Marino Bikes, a manufacturer for Sick Bicycles, are selling off Sick branded frames as they claim they have have not been paid for their work.
Based in Peru, Marino is one of a number of manufacturers that Sick have used in the past alongside Frank the Welder and Downland Cycles. Sick have come under fire recently for delayed orders, leading to a wave of cancelled orders, refunds and social media backlash. Read their response to those problems
here.
Marino have previously posted that they were unable to deliver frames to Sick due to a lack of payment but this post was later deleted and the issue seemed resolved. However, in a statement on social media this evening, Marino said: "We had communication with Jordan and Tim from Sick Bikes, the payment limit date was May 20th, we hadn't received any communication from them... because we have material to pay, CNC machine, welders, painters, we see ourselves in the obligation to sell these frames, if you are interested please communicate with me."
Sick Bicycles have already posted a response on their social media, saying: "Well that has thrown us a curveball today. Please rest assured that we are intending to reach a suitable resolution to this problem. Whether arranging delivery of frames, an alternative or a refund.
"I'm still a little surprised our every move is headline news and would have preferred to manage this privately, like most businesses do. The last few months have been really hard but we started to see a light at the end of the tunnel. I've not really had time to prepare a proper response. I'll need a few hours to do that."
In a further statement to Pinkbike, Jordan Childs of Sick Bicycles said: "If we don't resolve it with Marino, we will either refund or provide the customer with an alternative frame."
We'll update this story when we get any further info.
They’re so dumb that they would probably respond to us in this article comments section and engage argument, and expect that to be the correct move in this situation.
So the fast talked Merino got them to take down the post set a date for payment didn't respond or make payment on that date and they wonder why this is happening? Da f*ck dude.
As far as every thing being blown up publicly that's what happens when you take people's money and don't deliver the product. Then get caught lying multiple times.
My message to Sick bikes is you aren't lying your way out of this shit. People are going to start pressing charges at some point. Also STOP f*ckING TALKING everytime you open your mouth you show how dumb and shitty you are.
@southoftheborder:
I'm surprised there aren't more comments about these available frames, ripe for the plucking!
Sick already had pretty low prices (... provided you actually got the bike), so presumably there's going to be a discount on top of that because manufacturers are used to selling below MSRP (obviously).
Think about it: cheap frame, steel, made by a reputable manufacturer, plus you get an infamous, soon-to-be-bankrupt company's bike to show off! If I were in the market for a f*cked up hardtail (super long/low/slack hardtail) I think I'd probably order one form Marino.
Another MTB company bites the dust, social Media kills countless companies daily
Formally dunning Krueger but I move that from this point we call it the Trump effect.
I could start offering yoga classes even though I can't stand yoga, but enough catch phrases on IG and I could be a hit!(oh wait, I'm pretty sure this happens too)
'The Dunning Kruger syndrome or effect is characterized by the inability of some people to be aware of their incompetence or ineptitude. Is a Cognitive distortion By which a person who actually has little ability to perform an activity, thinks that he has a lot. Even more than some experts.'
A spot on assessment!
We had a shop that was owned by the same guy for probably 10-15yrs. One of his buddies or maybe rather more of an acquaintances came into the scene and wanted to buy the shop from him (with his daddy's money)... So the purchase happened, and now he's the new owner of the shop. A close friend of mine was his main mechanic, and would update me on the chaos that was unraveling. The new owner portrayed himself as a hardcore MTBr, but it became painfully obvious that he wasn't when he proceeded to force a left side pedal to crossthread by tapping it in with a hammer and then screwing it in the rest of the way. Not too long after that, my friend confides in me that the owner is shooting up meth in his back office multiple times a day, and snorting coke. The fiasco culminates when he decides to not pay his bills anymore, so he can't order anything from anyone. (My buddy left the shop at this point) In his last act, the owner posts on his Facebook that he is doing a huge sale, and that all bikes are half off, and he asks people to special order whatever bike they want, they just have to prepay the full amount. A good amount of people were gullible enough to go in, and order their dream bikes. They paid him in full, and then he skipped town. Arrest warrants were out for the guy, it made the news, etc. Complete disaster. A few months later it came out that he offed himself, found him dead with a pistol in his lap. Terrible outcome especially considering he had 2 kids. Moral of the story is don't get into a business you know nothing about!
As for the whining about it all being played out in public? Well, Sick were quite happy to milk social media for all it was worth when it was in their favour. Not so keen when the boot’s on the other foot.
Jesus fing wept....
"Here ya go, sir. That'll be $2.50."
"Shit. Well this is a curveball..."
We throw them away...
Well how about instead of throwing it away, you throw it into my mouth.
My guess is this sharade will keep going until they´re back on solid financial footing again, but a lot of uninformed new buyers will have to deal with massive delays until then.
Most likely won´t work, but that´s my best guess for the strategy they´re implementing right now.
If Sick bikes is thinking about continuing business then they either need to change their name, or pay a shit-ton of money to scrub the internet.
Don´t underestimate how many newbies are out there.
Not that many people do actual research before buying and even then, there are still those who actually don´t care being potentially ripped off.
I don´t know why, but i´ve met a lot of people who are careless like that.
Give things three weeks to calm down and they´ll most likely start selling frames again.
solves itself tomorrow' type.
How do you guess that's going to happen?
Let me rephrase that part.
"I guess they plan to keep up this sharade until they´re back on solid financial footing again."
"I guess they plan to keep up this charade until they're on solid financial footing"
Not clear to me they were ever on solid footing.
Marino Bikes: "We need our money my May 20"
Sick Bicycles: *doesn't pay*
Marino Bikes: *Sells the frames themselves*
Sick Bicycles: *Surprised Pikachu face*
Their explanation, and I have some sympathy for this, is that they need to raise more money by selling retail so they can ship to original backers. And there is probably some truth to that, but it reflects a fundamentally flawed business model and saving face through the process is impossible.
That´s exactly what i suspect is happening here.
Yup, ended up picking one up. He has some large pre-painted red in stock and some raw unfinished.
$320 for frame
$20 for Marino oil slick headset
$110 for expedited shipping to USA.
$450 total.
I plan to strip the bike and have it painted so I didn't care about the color.
He has red in stock, and a bunch of raw frames that he said will be about 2-3 weeks to coat but you can pick the color.
As Matt said below, you can run 27.5 or 29 wheels.
To be honest, I didn't know anything about these bikes until yesterday and there is so much action on them I jumped on the opportunity to purchase one.
Testing... bold?
Dispute payment charges with whatever payment method one used.
That said, I wouldnt be surprised if there is a winding-up petition out there already, the shame is that my understanding is that your ordinary customers are "unsecured creditors", so fairly low down the pecking order when it comes to paying the range of creditors on winding up. There is always the possiblity that the liquidator could deem directors' conduct to have been "unfit" and take action to ban them from being directors for up to 15 years...though I'm not suggesting that this would apply here...
dirtmountainbike.com/features/sick-cycles-mountain-bike-menagerie.html
My frame (included seat collar, rear axle and a Cane Creek headset) from RSD Bikes showed up under two weeks, shipped from another country and ordered while they were away at Sea Otter. The owner of the company emailed me from the show telling me what was going, when it was going to ship and gave me his cell number in case I needed anything. That's how you do small business!
Pinkbike - you’re meant to be better than this.
Obviously we all can tell that Sick Bicycles is a total disaster run by shady (or maybe just naive) people. PB didn't need to say it outright.
It looks like he’s writing stuff to try and help out his mates and it’s being published unchecked. This is why I believe PB should be doing better here
I´ve given PB a lot of crap for recent articles that were questionable at best, but this one is just simple news.
And that´s a good thing.
No need to jump on the bandwagon, they´re a news outlet and should try to remain as neutral as possible, only presenting facts to their readers.
Nope.
As new, unknowing customers continue to pay, they most likely try to sit out those few transitional cases who don´t get a refund or frame. I mean, think of it.
Imagine you´re a moron with no business sense or knowledge and you´re stuck without product and refund claims you´re unable to pay back.
The logical response would be to declare bankruptcy and try to resolve the matter with as little additional damage caused as possible.
The idiots response is to try and sit things out, hoping to not get hit with a massive flood of lawsuits, try to get things off the ground and pay people back once you actually made money back.
They´re basically turning some of their early buyers into unwilling creditors is my best guess.
Their whole interview and explaination was a mess.
They basically admitted to not having any capital while still having open claims.
Now they tell us they´re going to pay everyone back (with literally no money in the bank and while obviously unable to pay for product) or give them another product, which again is non existant as their stock status on the site indicates and also the fact they themselves said they do still have open deliveries. Missing a whole shipment of frames isn´t gonna make that situation any better for them.
Or did you mean pinkbike reporting a false statement?
Boo hoo, you poor wee sensitive things.
Some poor buggers have been waiting 18 months for frames THEY HAVE PAID FOR!!!
Good luck trying to make us (the vast majority of PB users) feel sorry for you you f*cking scam artist thieves!!!
If you don't pay your suppliers, you don't get to make money off their work. And if you don't respect customer's rights, you don't get to be in business.
Sick bicycles was a pet project that got out of hand and this is what happens. The same thing happens to small manufacturers all the time (anyone remember Lahar?).
Sadly they have a huge social media presence that has inflated their problems (and their egos).
They are really good guys that are true riders and only want to do the right thing.
Said no one with any intelligence!!
Just glad I managed to get my money back from the pricks!!
www.aliexpress.com/item/titanium-suspension-bike-frame-with-taper-head-tube/33021859289.html?spm=2114.search0103.3.37.b8b434b7qxfLMF&ws_ab_test=searchweb0_0,searchweb201602_10_10065_10130_10068_10890_10547_319_10546_317_10548_10696_10190_453_10084_454_10083_10618_10307_10820_10303_537_536_10059_10884_10887_321_322_10103,searchweb201603_52,ppcSwitch_0&algo_expid=8107d6a7-8d48-4853-80f4-abd6c1ac1121-6&algo_pvid=8107d6a7-8d48-4853-80f4-abd6c1ac1121
m.imgur.com/gallery/Nxb4o1O
Besides if you turn your attention to details such as the lower pivot mount, you’ll see it’s not exactly executed well and will most likely fail at that point if it doesn’t fail elsewhere first.
just been sent this
www.captiongenerator.com/1401902/Sick-Bicycles-dont-Deliver
www.pinkbike.com/forum/listcomments/?threadid=211801
Also how many bikes has Frank The Weldet actually made for them? And how many and how long ago did Downland make frames for Sick? And aren’t all the new frames coming from Taiwan?
es-la.facebook.com/MarinoBikes
Apparently their site collapsed for lack of bandwith, that's ok, better spend their money on building good frames.
Idea: why not help these guys by buying directly to them?
I also bought a GG bike in 2017 and the whole experience was great. The "problem" with the bike though is that it's so damn fun to ride that I don't want to do anything else. My yard looks like crap.
GG - Smart people, won local business awards, have a premises, actually manufacture in-house, understand engineering principles, good customer services, nice attitude etc
The only thing they have in common is they are in the bike industry.
It really shows how one company can go one direction and another completely differently.
So if you've been following this debacle, apparently sick never got copyright on the Sick name? So... Somebody with some £$€ could buy up ALL these Marino frames an set up as Sick Bikes 2
:'D
My advice to Sick: Steel is real, and a wonderful material at that, but don’t let it be “realer” than you are to your customers and suppliers.
www.captiongenerator.com/1401902/Sick-Bicycles-dont-Deliver
beta.companieshouse.gov.uk/company/11453634
"Bandwidth Limit Exceeded
The server is temporarily unable to service your request due to the site owner reaching his/her bandwidth limit. Please try again later. "
I wonder why.
"Warning: count(): Parameter must be an array or an object that implements Countable in /home/marino/public_html/wp-includes/class-wp-comment-query.php on line 399"
At least they use Linux :-)
For what it’s worth, shirts came no problem.
Customers are (rightly) angry. Sick need to take a breath and stop this continued escalation as it's currently heading towards something worse
No.. it's the supplier who's wrong.
How many people have taken to public forums and social media after Sick literally, and figuratively failed to deliver again? About 76 pages of people and counting.
www.pinkbike.com/forum/listcomments/?threadid=211801
Are these unsatisfied customers uncouth too? Marino has every right to call Sick out.
Evil were pretty well documented, any others?
The author has written plenty of positive articles about sick, both here and in dirt magazine, so no beef.
This is probably the only comment here that Sick won’t downvote!
If Apple does pay a supplier, regardless the reasons, does the factory have the right to sell their product without a court order or judgement? Of course not.
At what point would you consider there to be an issue? 3 years later, 10 years later? Would you just bin the frames instead?
Marino are a small company, bankrolling this kind of loss may not be possible for them or should they face financial insecurity because their 'customer' is witholding payment?
Sick’s reputation is gone down the drain, but what Marino did might just be the last nail in the coffin for Sick. There were damages to Sick’s reputation before, but because of what Marino just did, I think there are more damages now, hence why I was only suggesting that they might have a case. We also don’t know everything that happened that is not disclosed here.
How does a company in Peru obtain a credit reference for a British company with less than a years trading and therefore no info to gather?
Further to that, why would one be obtained when Marino required full payment before delivery and are therefore not offering credit in any sense?
This is why we are here - Sick order frames, Marino make them, Sick don’t pay for them (at all, not 50%, nothing) and don’t keep to payment terms so Marino sell off frames to potentially keep their own lights on.
Stop thinking of these two companies like Apple or Sram, they are super small, nobody is suing anyone, no credit, no corporate structure or clever broken agreements, just a manufacturer left out of pocket for an unpaid order from months ago.
There are many companies that can provide credit references, including banks. I'm in Canada and i can probably find a company to give me a credit rating on a company from England. I'm not talking about these online scammers. A legitimate company.
From your standards, you would produce whatever amount of frames for someone without getting a credit reference, getting a credit report, getting some sort of deposit and not even know who you're doing business with?
Dude... Wake up. Marino didn't do their due diligence and if you can't see that as an alternative to why they are in this shit, there is nothing further to discuss here.
On that same token: I need 1000 frames - Can you make them for me?. I'll pay you when they are ready.... haha...
No I'm not angry at all, just dumbfounded
Peace.
And i came to the conclusion you are a c*nt!
Maybe you would have used some kind of psychic / thought police......