a story on how we get attached to things that suck
I recently began doing some research on changing the color on one of my vehicles using a vinyl wrap. I’m intimidated by doing it myself, but it’s very expensive to do it at a professional shop.
During COVID-19, I ramped up my website work for local businesses where we lived at the time, and I learned more about the vehicle wrap industry through one of my website clients at that time. I
I was proud of how that site came out, so I had an idea…I would find a local vehicle wrap shop, one that has a terrible website, and offer to trade them a new fully custom website in exchange for a new vehicle wrap.
According to some quotes and estimates I had, it would be about the same cost ($2500ish), so this seemed like a no-brainer.
I did some research in my community Facebook groups and found a guy that had a well-rated shop near me. I looked up his website.
Bingo! It sucked!
I called him up and pitched my idea.
“Hey Dave, my name is Luke, and I have a suburban I want to get a simple wrap on. What would your ballpark price be for that?”
He told me the price, and it lined up with what I thought.
“Great, man, thanks! Hey, a little bit of a different idea. I do websites and digital marketing for a living, and I want to propose a trade. I built an awesome website for a vehicle wrap company in Abilene a few years ago, and if you’re open to it, would you be interested in bartering – website for wrap?”
“Hmmm”
He though for a second.
“You know, that sounds like a great idea, and I’m always open to bartering. Truth is, right now I have a website I’m okay with, so I’m just going to keep it as is. I have a guy that maintains it for me so I’m not looking to change things up. But if you just want to pay outright, I’ll wrap your car no problem”
I was shocked. The website was so bad.
“Okay. Thanks man! I’ll let you know”
I hung up in disbelief, almost offended that he would legitmately believe his site was OK.
My guess is that Dave spends so much time with vehicles and vinyl that he doesn’t look up much to see what’s happened in the website world since 2010.
I wonder if I have had any blind spots or things I stuck to that sucked.
Here’s his site homepage:
