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Sad to hear this Matt and your bike building story has all the elements of a Greek tragedy. Bit fucked up for all involved. As my eldest daughter and I plan to set off from Bilbao to Barcelona this summer on the tandem and the youngest is now starting her journey on the back, I salute you both for all that you've achieved.
Our journey was far from straight forward but ultimately taught me a lot about myself. Here we are on a trip in 2021 London France Belgium Netherlands London.
Speaking to a few friends who run businesses, it's the wild west out there for anyone trying to make a go of it.
No one is perfect. Not you, not I nor anyone commenting on this thread but ultimately you got out from behind the keyboard, gave it a go and created some awesome bikes along the way. -
However, if you are of the opinion that we are actually a bunch of scamming scumbags, you can at least take heart knowing that because of it we won't be able to work in the industry again, so hold that close at least.
Is it fair to presume that Caren will return at some point with Hartley Cycles Ltd ? It is still incorporated and moved registered offices earlier this year from the same office as ISEN to another address.
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EcuriePeril
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I don't have any desire to go over issues from years ago, there's nothing to be gained at this point. I should address a couple of points however.
Caren wasn't selling isen assets, no one has done that. None of our machines were owned by isen, we both came into it with them from previous businesses.
Running a business over the last few years has become increasingly difficult, rent increases, rate rises, crazy energy increases and brexit all made our lives much harder, but we still just about managed to keep going. However, as was mentioned above, which I'm not going to get into any further, a key staff member had personal issues such that they weren't able to work. With benefit of hindsight that was the beginning of the end, but we still hoped we could keep going.
However, when they stopped working, we stopped taking orders because it was obvious that it could go to the wall and we couldn't in good conscience take people's money knowing that. Our hope was we could build through the backlog and in that time find a full time painter who could come and work for us. That didn't happen.
Isen was a limited company, and as directors of a limited company you have legal obligations you have to abide by. I wanted to get all the frames we had taken money for finished, but in the end it was only me there, and even then we ran out of money. Not only can I not magic money to pay rent, keep the lights on etc... but we were then knowingly insolvent. As such we couldn't continue trading. The other thing about a limited company is that the accounts are all available online. You can see what our revenues were and you can also (with a bit of working backwards) see how much we were paid, which for the entire time we were operating was less than minimum wage for an apprentice. I mention that solely incase anyone was under the illusion that we had found the cheat codes that allowed someone in the bike trade to earn enough money to develop an enjoyable cocaine habit. We hadn't.
I'm very aware how upsetting it must be for the 5 people who didn't get there bikes, I did everything I could to try and get them done, but in the end there just wasn't any way. Id suggest that hanlons razor would be a good way of viewing this whole situation.
We didn't set out 6 years ago with the intention of stealing 5 people's deposits at some point in the future, even with my propensity for bad ideas that is too far fetched. However, if you are of the opinion that we are actually a bunch of scamming scumbags, you can at least take heart knowing that because of it we won't be able to work in the industry again, so hold that close at least.
I'm going to try and find somewhere to dump all the data sheets for people with isens in case they need info in the future, but not sure when or where that will be.