Club benefits - your ideas please...

[Karl V]

Christmas at yours then!

[Anon]

I love the idea of offering more value to members. But I am missing the clubs objective? If I were to make a guess I would say the objective is: to build a community obsessed about Ariel projects, to share knowledge and have fun.

Then with all the tactical things like reducing membership for new members, reducing the forum sections to paid members, does this help achieve the objective?

Some things to help build the community is to make people feel they are part of a community with like minded individuals. One thing that is missing is feedback from the factory and staying up to date on things i.e. when will the forged wheels be ready, wings etc on the 4. Status of the hypercar etc. This us an opportunity for the club to lead and provide this "bridge".

Other things that make people feel they belong to a club, is swag i.e. t shirts, stickers, hats. I know there is a shop, but perhaps give deals or let people select a free item every year.

Personally I am not an Ariel owner, I have had a order in for an Atom 4 since 2017 so the current benefits would not make sense for me to join at this time but I do enjoy learning from others on this forum. Please don't take this away otherwise I see the small community shrinking not growing.

[atomiser]

Discounts - mostly done now - though it would be good to secure a A048 super soft supply of tires and maybe a links page for all discounts and current status

Club watch - seems to be the thing at the mo - Ultima do a nice LOUIS ERARD one https://www.ultimasports.co.uk/Merchandise

Tech stuff - manuals and guides in one place would be good (may have been done ready) but I recently had to do a ninja kungfu search to find aero settings. here is Ultima's https://www.ultimasports.co.uk/Resources and there also have a portal for tech downloads, spec sheets etc

Club Ariel models in 1:18 - always like to have one on the desk

TIPEC do a monthly meet at a local pub, newletter and have a event schedule (shows, roadtrips, talks, factory tours, trackdays, experience days etc etc) - we may not be really big enough for that - and it requires lots of time.

[GraemeW]

TIPEC do a monthly meet at a local pub, newletter and have a event schedule (shows, roadtrips, talks, factory tours, trackdays, experience days etc etc) - we may not be really big enough for that - and it requires lots of time.

Thanks Atomiser. We do have monthly meets, road trips, factory tours and trackdays. They are advertised here and on facebook. Some have been patchy, like trackdays because of financial commitment risk by the club. We are a small club with relatively few members, however as we plan to grow the members, we can add additional events. Towards the end of the year I will be seeking more specific feedback about events. They are clearly a big part of the club

[CAG3D]

How many members are in the club?




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[reg]

Another perspective, the TVR club is £55. For that you get a really glossy mag, which is half decent. Good discounts on insurance, I saved £50 off the top. They had three or four TVR only track days so no Lewis Hamilton’s trying to scalp you into turn one, these were all subsided. Some of the owners Sprint, not sure if the club spend on that but it’s suggested. Then regional and national events. Trey actually lock their entire forum down without membership but I’ll happily pay because of the discounts with various parts suppliers and insurance.

Forums are dead/dying, that’s life. But if you want to attract owners to the website my advice would be don’t limit the technical forums. They’re likely the ones who will contribute there over and above all else, bringing value for everyone.

[hamtt]

I've always offered club members discounts on products but this has always sort of been done informally, to the point now where just anyone that emails or asks I generally let them have the discounted prices without knowing if they're a member or not.

I did it originally to kind of promote the club and interaction of the club as I got a lot out of the forums when I first joined, and in the past have offered to do more to promote the club but whenever I have suggested anything I have always been told for the sake of impartiality the club cannot be seen to be involved with me so kinda left it.

I'm still happy to tighten up the discounts so it's to club members only and included club leaflets/flyers to all my customers etc and even get some club merchandise done at cost if it helps.

Also I think having the usernames of paid up members or a note specifying if a member is paid next to their username would go a long way in encouraging unpaid members to sign up. It woud raise awareness of the paid subscriptions and benefits etc.

[John Scherrer]

The forum does display "Club Member" agianst the posters username though?

It's a bit confusing though as some committee users etc don't get "Club Member" displayed.

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[Karl V]

[mention]John Scherrer[/mention] we have only just finished cleaning all this up, but I'm glad you noticed it!

Up until yesterday afternoon, some users had a 'Rank' if they were members or admins etc. but it was a little out of date so quite a few members didn't have a rank and some lapsed members still had their rank.

Also, any user with a rank didn't have their 'post count' displayed - you may remember the Hero, Quarter Grand, Newbie etc. badge that displayed for some users? Well now the forum displays both:

• A Club Member badge if you're a member (or Admin / Moderator) - this is applied manually by me along with forum permissions when folk enrol / lapse

• Star rankings (1 to 10) based on number of posts - this is automatic

BTW - There are still around 20 members who have paid but I don't know what your forum username is. If anyone is a paid up member and doesn't have a Club Member rank, please do let me know. It would be good to make sure everyone is taken care of.

That said, each and every member on here should have received a membership confirmation letter, by email, over the weekend. Again, if you believe I have missed you out, please shout!

[Alex Brandon-Smith]

Another perspective, the TVR club is £55. For that you get a really glossy mag, which is half decent. Good discounts on insurance, I saved £50 off the top. They had three or four TVR only track days so no Lewis Hamilton’s trying to scalp you into turn one, these were all subsided. Some of the owners Sprint, not sure if the club spend on that but it’s suggested. Then regional and national events.

Reg, (and others) comparing ourselves to other clubs is a little difficult tbh but It's good to see what they provide. TVR have a huge amount more cars out there than we do and having charged £55 for quite a while I'm sure it's swollen the coffers somewhat, hence the ability to be able to subsidise and run TVR only track days. Let's not forget they go wrong quite frequently and need more spares that Ariels do!

I would love to be able to run this type of stuff but we simply don't have the money...atm. We are in a difficult halfway house whereby we need to increase the income, in order to provide extra benefits (hopefully like track days one day) but too may people are simply freeloading the system. Karl and the team are trying to find some interim solutions to help us grow to be able to give more back.

The Atom 4 has a huge waiting list and, as such, these people should be getting involved. That's what we're aiming to do, and at £30 it's not exactly a huge amount of money...question is, as what point do we try to increase the cost to give back more. Do we say, increase ourselves to £55 first (just as an example) which could drastically shut down the membership levels instead of proving more money to give back, or keep it at £30, try to use what we have to generate more, then be able to give back once there are more members and more in the koffers? You can see the problem.

We are working on the "LITE" membership which will allow access to those who can't make use of discounts/events etc. I know it's not going to be popular to everyone, but the club has stood still on membership levels for too long really. Even organising events like MSG is a huge risk when hiring places like Thruxton as we did this year. We simply don't have huge amounts of money to take risks and traditionally the members have been, shall we say, laissez-faire on their uptake.

In order for the club to survive, people need to commit more. Those that do commit should see a benefit. That means that those that don't commit will not get the full benefits of course. Hopefully we can all work together to produce some other benefits to help us progress. And don't forget that can come round in a multitude of ways...giving time to help the committee, discounts on printing or anything else we can use to promote the club, finding club discounts if you have a connection somewhere. It's all welcome and ultimately it's what Karl's original post was intending - we want to know how to progress, not necessarily question the idea of protecting the few things which actually have some intrinsic value for the club. I massively appreciate all those people who participate on the forum at any level, and there is still plenty of space for everyone to do so, but it's fairly clear that leaving the forum free for all is not increasing our membership numbers and hence the changes.

John, in answer to your question mate, most are members or registered users, but those few moderators etc are seen to have higher status that club member so it shows their highest rank. Sorry if it causes confusion but there's only about 6 people it should affect.

[reg]

Ah. So ‘lite’ members are ‘freeloaders’

Good stuff

[Trigger]

Just an idea - but could all new car orders get a membership attached (added to the cars cost) and then money handed to the club ? May be a way of increasing the size and scope. Obviously owners could opt out but surely when spending the £60k plus on an Atom 4 you would just accept ?

[atomiser]

Just an idea - but could all new car orders get a membership attached (added to the cars cost) and then money handed to the club ? May be a way of increasing the size and scope. Obviously owners could opt out but surely when spending the £60k plus on an Atom 4 you would just accept ?

+1

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[HenryJS]

A quick one from me...

RE Karls comment about the preferential rate at Haselbury Mill - this applies to Ariel Owners, potential customers and visiting suppliers alike.
Limiting it to paid club members would stop them giving discounts - as we put a HUGE amount of business through that place every year, we would like to keep it the way it is as we use Haselbury Mill for a great many things!

Please however do feel free to contact the other places local to us for special club rates.

[mention]Trigger[/mention] we now have ariel.club flyers that go in with new vehicle 'paperwork packs' (service info, handbook etc) RE the 'auto enrolment in the club'

[Karl V]

Limiting it to paid club members would stop them giving discounts

Fair enough Henry. I'll strike them from my list of 'membership benefits to pursue', but I may still add them to the eventual list of where 'we' can be brave and ask for a discount.

Thanks to everyone for the ongoing suggestions...