Customer stories:
BOFI Racing
Entrepreneur Leigh Gray from BOFI Racing built a successful business out of a hobby with friends. BOFI Racing built up a loyal Mazda MX-5-loving consumer base, but when the UK pulled out of the EU, new delivery rules caused havoc amongst a large proportion of their customers.
I’d recommend SAMOS, hands down!
“BOFI Racing started as a blog with my two friends James and Daniel who I had met through mutual ownership of MX-5’s. We decided to write about our passion for these cars and soon found out that there was a lot of people who wanted to read it.
We were having many conversations about the various states of tune we found our cars in, and we realised there wasn’t a one-stop shop for Mazda MX-5 performance parts in the UK. We set about sourcing as many MX-5 specific parts as we could, from air filters to turbo kits, and everything in between. Before long, we’d outgrown the bedroom and then a small office, so we moved into an industrial unit with a warehouse and workshop in late 2019.
With better facilities for storing and packaging products, we were able to offer fast shipping on parts that come from many specialist suppliers across the world (where we couldn’t source the parts, we’d make them ourselves). However, when Brexit happened, it was painfully obvious to me that shipping into Europe was going to be a huge problem.
We didn’t have a solution in place for delivery to the EU, and it decimated our European sales. I’d say Portugal is only just starting to recover.
Looking back on my emails from March 2021, I can see I was inundated with queries and complaints from customers. We had people who had ordered things and we had refunded the VAT for them, but then the item would turn up and they’d be charged again. There were a lot of challenges and Europe accounted for at least 21% of our business, so we couldn’t afford to lose the business.
Our European sales went backwards, and then it took us to 2022, before we just about managed to do the same amount of European trade that what we had managed in 2012!
But the biggest problem was building the trust with the customers. We’ve still got messaging on our website – in fact we’ve got a whole page – that we wrote to explain to the customers that they wouldn’t have any issues. They’re still learning about it now.
At the time, I knew there must be a straightforward solution, so I contacted a VAT specialist. We were looking at doing IOSS and DDP (delivered duty paid), and the person I contacted said: ‘You need to speak to Simon at SAMOS.’
So, we got in touch and our first delivery was in May 2021. Three years on, and our customers are absolutely delighted with how pain-free delivery is once they’ve placed their order. We give them an estimated delivery date based on our calculations and they love it. They’re really impressed with how easy it is to buy from us.
They know what they’re paying for. All the duties are displayed as a line item at the point of order so they can see that process. They know exactly what’s going to happen. The customer service team has come back to us and said when they speak to the European customers, they’re delighted with the fact that this stuff just turns up.”
“I’d recommend SAMOS to anyone who says they need to get anything into Europe. I’d say, it just works great, because it really does.”
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