Anyone knows about One Tube At A Time?

I had booked a class at TBA for March 2023, but as you all may know, TBA went into liquidation last November.
From the Radavist article about the TBA closure, it looks like the founder of TBA Andrew will start a new project in 2023, called One Tube At A Time.
Does anyone have more details about it? I tried to message their IG account (https://www.instagram.com/onetubeatatime/) a few weeks ago to hear more about it, but I haven't got a reply. The most important thing I want to understand is whether my booking for March will still carry on at the new workshop or not.

Not wanting to be the bearer of bad news, but I doubt it would. They'd effectively be giving you the course for free, which would be a recipe for a second liquidation.

Why would it be for free?

When the previous company went into liquidation all its assets would have been distributed amongst its creditors. The Bicycle Academy Limited was insolvent to the tune of around £280k when it went under. You won't presumably have paid the new business anything, and the new business wouldn't have received any money from The Bicycle Academy Limited, so if they provided you with a course, they'd be doing it for free.

It's difficult to tell from full exemption accounts, but it looks like the business has always traded at a loss, got a big injection of funds of £300k at some point between March 2018 and March 2019 when shares in the company were issued but finally became unsustainable during the pandemic. The business was certainly losing money hand over fist between 2020 and 2022.

Thanks. I am not really familiar with how liquidation works in UK (or anywhere else, for what matters.) Does it mean that customers who purchased courses for 2023 won't ever see their money back? In my case I had paid a deposit, but not the full amount yet.

Well, you could put in a proof of debt to try and get something from the liquidation. But it looks like you wouldn't actually get anything back, as the company doesn't have enough assets to satisfy the preferential creditors, and you'd be an unsecured creditor. TLDR: yes, customers who paid The Bicycle Academy Limited money before it went into liquidation have lost that money. Sorry to be the bearer of bad news. Something of an occupational hazard for me.

So I am guessing the idea behind his new project is to do it again, but trying to reduce costs as much as possible in order to make it sustainable.

Looks like it's supposed to be TBA Take 2, yep, but what the business plan is, who knows?

So I am guessing the idea behind his new project is to do it again

I think the mindset for people who have a business go bust and start another very quickly tends to stop there.

Depending on how you paid your deposit, you may be able to claw it back. If you used credit card for example, I believe there is quite a high success rate in these sort of instances. If you are UK based, there is something called a Section 75 refund:

https://www.moneysavingexpert.com/reclaim/section75-protect-your-purchases/

I am going to wait and see if Andrew replies. I still want to learn framebuilding, and that looked like a good school :/ I met Jack from TBA in the past and I was really excited about joining them for a week.

In fact the original intention of this post was to find out more information about the timeline of the new workshop, since I have already taken a week off work in March to accomodate for TBA :(

Section 75 would likely be a sure way to get money back, if you paid with a credit card.

If you paid with a debit card, you may be abke to charge back. This is not backed by consumer rights law (like s75), but by banks' own guarantees.

If you paid by transfer or cash, your name probably goes at the bottom of a long list of creditors fucked over by shitty business decisions.

I teach framebulding in Tucson Arizona. I have been in business 30 years and I am too small to fail. I had a discussion with Andrew early on where I gave him my opinion that he was going at this the wrong way and there wasn't the necessary demand to support the type of business he wanted to run. Anyways, he had a good run.
For those that lost deposits and/or tuitions with the Bicycle Academy I will extend a $300 dollar discount on tuition. Check out http://www.framebuildingschool.com

Sincerely,
Dave Bohm

there wasn't the necessary demand to support the type of business he wanted to run

Whenever I checked on their website, TBA was fully booked all the time though.

That may have been true but he had a lot of overhead and worker compensation. That was shown by the amount of debt he was in. UBI, which is an American equivalent but was even larger than TBA also shuttered its framebuilding courses. The business is cyclical and we are going through a contraction right now. Each time this happens (second one for me) the ones who don't see it coming go under. It really didn't help that Covid screwed everything up for at least two years. I could expand, its not like those of us who were here before TBA didn't realize we could do so but running my modest business makes me too small to fail and I am okay with teaching the 25ish students that I do every year.

Dave Bohm

Wow, Dave Bohm on LFGSS, who'd have thought it?!
In the run up to building my own frame with Dave Yates I consumed all the stuff you were posting about frame-building, so thanks so much for sharing the art.

Just wondering if you had any contact with Andrew, I'm having a similar problem as I bought a frame Jig last year that had missing parts. The guys at TBA said they would mail them to me but I'm getting a sinking feeling I have a thousand quid paper weight sitting in my garage......The thing thats a little disappointing is the lack of any feedback. According to Tom who worked with him at TBA he plans to start selling the jigs and tools again soon, lets wait and see.

What are you missing?

If it's some of the laser cut stuff, I found this drawing which I suppose is meant to be all the pieces, should be easy enough to check if it's to scale and then extract what you need and either get it lasercut yourself or make it by hand.

Thanks for that, this was going to be my last resort. I'm missing pack E laser cut parts and fasteners plus the fasteners for the stand, would take a while to work it all out but its doable. I think tolorences may be an issue if working in the way you discribe. The problem is, all of my parts are in a bag somwhere waiting to be sent to me and the missing piece of the puzzle is lack of contact. I'm happy to pay postage or pick up in person so its quite irritating! Do appriciate the image though, Thanks.

The problem is, all of my parts are in a bag somwhere waiting to be sent to me...

I'm no expert but I think what'll have happened when the company has gone bust is that someone will have taken over whatever stock, tools etc was left (including your bag of parts) and will be putting whatever of those things they can see value in to auction to try and recoup some money to pay the creditors.

As someone who has given the company money and has not received what you are due you could probably class yourself as a creditor but as @TW says, your name will be at the bottom of a long list of people owed a lot more than you are so I wouldn't be holding your breath.

Pack E is the headtube carriage assembly according to the manual I found online. Have you got any headtube parts? The lasercut parts look like the one marked '32' in the diagram I posted plus another one which I haven't managed to find yet and it looks like they just clamp around the beam and give you a flat surface to mount the headtube 'pucks' to.

The pucks would be easy enough to make, I could give them a bash in ali, not sure if the lathe I can use is up to making them in steel. There's various sources for cones,

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/313376313204?

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/324808221850?

There was someone making cones and pucks for making your own jigs wasn't there? Link will probably posted in the jig thread I started on here.

I'd maybe even be thinking about whether it was possibly to replace that front beam with some extrusion as that might make it easier to bodge it into something workable.

I don't know the exact reasons, but I suspect the lack of feedback is intentional during liquidation processes.
I have got only one phone call from Andrew in November right after they went into liquidation (most likely because I was in a list of people who had put deposit for the academy.)
After that, no contact with Andrew or anyone. I tried to reach out to them on email and IG, but no replies.

I’d imagine liquidation is an escape from something that’s not working for folks tbh. Doesn’t surprise me that they would go quiet.

You could try to get in contact with Andrew via the cobblewobble site...

https://www.thecobblewobble.co.uk/contact