify it. It basically says that it wants to start on a new foot. That being the case, it should welcome being made aware of this discussion and then take steps to resolve the issue.

Re your question "Have you ... any idea how to get in touch with them"...

I've dealt with Ries both via e-mail and phone. The e-mail address, which is what you used when you tried to contact Ries via its website, is info@riestripod.com. You also have the phone number. If I recall, it's possible to leave a message.

[John Layton]

So amazing back in early 2004...finally getting my L-45A camera to become a reality...the magic of watching the computer screen to see the tracings of how the four and five axis CNC machines would sculpt the 6061 and 7075 aluminum - and then actually watching the first block as it was being cut...the shapes over which I'd toiled for so many months appearing before my eyes. And the engineers aiding in this process...all so bright and young, and eager.

But a few months later, at the eleventh hour when everything was coming together and it came time to see if this thing would actually work, when I'd been basically living at the facility, smelling of machine oil, spending hours and days and nights in an assembly room fitting parts together - I found myself making a number of trips to the machine shop...a large, dark room smelling of oil...a room where, instead of fancy automatic machines guided by computers - there were a number of huge old Bridgeport milling machines and Hardinge lathes...drifts and hydraulic presses...and on the old crusty worktables an assortment of metal rulers, machinist's squares and loupes, bits of emery cloth and leaky cans of cutting oil.

I'd been needing to make those visits because, at the end of the day, I'd been finding that despite the amazing technological capabilities abundant in the CNC environment, there were some very crucial "fit and finish" aspects of my camera which no amount of technological wizardry could seem to address...so I needed to find this magic elsewhere, which brought me to the shop with all of those (relatively) ancient, and decisively old school machinery, with all of it...every single milling machine, lathe, press...operated by equally ancient men, all of them well past retirement age.

Consider that again...all of those folks with the knowledge and skills I needed to actually finish my project were well past retirement age! And if you think I'm being just a tad oblique in addressing the issue raised in this thread...think again!

[Bob Kerner]

Let’s assume all the propounded excuses are real. The company, if it wants to stay in business, should acknowledge the issues and either explain it to the customer or stop taking new orders. It’s 2024 not 1907. Poor communication is the death of companies.

Also. It’s 2024. Do a search before ordering from a company with a track record of poor customer service. Not sure: call them before ordering to get a sense of their commitment to the customer.

[Drew Wiley]

John - and there I was, pleading with a start-up manufacturer of highly automated expensive metal lathes themselves, locally made (mostly), not to subcontract certain "generic" parts like chucks to the lowest bidder. He did worse, and resorted to budget readout calipers for the specs he sent to China - and that failing, next to India. Nothing fit right at either end. Just some "minor" components on an otherwise fancy machine. But he was neck deep in startup overhead, and rather cocky about all this, and had already pre-sold 8 machines. But cutting a few corners was all it took to bury him under lawsuits and go bankrupt.