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The Death Of Wolf Car Covers
I am sorry to say that I learned recently that the Wolf line of products will no longer be produced. No more Wolf Car Covers. No more Wolf Powersport products. Gone are ATV Covers and Accessories.
As you may or may not know, the Wolf Automotive product lines ceased production around the end of March or beginning of April when its parent company, Global Accessories went into receivership. Global continued to accept orders from our http://AccessorizeYourVehicle.com website for covers that were in stock, but then canceled many of these orders and stop accepting orders completely.
We were eventually told that Coverking had reached a tentative agreement to purchase Global. What we were not told was that the actual sale was conducted via auction. When the auction day came, Covercraft swooped in and outbid Coverking. When I first spoke to the people at Global they were excited about the purchase because they thought the two companies cultures and product lines were complementary and they hoped that Covercraft would continue to market their products, thereby keeping their jobs intact.
It retrospect it appears that Covercraft not only saw a way to branch out into two new product areas, dash covers and floor mats, but maybe more importantly, a way to eliminate a major competitor to their car cover line, who sold the same or nearly the same product for less. Sometimes a lot less.
To be fair to Covercraft, it does appear that they put more effort into creating the patterns used to create their car covers than Wolf. Where Wolf would have one pattern to fit a specific year, make and model of vehicle, Covercraft could have two or three patterns to accommodate various model configurations.
Wolf's line of car covers were made exclusively using the fabrics manufactured by Kimberly Clarke. Covercraft also offers covers made using the same Kimberly Clarke fabrics, plus a selection of higher end fabrics that complete nicely with Coverking's upper end fabrics. When it came to head to head product comparisons, the Wolf line of car covers appeared to be more popular than the Covercraft equivalent.
Although Covercraft markets their products based on product quality and not price, in our experience, the message is not having an impact on the end consumer. First of all, both Wolf and Covercraft boasted that their factories meet ISO quality standards. And they were both using the same fabric. And to one up Covercraft, Wolf extended the Noah fabric warranty provided by Kimberly Clarke from 4 years to 5 years.
Personally I appreciate the fact that Coverking products are still made here in the good ol' USA. Global Accessories had moved the Wolf, DashMat and Premier Floor Mat lines from Ohio to south of the border. I am still having trouble buying the argument that we are better off exporting our jobs to Mexico and China while keeping our free market borders open and trying to compete against products produced by foreign government subsided companies. But that's the topic of another article.
A Wolf car cover made using the same Noah fabric used by Covercraft was usually priced 15% - 20% less then the Covercraft car cover. So from the consumer's point of view it was the same fabric, a better warranty and $30 cheaper. It was an easy choice to make. Wolf even subsidized the shipping cost by charging a flat $5.00 handling fee.
BUT, you say, Wolf went out of business! So maybe they priced themselves out of profitability. Well, for sure, Global Accessories was hurt by the economic credit crunch. Whether their business failure was the result of a specific product line or how profitable each product line was, I do not know. I do know the tonneau business was suffering due to the near stand still in truck sales. Covercraft had exited the tonneau market last year and did not pick up Global's Lebra or Downey tonneau lines.
So back to the subject at hand. I am disappointed that Covercraft is killing off the Wolf product lines. Eight years ago, before I was in the automotive after market accessories business, I bought a Wolf Evolution cover for my '99 Mustang Cobra. I am still using it. When my cover tore around the antenna because I did not install the reinforcement patch correctly, Wolf sent me a piece of Evolution fabric so I could cover my mistake.
Wolf (Global Accessories) has been good to me, as a consumer and as an internet marketer. I will miss them.
About the Author
John Noland is President of Noland & Charges, Inc. the operator of
AccessorizeYourVehicle.com
. With a lot of help from his "charges" they provide a quality and well priced buying experience for their customers by stressing customer service.