As of January of 2025, we have discontinued all of our Bilstein based website entries. This was not a choice we made lightly, as we have been a Bilstein dealer for over 15 years and have developed numerous unique products using their dampers. The availability of the Bilstein dampers has been extremely limited, and once they run out of stock we have to wait months (sometimes 6 months or more) before product is available again.
As a small company, we at Vorshlag can only afford to hold a limited amount of stock of Other People’s Parts (OPP), and we rely on being able to restock frequently direct from the manufacturer or a wholesale warehouse. The way Bilstein is functioning the last 8+ years we would have to buy a full years’ worth of stock for every part number we need from them – then hope that we can sell it, or that we don’t run out.
With so many Bilstein based kits we listed on our site, we constantly ran into long lead times for items that our customers ordered. With the “Amazon-ification” of online shopping habits, customers have nearly zero tolerance for waiting. Those delayed orders inevitably turned into cancellations and refunds, which costs us both time and money – and it hurts our reputation with those customers.
We were happy with the quality and function of the Bilstein monotube OEM replacement dampers and PSS coilover kits, but we simply rely on their inventory. To complicate things, Bilstein has an extremely low profit margin for their authorized dealers (due to a very big gap between their set MSRP and allowed MAP pricing). That is almost acceptable if we can order products as needed (and add something to them like our top mounts, to make some sort of profit), but that slim margin does not cover the holding costs to have a full years’ worth of stock sitting on our shelves.
We recognize this creates a hole in our suspension offerings for our lower cost of entry “StreetPro” kits (see above), the PSS ride height adjustable coilovers, and even the modified coilovers we made from their monotube B6 dampers we called the “TrackPro” (see below) – which we built when Bilstein didn’t make a PSS kit for a particular car model.
We have identified a potential replacement supplier of quality, monotube dampers with ride height adjustability and a huge model range. We will be testing this more attractive option soon, but we also need to verify inventory of this brand before we add them to our website. Stay tuned!