Ch. 7 Bankruptcy Filed 9/6/18

Can some of you legal eagle types describe the situation in layman terms as to how you think this might play out?
We payed to the corporation.
The corporation still exists.
The "owners" of the corporation are in bankruptcy, not the corporation itself.
Is my understanding correct that ultimately, credit card payments made to the corporation will be covered by the major credit card issuers retail protection services?

 

They won't be the last fab shop. This whole crazy lead time deal is getting out of hand. If you don't have start up capital. Hold off until you do. Don't use my money to finance someone else's order. That is a pyramid scheme.

 

There weren't complaints but I know most people, including myself, weren't happy paying full price up front and waiting for the best. We just didn't have a choice since everyone operates that way.

 

Care to say more about that? Nothing I've seen even remotely suggests that to be the case. It would be an inexcusably bad investment. Any investor would be taking on likely millions in debt (certainly hundreds of thousands of dollars) of debt to both vendors and customers and I don't believe they even had a trademarked name or logo (which might have been worth something).

 

Kind of hard to keep 100s of sliders in stock for all the different models and options without being a company like RanchHand or fab fours. Same goes with bumpers and such when there are so many customizations you can do. Especially if the company is willing to take your idea and bring it to life even if its something not on their website.

 

What does lead time how to do with startup capital? It's a manpower issue. We increase lead times to discourage ppl that don't want to wait from placing orders. Some people are willing to wait because they like the product. Simple as that.

 

I agree. It's an easy way of starting a company. Getting credit from banks to start a fab business or any other business is very difficult without assets or some assurance for the banks. Also, we wouldn't have all these fab companies if they required capital up front to start operating. In a way it's good for the consumer.
This just brings to light how discussion needs to happen to find a better way of operating so the community doesn't get screwed again.

 

Definitely not the last time!
People just slowly start to forget.
Remember when Tim from Elite Off-Road did that to 1st Gen owner’s back in 2013???
Oh yeah, I do.. cause I was again involved in a similar sh*t storm

 

agreed. Waited a year and half for my bumpers (from another vendor). Paid only a deposit though but still. Lead times only have to deal with manpower. its not a huge mass production.

Really every company now is taking full payment before you receive goods. Problem of online shopping. However its a double edged sword as you can only buy half this shit online....

 

You still need capital upfront to get equipment, material and money to pay ppl. Pretty hard to get started without sinking any of your own money into this. Most of the vendors here have everything riding on this. We are all in. I understand how people get skiddish following a situation like this. But this is not an industry wide problem. This is a problem with one company.

 

@jowybyo and I started this company with very little savings we both had. Banks wouldn’t even let us take a pen from their counter. We are three years in and banks still won’t talk to us. They’re all afraid to hand out money without us putting up personal assets. And starting this type of business with no capital funding is very difficult. You either outsource everything and have poor margins and hope that your volume makes up for it or you hire people, buy all your own equipment and work that way which takes a lot of money too. You also have to build relationships with vendors to get credit terms and you have to buy in bulk to get cost down so you can try to turn a profit, pay overhead and keep going month to month. You HAVE TO BE WISE WITH YOUR MONEY AND BUDGET. They clearly didn’t do that, we do. There is a common misconception that the buyer thinks the vendors are diving into their vault of gold like Scrooge McDuck when in reality we are no different than you. We have families and mortgages and are just trying to make it in this world.

 

Thanks

 

They had financial backing from their fathers successful business from day 1.

 

I saw a comment on their Facebook when they first announced the possibility of investors before the long weekend, saying he has a fab shop as well and the trade war of tariffs is really hurting the business. I wonder if that has anything to do with this.

I might have missed it but I don't understand how the fully happened. They had a great rep and looked like they had plenty of business so not sure how they ran out of money.

 

I'm sure some thought I was nuts when I said in a prior post about filing BK.

So we know how many creditors, do we have a total dollar amount yet?

 

Scaling this type of business too quickly is a slippery slope without plenty of cash—that is not cash from sales. It is a sad and unfortunate situation for Pelfreybilt, sure, but the company’s mismanagement should not cost the customers. A couple thousand, hell, even a few hundred dollars is real money to most people. I know the owners are in a dark place right now, but the way this has been handled—especially in the tone of their last statement—lacks class. You can not flip it on the customer. It is not the paying customer’s fault. At all.

 

The tariffs have sucked and it has definitely affected us as well as everyone else in this line of work but it is not enough to where it should have put anyone out of business. If it did, you were already working on margin’s that were way too thin.

 

Borrowed from Instagram.



#itsyourfault

 

I think with Pelfreybilt the difference was seeing over 150k in vehicles alone.

They made it out that they were living the lavish lifestyle.