Unhappy Sick Bicycles Customers. BEWARE!

PB Forum :: United Kingdom
Unhappy Sick Bicycles Customers. BEWARE!
Author Message
flag Samrwood
Posted: May 22, 2019 at 3:13 Quote
dinde wrote:
Went to check on any activity and comments were removed. Likely I was the last one to leave a comment:

"Order placed end of March 2018. I'm aware there have been at least 25 frames made while mine was supposed to be no 4(5?) and not received while 25th has been shipped early this year. Requested a refund in January 2019. No response from you apart generic James's responses. You are aware of this. Where is my refund? "

Have you taken legal action yet?
flag v7fmp
Posted: May 22, 2019 at 3:23 Quote
gbcarmona wrote:
Catch 22 right...would you go to court and spend a lot more money in the hope that these f£&@ers end up having to pay everything back, including compensation, expenses, etc...when it looks like they don’t have any assets anyway to do so in the first place!? And this times as many people who got stung?! Very sad to all...
Jordan’s business track record and entrepreneurial YouTube videos clearly show how this would end up and how they built a business/hype in a dodgy way!
To start a business without any investment behind to back it up hardly ever works, unless it relies solely on your own time, skills, effort and labour...as soon as something goes wrong (which always does), it snowballs into a pile of sh1t3!

it costs circa £80 to start a small claims court claim against them. They will lose, so any subsequent costs will be on them. So whilst you might not get any or all of your money back, it wont cost you more than £80. At least that way you may take some solace in the fact you took them to court.

I know its probably not that easy for some folk, but if they owed me a vast amount of money, I would drive to Worthing and confront them.
flag ranjomandolin
Posted: May 22, 2019 at 3:57 Quote
i am genuinely intrigued to see where they go next from this and what the email they send today will say.
flag mr-ed
Posted: May 22, 2019 at 4:59 Quote
ranjomandolin wrote:
i am genuinely intrigued to see where they go next from this and what the email they send today will say.

My bad?
flag tom666
Posted: May 22, 2019 at 5:35 Quote
Compositepro wrote:
gbcarmona wrote:
Catch 22 right...would you go to court and spend a lot more money in the hope that these f£&@ers end up having to pay everything back, including compensation, expenses, etc...when it looks like they don’t have any assets anyway to do so in the first place!? And this times as many people who got stung?! Very sad to all...
Jordan’s business track record and entrepreneurial YouTube videos clearly show how this would end up and how they built a business/hype in a dodgy way!
To start a business without any investment behind to back it up hardly ever works, unless it relies solely on your own time, skills, effort and labour...as soon as something goes wrong (which always does), it snowballs into a pile of sh1t3!

isnt this how a great deal of businesses start up these days

It might feel like it, but in reality no. Getting a company off of the ground with no investment is super difficult, particularly in manufacturing. If your product is tech or service based it's slightly easier but still hard. You need either a stack of your own money, or you need to write a business plan and go to a bank or an angel investor and try to secure cash.

Sick needed a loan of $50-100k to get them going. Most of the issues they've had are to do with cash flow by the sounds of things, along with a lack of attention to detail.
flag sacalobra
Posted: May 22, 2019 at 5:47 Quote
tom666 wrote:
Compositepro wrote:
gbcarmona wrote:
Catch 22 right...would you go to court and spend a lot more money in the hope that these f£&@ers end up having to pay everything back, including compensation, expenses, etc...when it looks like they don’t have any assets anyway to do so in the first place!? And this times as many people who got stung?! Very sad to all...
Jordan’s business track record and entrepreneurial YouTube videos clearly show how this would end up and how they built a business/hype in a dodgy way!
To start a business without any investment behind to back it up hardly ever works, unless it relies solely on your own time, skills, effort and labour...as soon as something goes wrong (which always does), it snowballs into a pile of sh1t3!

isnt this how a great deal of businesses start up these days

It might feel like it, but in reality no. Getting a company off of the ground with no investment is super difficult, particularly in manufacturing. If your product is tech or service based it's slightly easier but still hard. You need either a stack of your own money, or you need to write a business plan and go to a bank or an angel investor and try to secure cash.

Sick needed a loan of $50-100k to get them going. Most of the issues they've had are to do with cash flow by the sounds of things, along with a lack of attention to detail.

They aren't manufacturing.
They are asking for payment upfront so no risk or capital investment themselves.

The customer is self funding the business up front with long lead times expected.

The above isn't a normal business like you'd have with a shop where you have the stock up front.

Sick needed a loan of 50-100k to get them back, how did you get to this figure/this idea?

Their business model is you give me me 1,000 now. Right I've got the money, it'll be 4 months mate. Goes to supplier 'ive got the money now so you can go ahead and make it'.

Where's the risk to Sick? The customer is carrying all the risk and the supplier Marino is awaiting payment. So Marino also has all the risk.
flag justanotherusername
Posted: May 22, 2019 at 5:47 Quote
Disagree, you can have cash flow issues regardless of initial investment, poor planning and incompetence ensure it, having more cash to start with means more cash to lose, if they hadn’t ordered a container of Taiwanese frames before paying for previous orders would there be an issue? If they had the £50k to begin with they may have just spent more on odd projects and make a bigger more diverse Taiwanese order.

They have received about £28k in crowd fund frames which don’t appear to exist outside of autocad, should that not have been sufficient?

Also, I doubt you speak from personal experience regarding starting a business? I have been there - did it with my business partner and £2k each, we part own a small business now which after 10+ years of slow growth is going OK.

Look at Cotic, BTR, Stanton and Starling too, years of work, no £50-100k silver spoon, it’s a bullshit excuse, you do what you can with what you have available to you.
flag Samrwood
Posted: May 22, 2019 at 6:27 Quote
I fail to see how this all went so wrong... Customer pre orders a frame... frame order goes to Marino... frame gets built... ships... delivered to customer.

Of course that formula is multiplied, often ordered in batches to keep shipping costs down but how can that get so f*cked up? All they needed was an Excel doc to see what orders were in against the number of items in stock/production and the sum of money in the pot to pay for the fabrication of any outstanding items. As soon as those numbers to get thrown out of balance then they could have acted accordingly.

Is it because they spent the customers money elsewhere (i.e oil slick ti bars, cane creek cranks and onyx hubs) instead of spending it on the items customers actually ordered?

It baffles me. It really does...Especially as they weren't even building their own frames.
flag tomhoward379
Posted: May 22, 2019 at 6:36 Quote
Samrwood wrote:
I fail to see how this all went so wrong... Customer pre orders a frame... frame order goes to Marino... frame gets built... ships... delivered to customer.

Of course that formula is multiplied, often ordered in batches to keep shipping costs down but how can that get so f*cked up? All they needed was an Excel doc to see what orders were in against the number of items in stock/production and the sum of money in the pot to pay for the fabrication of any outstanding items. As soon as those numbers to get thrown out of balance then they could have acted accordingly.

Is it because they spent the customers money elsewhere (i.e oil slick ti bars, cane creek cranks and onyx hubs) instead of spending it on the items customers actually ordered?

It baffles me. It really does...Especially as they weren't even building their own frames.

Ti frames sold as loss leaders, big booths at bike shows and trips to interbike aint cheap. plus, from their whining posts, it looks like they massively underestimated all the associated costs of getting frames made, shipping, customs, email triage systems etc.

then having to give people their money back when stuff didn't get delivered on time.

thats assuming they haven't paid themselves anything too.
flag justanotherusername
Posted: May 22, 2019 at 6:43 Quote
tomhoward379 wrote:
Samrwood wrote:
I fail to see how this all went so wrong... Customer pre orders a frame... frame order goes to Marino... frame gets built... ships... delivered to customer.

Of course that formula is multiplied, often ordered in batches to keep shipping costs down but how can that get so f*cked up? All they needed was an Excel doc to see what orders were in against the number of items in stock/production and the sum of money in the pot to pay for the fabrication of any outstanding items. As soon as those numbers to get thrown out of balance then they could have acted accordingly.

Is it because they spent the customers money elsewhere (i.e oil slick ti bars, cane creek cranks and onyx hubs) instead of spending it on the items customers actually ordered?

It baffles me. It really does...Especially as they weren't even building their own frames.

Ti frames sold as loss leaders, big booths at bike shows and trips to interbike aint cheap. plus, from their whining posts, it looks like they massively underestimated all the associated costs of getting frames made, shipping, customs, email triage systems etc.

then having to give people their money back when stuff didn't get delivered on time.

thats assuming they haven't paid themselves anything too.

Not to mention a completely mis-timed order made to Taiwan for 150 frames taking up money that could have been used to pay for pre-orders.
flag Samrwood
Posted: May 22, 2019 at 6:54 Quote
justanotherusername wrote:
tomhoward379 wrote:
Samrwood wrote:
I fail to see how this all went so wrong... Customer pre orders a frame... frame order goes to Marino... frame gets built... ships... delivered to customer.

Of course that formula is multiplied, often ordered in batches to keep shipping costs down but how can that get so f*cked up? All they needed was an Excel doc to see what orders were in against the number of items in stock/production and the sum of money in the pot to pay for the fabrication of any outstanding items. As soon as those numbers to get thrown out of balance then they could have acted accordingly.

Is it because they spent the customers money elsewhere (i.e oil slick ti bars, cane creek cranks and onyx hubs) instead of spending it on the items customers actually ordered?

It baffles me. It really does...Especially as they weren't even building their own frames.

Ti frames sold as loss leaders, big booths at bike shows and trips to interbike aint cheap. plus, from their whining posts, it looks like they massively underestimated all the associated costs of getting frames made, shipping, customs, email triage systems etc.

then having to give people their money back when stuff didn't get delivered on time.

thats assuming they haven't paid themselves anything too.

Not to mention a completely mis-timed order made to Taiwan for 150 frames taking up money that could have been used to pay for pre-orders.


Stresses me out just thinking about all those loose ends! I can respect that promotion and momentum is important for marketing, but surely finish one batch before pulling the trigger on another project / projects Razz

When I found out Marino was building frames for them I thought these guys had basically found a way to print money... They had the market, a talented dude sweating it out in his workshop and they were sitting on a beach earning 20%
flag ranjomandolin
Posted: May 22, 2019 at 7:23 Quote
they managed to screw up a relatively simple business model by fannying about pretending to be "tough" and "punk" and wanking around creating daft frames. how many styles of bike have they mocked up/had samples made of?

still, it's all our fault because we wanted them to fail because they were dirsupting the industry
flag tom666
Posted: May 22, 2019 at 7:24 Quote
sacalobra wrote:

They aren't manufacturing.
They are asking for payment upfront so no risk or capital investment themselves.

The customer is self funding the business up front with long lead times expected.

The above isn't a normal business like you'd have with a shop where you have the stock up front.

Sick needed a loan of 50-100k to get them back, how did you get to this figure/this idea?

Their business model is you give me me 1,000 now. Right I've got the money, it'll be 4 months mate. Goes to supplier 'ive got the money now so you can go ahead and make it'.

Where's the risk to Sick? The customer is carrying all the risk and the supplier Marino is awaiting payment. So Marino also has all the risk.

justanotherusername wrote:
Disagree, you can have cash flow issues regardless of initial investment, poor planning and incompetence ensure it, having more cash to start with means more cash to lose, if they hadn’t ordered a container of Taiwanese frames before paying for previous orders would there be an issue? If they had the £50k to begin with they may have just spent more on odd projects and make a bigger more diverse Taiwanese order.

They have received about £28k in crowd fund frames which don’t appear to exist outside of autocad, should that not have been sufficient?

Also, I doubt you speak from personal experience regarding starting a business? I have been there - did it with my business partner and £2k each, we part own a small business now which after 10+ years of slow growth is going OK.

Look at Cotic, BTR, Stanton and Starling too, years of work, no £50-100k silver spoon, it’s a bullshit excuse, you do what you can with what you have available to you.

There's literally dozens of reasons why it hasn't worked, but financial illiteracy - not using the money they did have effectively is surely #1. I think we all agree on that.

Cotic, BTR, Stanton and Starling started within their means. I don't know how all of them sourced the money they started with, but they certainly didn't try to produce 300 frames within a year using pre-orders, crowdfunding and social media hype as the method.

If they were going to try and sell 300 frames in a year they clearly needed somebody on board who actually knows about finance and business and who has more of an eye for the details and the logistics.

They needed some money so that
1) They could afford to pay their frame builders
2) They could hire somebody to do the finance and logistics - clearly not their skill set
3) They could finance their "special prototypes" concurrently with producing their orders
4) If they get hit by unexpected costs - import duties, VAT (I mean you should see those coming, but to them they were unexpected) you can afford to pay them, so that everything doesn't get held up.

50-100k would get them through all of that. Most of these hold ups wouldn't have happened. 50 would be low end, 100 they could probably secure premises, get computers and systems and office furniture and have a proper setup - might actually look like a business, not something run out of a kitchen or a bedroom.

In terms of my credentials - my dad and grandfather have run their own businesses. I'm involved with start-ups and enterprise at university and I've seen the student businesses that have gone off and which haven't. There's almost 100% correlation where the business that sourced investment or loans got going and the ones that attempted to start on a shoestring don't make it very far. It's really difficult to start on a shoestring - particularly in a saturated market like the MTB industry.

Taking out a loan is a risk - but with that many pre-orders it's really not that risky - and like sacalobra said - they're happy to take a risk with customers money and happy to risk Marino's money. Not so happy to take a risk themselves.

Also, it's definitely not a silver spoon. It's a loan of money - a substantial liability. Quite the opposite of a silver spoon. Being able to start on your own money, or your families money would be a silver spoon.
flag TheMountainViking
Posted: May 22, 2019 at 7:47 Quote
Seeing as people are getting very speculative on the finance side of things, here are the companies house records.

https://beta.companieshouse.gov.uk/company/10621767/filing-history


For obvious reasons only 2017-18 currently, but the 18-19 records should be real interesting if they don't file before then.

 


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