Pelfreybilt Information Release

Don't I recall Joe stating that Mobtown's recent move is in part, motivated by the possibility of keeping product in inventory?

 

You got a Swag box? I've spent over 10g's with them over the years and not gotten anything like that. Must be nice.

Was wondering why I have not gotten any calls back to order a rear bumper. I've left VM's and no return calls. Some lady even told me Tyler never drove or had a White Taco?? What? Very strange indeed. At the end of the day, I've always had a top notch experience with them as a customer using their products on my rigs. Hope they get this situation resolved for all of you guys. Maybe I'm kinda glad they never called me back to take my money.....

 

There will be a time when my laid-backness becomes crying in my sleep and yelling at my laptop. But, until then, I choose to stay calm and give it some time. Since my dumb ass paid cash (which I never even do, so much for making an exception), it won't matter anyway, that money would be lost. I choose to do business with smaller companies and support local...sometimes, that backfires. I'll still do it though (and use my damn credit card).

 

Nothing in the federal courts at that time that matches.

 

I read somewhere that the reason most new restaurants (that are not part of a franchise) go out of business after a few years is that the owners don't understand accounting and how to maintain cash flow. When they start up, they are swamped with new business and revenues greatly exceed expenditures, such that they don't have to watch the books too closely, it all just works out. However, over time as the buzz of being a new restaurant wears off, the revenue starts to decline slowly. If the owners understood accounting and would take a long view of how much cash needs to come in to maintain the status quo and also make investments, they could start to make changes early (advertising, cutting shifts, etc.) when they start to see the downward trend. To do this at a bare minimum, you need software and the understanding of how to use it, to see the trends before it's too late. It's not easy, takes experience, a lot of knowledge and skill. That's why corporations hire CPAs, instead of doing the accounting themselves. There are so many variables involved in maintaining cash flow, and so many different ways to do it. One of the most common ways to deal with the dips in cash flow is for the business to have an account already set up with a bank to borrow on at a moment's notice at a pre-agreed upon rate.

So that all said, one of the things I find curious about all this, is that if you are being paid for a service/product before you have to make any investment in labor (and possibly even raw materials), and you have months of backlog to count on, it should not be difficult to manage cash flow if you are using even rudimentary accounting practices. The hardest thing about hiring people and meeting payroll is that usually you can't predict how much business you will be doing a week or month from now. To hire someone, or make an investment, is to take a leap of faith that business will continue at a certain trend. However, once you have decent backlog in work, it should be relatively easy to make plans on how many people you need, how many hours you can give them to do their job, etc. Plenty of businesses operate without requiring customers to pay up front, one shouldn't need more than a deposit to establish and maintain a new contract with a customer. They are able to do this because they have solid accounting backing up business decisions.

I realize that R&D costs can be significant, but once again, if your accounting is in order, you should be able to see on paper when you are capitalized enough to start a new R&D venture. That is assuming you are doing the math up front to estimate the cost of R&D.

There is also the issue of finding and maintaining dependable skilled labor. That can be tough thing to deal with, no argument there. Not much to say there, other than every business has to deal with this.

If the other fab shops learn anything from this, maybe it will be that accounting is critical to keeping the lights on, and that they will hire a CPA if they can't figure out the accounting themselves. FYI, I'm a Civil Engineer, not a CPA, if anyone is wondering. I have no stake in this game.

 

This is a great point! I have a small shop and company I want to get started. I have learned this the hard way, while I am good at X, I suck at business management and accounting. So, I hired a consultant who specializes in those things. He's already found a ton of mistakes I was making that would screw me 1, 2 or 3 years down the line. Good to know your strengths and your weaknesses.

 

Some people have waited months.
I have their skid.
I’m not married to them but I am in the service industry and you don’t do customers like they have

 

Personal won't likely appear in federal court.....

 

Just caught up on their thread

Pelfreybilt- Suggestions, Likes, Dislikes, Feedback +/-

Even just a couple of weeks ago it was sounding like they had more business than they could keep up with and were implementing new systems to help out. So weird to now claim financial difficulties. I miss when Michael would immediately email me back with every single annoying questions or concern I had

 

Agreed with everything you said. Most of these companies spring up from a passion to build a product that someone didn't offer and then it erupts into a full fledged business. Before they know it questions of get bigger, who to hire, more R&D, actual marketing etc start playing a role. A big difference in what these small fabrication companies do though is build things from scratch. It maybe easy to forecast how many people they need etc but the popularity of their product far outweighs their productions which results in long lead times. Same goes for the other fabrication vendors here. I agree though a deposit is more than enough to get the ball rolling. Plus a lot of the sales are done during the "sale weeks" in which hundreds of orders are given which in turn creates these long lead times but the company is offering their product at a discounted rate. I remember waiting 4-5 months for my sliders a couple years ago from BAMF. I can't remember if I paid up front or not but was super pleased and knew I was going to wait a long time to get them especially coordinating the shipping with multiple other TW'ers.

In the end who knows what is going on. Really I don't know why this thread is kept open until a complete statement from Pelfreybilt is given. They could have invested too much into equipment, or stock, or rented to expensive of a place etc etc. Or as you mention just overall horrible cash flow management.

What I am surprised is at the lack of communication members are experiencing. In all my time on TW, the customer service from Pelfreybilt was always #1.

 

I personally saw Tyler Pelfrey driving a white Taco (the one that said Pelfreybilt offroad) around Poway on several occasions, and the handful of times I dropped by the shop it was parked out front.

 

If they were just making changes to their corporate structure and not filing bankruptcy you won’t find that in PACER. You will likely need to search the state court system for any corporate restructuring documents. PACER would have any/all relevant info as it relates to bankruptcy filings but it doesn’t sound like that has occurred. Then again, I’m not sure anyone knows anything outside of what the owners have posted. This is a very unfortunate situation for all involved.

 

Condensed version

Sounds to me that Pelfreybilt is the same as many small businesses (especially in their "specialty" area)

These types of businesses OFTEN are started up by people who are great at making their product and terrible at running a business.

 

Nothing in state courts either, or at least not as of early this afternoon.

 

Not a problem at all. Most of their fab work is essentially off the shelf, not custom. They can simply stock it for the next person who purchases with 0 lead time. I guarantee if a fabricator posted a thread here about a customer backing out and they had a bumper for sale and ready to ship, it would be sold in less than a day.

If I made a cookie cutter joe bumper and someone didn’t buy it. Well someone right behind them will.

Fabrication is one of the last businesses that use this method.

 

I’ll raise you one, not only would it sell in 1 day. It would sell in under 10 minutes and probably could be sold for $200 more then list price. I’m sure someone would pay extra for instant gratification.

 

I'm just sitting quiet and reading because I don't really have a horse in this race. But as a fabricator / weldor (jet engines and things that go boom), those were my thoughts exactly.

But since I'm here. Too many factors unknown. Hopefully they clear it up in the unspecified future.

 

And I'd also like to note that it's often overlooked at how well this community can function as a whole. No vendors are trying to undermine the situation and other vendors such as Mobtown has experessed their condolences in this unknown situation and testified to their great products.

Hopefully no one loses sight of what everyone should be hoping for, and that is for Pelfreybilt to pull out of this strong and for everyone's orders to be delivered on.

 

I post this not to bring attention to the irony, but to point out the seriousness of the situation for the Pelfreys.
Obviously, they are proud that we, as a community of like minded individuals, voted them "vendor of the year".
Twice.
And they must now realize that the longer we are left to speculate and stew in our own juices, the worse the damage to their reputation becomes.
After so many years of being great, they have fallen...
After scoring countless "attaboys", this is one giant "awshit"...
The silence is deafening.

 

Just found Tyler was trying to sell his Tundra to "free up some money"

This was 4 weeks ago.
https://www.tundras.com/threads/fs-2017-trd-pro-cement-fully-built.29755/