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Yeah, the Tiananmen Square episode was a bit of a jaw-dropper. WTF were they thinking with that?
Fantastic article. This quote seems familiar
In early November 2017 – the week before the company was kicked out of its offices – a final email was sent to the Unicorn’s Kickstarter backers, sincerely apologising and blaming the delay in production on an “unsettled assembly factory”. Assessing this charitably, there was a glimmer of hope that the company could be revived with a last-minute injection of investment. With a more pragmatic view of the situation, Xu was acting under instructions to keep up appearances.
Confirmation form Lee that he's been done over for 1500 hours of work for nothing (in the comments)
Probably a good time to clear a few things up. I didn't get paid for anything I did with sick, 1500 hours and not a penny for my efforts. I never owned 25% of the company, and I never will. I provided designs on the basis of good will, however, that good will was taken advantage of. Me starting by myself is my attempt to make use of the work I put in, otherwise I loose twice.
That's the best part of a year with no pay cheque? Fool me once...
Blimey. 1500 hours is getting on for a full year in desk jockey days. That's a long time to be hoping that tomorrow you might see some cash.
I'm confused, what makes this chap so (seemingly) blameless in all this? Some might say he's even portraying himself as a victim.
He was a director, with all the duties and responsibilities etc associated to the role. He might not have been a major shareholder but even so. Surely he was a bit closer to the action, particularly after putting so much effort in, that just saying "woe is me too" is a bit unconvincing?
Look back far enough in this thread (IIRC) and there's a critique of "James" and his customer service triage. He didn't seem to get away so lightly on the basis of a similar approach (to paraphrase; "don't blame me Guv, I just work here").
1500 hrs is 40 weeks work (7.5hrs/day, 5 days/week). So pretty much full time for a year. Realistic or hyperbolic?
EDIT - too slow!
Look back far enough in this thread (IIRC) and there’s a critique of “James” and his customer service triage. He didn’t seem to get away so lightly on the basis of a similar approach (to paraphrase; “don’t blame me Guv, I just work here”).
James does not, and has never, worked for Sick.
depends if you count up FEA processing time...
General duties
As a director, you must perform a set of 7 duties under the Companies Act 2006.These still apply if:
you’re not active in your role as director
someone else tells you what to do
you act as a director but have not been formally appointed
you control a board of directors without being on it
Company’s constitution
You must follow the company’s constitution and its articles of association. These are written rules about running the company, agreed by the members, directors and the company secretary.The constitution sets out what powers you’re granted as a director, and the purpose of those powers.
Promote the success of the company
You must act in the company’s best interests to promote its success. You must consider the:consequences of decisions, including the long term
interests of its employees
need to support business relationships with suppliers, customers and others
impact of its operations on the community and environment
company’s reputation for high standards of business conduct
need to act fairly to all members of the company
If the company becomes insolvent, your responsibilities as director will apply towards the creditors, instead of the company. A creditor is anyone owed money by the company.Independent judgement
You must not allow other people to control your powers as a director. You can accept advice, but you must use your own independent judgement to make final decisions.Exercise reasonable care, skill and diligence
You must perform to the best of your ability. The more qualified or experienced you are, the greater the standard expected of you.You must use any relevant knowledge, skill or experience you have (for example, if you’re a qualified accountant).
Avoid conflicts of interest
You must avoid situations where your loyalties might be divided. You should consider the positions and interests of your family, to avoid possible conflicts.You should tell other directors and members about any possible conflict of interest, and follow any process set out in the company’s articles of association.
This duty continues to apply if you’re no longer a director. You must not take advantage of any property, information or opportunity you became aware of as a director.
Third party benefits
You must not accept benefits from a third party that are offered to you because you’re a director. This could cause a conflict of interest.The company may allow you to accept benefits like reasonable corporate hospitality, if it’s clear there’s no conflict of interest.
Interests in a transaction
You must tell the other directors and members if you might personally benefit from a transaction the company makes. For example, if the company plans to enter a contract with a business owned by a member of your family.Other duties
There are other duties you must perform as a company director. For example, you must:not misuse the company’s property
apply confidentiality about the company’s affairs
https://www.gov.uk/guidance/being-a-company-director
This seemed quite pertinent:
need to support business relationships with suppliers, customers and others
See top of page 17 re: James - not sure if this is a "whoosh" moment on my part or I've missed something?
The bloke had a full time job , this wasn't his income it was a hobby.
Bloody kids these days.
Startup business sometimes doesn't work out horror.
"Hobby" - who Lee?
Funny old "hobby" when you're a Director in it.
FEA. Because you should.
No. No no no. No.
“Hobby” – who Lee?
Funny old “hobby” when you’re a Director in it.
Which part of it was a Mickey mouse directorship title aren't you getting
No. No no no. No.
Not sure I’d read too much into his comment tbh, it’s just a dig saying he advised one thing, they did the other, it folded.
However, his “I will only build frames with a plate no matter what” comments don’t really instil much confidence in him
I'd say it was probably a fair point of view especially if using double butted steel tubes. that particular load case puts the tube into direct bending which the tube is simply not designed to support so in that case I reckon it's justified. There's no opportunity with a tubeset to optimise profiles or thicknesses like you could with hydroforming (to some extent) so an additional plate is a reasonable solution. At least he's only using it as a comparison between with and without and not talking absolutes.
And it's easy to burn 1500 hours as part of a personal project you've fallen in love with. Admittedly it's probably slightly inflated but I'm certain, having seen the frame(s)? he designed that a lot of work went into them. And while it's understandable people giving him a hard time over the collapse, I imagine it's very easy to be given a "directorship" of a paper company and not have any visibility of the finances at all. Especially at that stage of the company's life. Is there any evidence he is/was ever a director?
Speeder
Is there any evidence he is/was ever a director?
There's the below, although I'm inclined to agree that it might hvae been "on paper" only - that said, he'd have had to sign up to it, and that means taking on the responsibilities.
https://beta.companieshouse.gov.uk/company/10621767/filing-history
05 May 2018 Appointment of Mr Lee Michael Crawford as a director on 25 April 2018
05 Jun 2019 Termination of appointment of Lee Michael Crawford as a director on 28 May 2019
Which part of it was a Mickey mouse directorship title aren’t you getting
it wasn't a "directorship title" it was a directorship - see above for what that means. I agree that he may not have taken signing-up as a director seriously - but thats his fault/problem if/when when any legal action starts.
Just chewing the fat on this one, guessing as to Lee's understanding and agreement with Sick.
My guess is he was told that as a Director he would be guaranteed a % of any future sale of the company. Once the company took off there could be other parties interested in purchasing Sick, or they would be raking in the cash. Either way my guess is it was sold to him as a future golden egg. Sick will make him a director so he is secure in the future money all he has to do is put the work / effort in now and all sorted in a year or so.....
I'm a company director, I've never read those UKGov websites. I see the finances monthly but not in detail, other people deal with the more detailed financial reporting. I can easily understand why an engineering type of person would leave the more detailed running of the business to the founders of the company. One of the companies I'm a director of I only partake in interim and end of year reporting, but there is good people working in the company and I trust the other directors and the company secretary (the wife!).
There is real world ways of working and an engineering director shouldn't really be dealing with any customer financial problems. I would also hazard a guess that the company may not have been run like a 1960s Insurance company with every meeting minutes sent to all directors, monthly financial reports distributed etc. Something tells me they were a bit more relaxed in their operations than that.
^ there was also only three of them. No way he wasn't aware of the issues
I also read the SpeedX Bikeradar piece earlier this week and thought "huh, that sounds familiar". The Cyclingtips article really sheds more light on it - one piece that jumped out though is just how willing every single industry/ news outlet is to regurgitate a new, untested company's press releases, claiming to have the inside scoop on this amazing product.
It's easy to forensically analyse the sh*tshow after the fact, but *everything* pointed to this being absolute bunk from the very beginning. And yet publishers get to have their cake and eat it: they generate clicks with the breathless headlines when it's launched, and again when it all crashes and burns (as it so obviously was going to) as they do an 'investigative' story.
Mainstream media, especially tech-focused publications like CNet, Gear Patrol and Fast Company, breathlessly announced SpeedX’s arrival on the global stage. The company’s marketing was sufficiently forward-thinking for the time that the brand was featured in case studies; articles in publications with names like BrandingMag carried headlines like “How China’s sleekest cycling brand is winning the race”.
And, after all, why not? The SpeedX Leopard was a slick-looking bike, developed with design input from the Frog agency – the visual wizards behind some of Apple’s most visionary products. As for the Leopard’s features? Well, there were just so many of them.
Just chewing the fat on this one, guessing as to Lee’s understanding and agreement with Sick.
I would agree with your view. No idea if it is true in his case or not but can easily see someone without knowledge of business law/high level of paranoia having them check it taking a "directorship" in lieu of cold hard cash.
Grow up Batfink, you've got a very black and white, idealised sense of this and as has been said above, most of the world doesn't work like that.
YES he probably should have been on top of it from day one but I very much doubt it was possible to view any accounts let alone have any influence over proceedings. It will most likely have been a directorship in name only in a "in this time next year we'll be millionaires and you'll get paid" scenario.
Even someone that's paid a deposit on one of the frames isn't anywhere near as out of pocket as Lee. At £10/hr he's owed £15k and a decent CAD designer can earn a lot more than that for their time. Have a little compassion.
I get the impression Lee was taken for a ride as much as anyone, if not more.
Ironic. Not being able to go on a ride despite being a customer is the Sick problem.
You've got to be either reckless or deeply naive to sign up to the liabilities of Directorship without knowing those you're effectively going into partnership with.
That Speed-x article seems to sum up a lot of what is wrong with business & capitalism today - just keep throwing money at it & hope it works until the bubble bursts.
As for sick themselves - why is it so hard to apologise to their actual investors (I'm not going to call them customers, as they haven't had any product)
In an endless mire of bad news, here is something nice to look at. This was a sample we ordered from Frank to test the geometry and handling on a USA built hardtail. A reminder of good times. And dreams with heroes being fulfilled Something to remind us, why we started, and why we are continuing. Yes the company has fractured, yes, we have our more than our share of failures, it was brutal to fail so many people. We’re taking on guidance and mentorship to make things good, to un****, what we did **** up. Sorry that took so long. That leadership will mean restructuring, it will mean a lot of new people in the business, it has meant us stepping down from the positions we held. A humbling process. This team will have the skills we didn’t possess to operate at this level. We’ll be able to care for our customers better. For everything that did go wrong we are grateful for the opportunity to do it. We are down but not out. We’ll make good on the projects we promised to deliver. Thank you.
Apologising for them to take so long to ask advice. Saying they messed up. Again saying it'll be OK in the future.
Why can't they just say to those who haven't received their orders that they are sorry - they always make it about themselves.
Why can’t they just say to those who haven’t received their orders that they are sorry – they always make it about themselves.
Because their only regret is that they are putting off new customers.
They always write to a mythical future customer, never to the ones they've let down.
To be honest, I see it a lot in marketing - it's a deliberate strategy - they say what they think is enough to give confidence to new customers and just enough to prevent existing customers demanding refunds.
In an endless mire of bad news, here is something nice to look at. This was a sample we ordered from Frank to test the geometry and handling on a USA built hardtail.
Aha it seems they payed the legend that is FTW but not anyone else suppliers or customers ,must be nice to use other people's money expecting to be refunded on a bike for yourself to ride round on.
Aha it seems they payed the legend that is FTW but not anyone else suppliers or customers
I'm sure I read somewhere that the photo was taken from Frank's social media, and no evidence of the bike/frame having been shipped...
Willing to be corrected, obviously.
Willing to be corrected, obviously
Pinkbike says.
Whatever happened to the keith flint memorial riding jerseys
probs having trouble onshoring them...
I can’t believe this is still going on. How are they not in serious legal trouble.
It's difficult not to feel a smidge of admiration for the sheer bloody minded refusal to call it a day.
I can’t believe this is still going on. How are they not in serious legal trouble.
Hysteria, hyperbole and conjecture aside, how many people are actually owed money?
Somewhere way back in the thread someone asked that question and the answer was something incredulous for the amount of noise being made like "at least 6 on pinkbike". Since then there seems to have been a trickle of refunds, either via paypal, CC's and maybe directly. Now assuming the average Sick bikcycle buyer is probably a pinkbike user, that's not many bikes sold is it?
So an alternative version of history (well, conjecture, but about as grounded in reality as any other explanation and kinda tallying with the timeline of their statements) might just be that they believed their own hype, and the reason Marino and others didn't get paid was simply because very few people actually bought the bikes. And if they didn't sell enough of the batch, they couldn't pay suppliers, which caused the delays whilst trying to raise the funds to "onshore" the frames. Then as refunds spiral with bad news, and suppliers cancel contracts and start flogging the frames directly things actually get kinda better as you can then just offer refunds as you no longer need that money.
Sure, if you've paid £700 (or whatever) for a frame you don't really care how many other £700's there were, you just want those £700's converting into frames so you get yours, ineptitude or fraud is irrelevant as you end up in the same outcome. But I still think it's more likely ineptitude and ego than industrial scale fraud like some are hyping it up to be.
Somewhere way back in the thread someone asked that question and the answer was something incredulous for the amount of noise being made like “at least 6 on pinkbike”. Since then there seems to have been a trickle of refunds, either via paypal, CC’s and maybe directly. Now assuming the average Sick bikcycle buyer is probably a pinkbike user, that’s not many bikes sold is it?
There are more than 50, but less than 60 tickets issued from the new ticketing system/inbox for people who are owed money or a frame, based on what one of the owed customers has said (didn’t want to give away which number he was). So it’s not speedX levels of money, but it’s more than pocket change.
It can’t be just a few people though, otherwise why would Sick keep making reference to them, putting off potential new customers (as much as they supposedly hate ‘potential’ customers)
There are more than 50, but less than 60 tickets issued from the new ticketing system/inbox for people who are owed money or a frame, based on what one of the owed customers has said (didn’t want to give away which number he was).
Given that most planet-x threads start with a variation on "I've e-mailed them three times already this morning and they've not got back to me" are those frame numbers or ticket numbers?
Even as many as 50 undelivered frames isn't going to let one person quit the dayjob, it's not even going to buy everyone at Sick a small hatchback even if it was a con and they pocketed it all.
Ticket numbers, assigned to those that wanted a frame or refund. I assume people who mailed about other stuff or to have a go weren’t given tickets. 50 isn’t a lot, but given their total orders is somewhere between 100 (what James said) and 300 (what they claimed in the indiegogo campaign) it’s Either a terrible hit rate, or an appalling one. And that just frames delivered, not including ones that either broke, or were in some way wrong.
And the undelivered indiegogo frames (gnarpoon and sleipnir) equate to about £30k alone.
Grow up Batfink, you’ve got a very black and white, idealised sense of this and as has been said above, most of the world doesn’t work like that.
YES he probably should have been on top of it from day one but I very much doubt it was possible to view any accounts let alone have any influence over proceedings. It will most likely have been a directorship in name only in a “in this time next year we’ll be millionaires and you’ll get paid” scenario.
Even someone that’s paid a deposit on one of the frames isn’t anywhere near as out of pocket as Lee. At £10/hr he’s owed £15k and a decent CAD designer can earn a lot more than that for their time. Have a little compassion.
Grow up? Lol.
Do you consider expecting people to behave like an adult, childish?!
Becoming a director of a company is not something to be taken lightly - especially when they are taking thousands of pounds from customers and signing manufacturing contracts for tens of thousands. And ESPECIALLY, when your business partners start ripping people off.
There is no such thing as a director "in name only"
Thats not "idealised" or "black and white" that's a) the law, and b) common sense (for an adult). Not understanding that is just naive.... but yeah: "grow up"!
but I very much doubt it was possible to view any accounts let alone have any influence over proceedings
Sick's situation has been all over the internet and social media for months - you cannot seriously claim that he didn't know things were going south fast, or have the nouse to start asking questions of his fellow directors. Its not like the other two were covering-their-tracks.... they were shouting their incompetence from the rooftops. I suppose he did eventually step down, which is something in his favour.
Have a little compassion.
I do have a little compassion - sounds like he made some bad choices (becoming a Director of a dumpster-fire of a company, then not taking that position seriously, and choosing to work nearly a years worth of hours for free - presumably of the promise of some larger payout down the track). But ultimately he owns those mistakes - like an adult.
There is no such thing as a director “in name only”
There is, but it doesn’t apply in this case.
Hysteria, hyperbole and conjecture aside, how many people are actually owed money?
Didn’t quote your entire post, but you make some damned good points. The hype they created seems to have bitten them in the arse.
I’m sitting next to Jordan* at my kids school sports day. He has a sick bikes T shirt on...
If I tilt my phone he might even see this.. (the thrill of it! 😬🤭)
I’m wearing a Heaven of the South MTB T-shirt, wonder if a chat will strike up?
* the one with tatts and a beard 🤷🏻♂️
Oh, to have a gnarpoon tshirt on in that situation...
Hysteria, hyperbole and conjecture aside, how many people are actually owed money?
Good shout, it's not cool to owe anyone money. But loads of people on here just seem to be bystanders who decided to put the boot in about something that hasn't actually affected them.
Let's have a show of hands, who on here is owed money by Sick ?