Cycle clothing brand Vulpine is "insolvent" and enters administration

Not the Sunday Times Front Page Nick would have hoped for...

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/crowd-investors-hurt-as-cycling-firm-...

Shame he was not able to comment ...

Anyone else hitting refresh every other hour or so, waiting for Monday in the USA and for Fixie Girl to get online?

I notice that the pop up adverts on this page are now for insolvency practitioners - not your usual cycling bling!

muhasib wrote:

I notice that the pop up adverts on this page are now for insolvency practitioners - not your usual cycling bling!

I don't think that's quite how it works, the adverts you see are based on your contextual searches. FYI I'm seeing datacentre cooling ads and online comic books shops (which sort of sums it up!).. you can install or turn on an ad blocker if you wished to.

Clickbait is defined as: content whose main purpose is to attract attention and encourage visitors to click on a link to a particular web page. I see no clickbait in this post, none that constitutes any direct commercial gain for the site anyway.

road.cc walk a tightrope for content.

yes, they have published a bunch of info about Vulpine over the last few years, because vulpine are/were good at PR and sending out press-releases.

If other firms did the same then road.cc would publish. as a news site they are always going to be looking out for content, if manufacturers oblige then it works nicely.

it also helped that vulpine kit was generally pretty decent, so the interest from the public was there (it's evident that you can see a shift in mood towards vulpine as the thread has progressed...)

about 30 posts below this there was talk about how the advertising spend decreased massively after a year or two - that would have coincided with vulpine stopping their sponsorship of a ladies pro-team (which had laura trott on the roster) - it's easy to make judgements purely from numbers, but context is also important.

I've crashed a company before, not quite this spectacularly, but still - it's going to be hard on Nick, I'm sure he started off with the best of intentions, but something went awry over the last couple of years.

Fixie Girl: The Sunday Times is paywalled. People here may not be familiar with any new details in its article.

All I want to know now is when they are going to flog off the stock. Through sportpursuit maybe?

Ive been chatting to one of our legal guys over here, he's here from the UK.  His view is that the investors have a good case of "wrongful trading' against the directors..  

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wrongful_trading

Potential red flags are:

Directors paid excessive salaries when the company cannot afford them.
Taking credit from suppliers where there was no "reasonable prospect" of paying the creditor on time
Deliberately increasing debt

FG

PS I will look to see if there is an update from the administrator this lunchtime..

What about one secured charged being repaid days before administration? That surely was to evade the rules on administration, debt priority and winding up of companies?

http://road.cc/content/news/221094-vulpine-returns-crowdcube-round-2-fun...

It's all a bit schizophrenic. The website falls over because there's TOO Much stock and it needs to be sold off.  The cash flow is because of too much stock being ordered necessitating the sell off. And then to say 'that jacket will still be there come pay day' is a weird approach. Looks like some of the investors didn't like that approach either.

A thorough piece of journalism over at Bikebiz...

http://www.bikebiz.com/news/read/what-the-hell-happened-at-vulpine/021275

Much as it appears he's been pretty unethical, and much as I don't like the bloke, posting up his home address details is a bit out of order 

If you look through the accounts and registered addresses and the sales history of Mr.Husseys house it would appear he has transferred/sold the house to his Mrs. That way they cant lose it can they................

Buying a house is a personal transaction - it's got nothing to do with the company or the company's finances.  You can hardly hold that against him.  It's likely he knew the future looked rocky and wanted to get a mortgage while he was in (what looked to the bank) to be a good postion.  So long as he keeps up the payments on the mortgage no one loses out.  If he doesn't the bank foreclose and there's likely enough equity that they get their money back.

I can't see any issue with his wife giving up her job and joining the company as well - many small businesses are run like that.  However, the salary bill is quite something for a company making losses. 

Overbuying stock seems to have been the main issue and according to one of the pieces is why the original directors left.  I really like the Vulpine clothing I've got but it was all bought in sales/clearances and you've only got to do that a couple of times before no-one is buying at full price. 

Upping the full prices in 2017 took them way beyond what the clothes felt they were worth.  At the first 30% off everything sale early in the season it was obvious something was wrong. 

Are any shareholders planning to come together to find out what is actually happened and if there are options for recourse?

I haven't really been following this thread because it's a bit dumb, but looking at the last few posts, it does make me chuckle. A promised salacious revelation that amounts to zero on an anynomous internet forum. Salaries (yeah, like £10k a month is anything special for a CEO...WTF-LOL!!!!!!!!!!!!). And house prices now. So many DMIs (Daily Mail Idiots) on this site these days. 

Lets burn Nick's house down unless we get our £179 back....cos there's nothing better to put our energy into .

Turns out that people running businesses are after your money and don’t always tell the truth. Who knew?

Some of my favourite quotes from this thread:

“I had issues with a Hoy Fortress Jersey pockets. The bartack stitching was becoming loose”

“If they had sorted out the boob issue years ago, perhaps it would have made a difference?”

“The last business moves seem shady and lacking in morals.”

“I feel a bit mis led if im honest as not at any given time were there any warnings of this”

“Sadly someone beat me to my reveal on Monday.”

“Wow, taking over £9k per month in the last 4 months?”

“His many absurd mistakes include: 1) Telling investors everything was rosy when it wasn’t”

“The previous pitch in 2015 1) No mention of the Hoy brand being finite”

“I notice that the pop up adverts on this page are now for insolvency practitioners - not your usual cycling bling!”

“If you look through the accounts and registered addresses and the sales history of Mr.Husseys house it would appear he has transferred/sold the house to his Mrs.”

Have you all got together for the special school’s outing?

Well let's put it this way, it is a great pity that a company with some great products looks like it is about to go under and perhaps there are lessons in this to be learnt ?

There are also some points that are worth investingating so that mistakes are not repeated.

Sure, money was raised from investors and the projections (with the benefit of hindsight) look to be too optimistic. Perhaps some scrutiny of those projections is not unreasonable ?

What about disclosures of key facts in the run up to the fund raising ? What was disclosed about the longevity of the Hoy/Vulpine relationship ? The key routes to market (i.e. Evans cycles who appear to have closed the door) ?  What about the board changes, was a complete change in board membership (other than the founder) disclosed ? What of the charges/loans and their disclosure?

The timing  and sale of the founder's house might be worthy of further enquiry ? 

Ultimately if you raise capital you are the custodian of it and duty bound to act in the best interest of your investors and backers and whilst it might be small beer to some, it doesn't mean difficult questions shouldn't be asked and most importantly, answered.

@gva - watch the personal abuse or we'll delete your account and you've only had it for six days.

I'm puzzled why someone with no financial skin in this game would spend this much time and effort here, and then create a second Twitter account, just because they're 'angry'. 

You haven't lost anything, a company has failed. It happens every day. The full story will no doubt come out in time.

But this is looking like a very personal vendetta.

So, apart from feeling very naive as well as a little stupid, I hope someone can gve me a factual not opinion based answer. I sent back a pair of Vulpine jeans last week because they are too wide at the bottom, for my liking. Will I get a refund? If not, will they sed me the jeans back?

Worried of Worthing (closest place that begins with a W!)

Whether you will get either the Jeans back or a refund is a good question.

I'm currently sitting on a Harrington Jacket that I don't require, as I bought two sizes. As the website still looks exactly the same as it did pre Administration, I sent them an email asking whether they were still honouring their returns policy. I still haven't had reply, over a week later, so I'm not holding my breath. 

If they are still trading then surely they must still comply with the Sale of Goods Act and thus their returns policy.

I'm not an expert but I believe they are still trading while in administration; the administrators run the company while seeking a buyer or failing that, dispose of the assets in order to pay creditors. I'm a lowly 'shareholder' (or as I prefer to call it 'charitable giver') and will be lucky to get a penny in the pound on my 'investment.'