Before I started Rugged Rocks, Nissan 4×4 parts were hard to find. Off Road shops and wholesalers didn’t carry them and in many cases they didn’t know they even existed. In those early days I manually went through the printed catalogs to consolidate the Nissan offerings into a single website, and special order parts through suppliers that had access to the parts but didn’t have them loaded in the systems. Once that was done I went on to building relationships with various brands working on special projects to bring more support to this forgotten circle of Nissan enthusiasts. The majority of this effort took place between 2006 and 2019. From Soid axle swaps, atlas transfercase adapters, headers, lockers, chromoly extended axle shafts, high output alternators, robust add-aleaf kits, ring and pinion sets built new as well as odd OE ratios from Japan, coilover shocks…the list goes on.
Fast forward through the pandemic and into a completely different economy, and industry. There have been a lot of brands bought by larger companies, some companies closed down, and the remaining have prices are constantly changing across every brand which has been a lot to manage, along inventory and production votality. Slow moving parts have also been Staying up to date become a full time job in itself.
In 2025 I had a major technology fail, crashing my website & phone system… everything ceased for a while.
The rebuild has been going well. It’s not just a restoration of old systems, but rather a fresh look at processes, managability, supply chains, with the goal of shrinking lead times, automating accurate info on the website, growing the catalog like it’s a fresh look at the industry, keeping my eyes peeld for unique problems ot solve, and best of all…. bring the Nissan 4×4 community back together… after all thats where this all started.
See you on the trail.
-Steven
