Orange Bikes Announces ‘A New Dawn’

We’ve just had word from Orange Bikes, they’re set to continue. When the application for administration was made, an application was also placed for P …

By stwhannah

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That’s great news.
All the best to them and more power to their elbows 😊

Awesome news when so many are not surviving. Wishing Orange success.

Orange not squashed.

❤️

This is great news.

Good to hear they are out of the woods. Some very careful wording going on there – were the two companies not already owned my Ash anyway?

Also

This strategic decision ensures a promising future for British bike manufacturing in West Yorkshire for at least another 35 years.

Suddenly they’re the most secure company in the world.

Brilliant news, my dream of owning a full sus Orange hasn’t been juiced!

Good news 🙂

👏 thats the news we wanted 😀

Some very careful wording going on there – were the two companies not already owned my Ash anyway?

The more cynical might theorise that the manufacturing company was saddled with all the debt, declared bankrupt and then sold to Orange for pennies.

Im happy to see Orange continue but some one has lost out big time to allow this to happen.

This is good news, but I don’t think they are out of the woods yet.

Hopefully this is a wake-up call to the business to look at the product range and the value proposition they offer to customers.

The creditors list will be interesting to see. They were millions in debt with a huge pile of stock they couldn’t sell. Indeed, there will be many losing out.

Good news.
Slightly pessimistic about the background figures and who has lost out.

Orange not squashed

Not folded either.

🍊 Awesome news! 🍊

Good news for the Halifax manufacturing but as alluded too above, some creditors will be spitting feathers about this I imagine and getting pennies in the £.  This could be the demise of them, but that’s less of a story. I thought Ashley had sold it recently, but can’t be certain. 

Glad to hear they’ve come to some sort of way forward. The business obviously needs streamlining, maybe being under one roof under new management and a realistic look at their range and perhaps price will make them viable. Idk. I am not an insolvency expert but I’m glad they’re, for the moment at least, still afloat.

Really so happy to hear a positive future out of uncertainty for an iconic British MTB company, good on them!! And delighted that it’s not another doom and gloom story for the bike industry. 

Great news!

The futures bright, the futures orange

The futures bright, the futures orange

If the newco have any right to use the name… that’s up to the big Orange

Wishing Orange all the best. Worth remembering they’re not some faceless corporation importing from Taiwan – this is people in Yorkshire making a top-end product from the ground up. The industry needs them.

Really glad to hear about this – I hope they can make it work!

I wonder how much they borrowed under the Covid loans scheme that won’t be getting paid back.

Ah brilliant!

Great guys who loved their product.

Great news but I doubt the streamlining will bring their pricing down as their running costs decrease so will still be premium or maybe overpriced imho.

Great news and a hope a new dawn means a direct sales model with significantly cheaper prices and I think they would be able to get back a lot of the past glory, where you would see loads of oranges on the trails.

Great news.

Wonder if I can sneak a new Five into the garage without Mrs J noticing 🤔

Fantastic news for all those that work for Orange

Sounds well dodgy, some people will have lost a lot of money, possibly jobs, and someone has benefited from poor business decision making, or used a legal process to benefit at the expense of others

And then they blatantly almost tried to spin it as good PR , mind boggles

I wouldn’t touch orange at all after stuff like this

Says they will continue under the ownership of Ash ball, didn’t he take ownership in 2015?

I think if the Stanton saga taught us anything it’s that these ‘fresh start with the same faces’ solutions can have unintended consequences.

Let’s see how things pan out but I’d be surprised if it’s as simple as writing off the debt and starting again like nothing happened.

I think if the Stanton saga taught us anything it’s that these ‘fresh start with the same faces’ solutions can have unintended consequences.

Which aspect of it Bruce.

Fwiw I wasn’t buying an orange before and won’t be now either, but it really leaves a sour taste so to speak.

I had a segment, it was good. When I packed it up to sell it was cracked. They stood by the warranty and sorted it quickly

So a great bike, but I wouldn’t buy a second hand one. And at full price I would have a long pause before buying one

@funkydunc I’m not sure your analysis makes sense. No one has benefitted inappropriately. The point is there would have been no ability to pay the monies owed to suppliers when they went into admin (I assume) so the restructuring wasn’t the trigger. It’s clearly difficult for suppliers with a significant exposure, but why would allowing the trade, assets and know get wasted be a better scenario?

Or do you just think the managers of Orange should be punished in some way?

Which aspect of it Bruce.

Well, if you go by the UK press (including STW) then Stanton administrators decided to not to complete an order of about 800 frames.  A mystery party then bought, painted and stickered those frames and sold them to 1bike4life.  Thanks to a timing and Brexit issue the Stanton brand name was ‘available’ in Europe.  Hence there is now an evil copycat running around selling a stolen Stanton brand.

If you read the German press then it gets a bit more interesting.  Apparently 1bike4life and Stanton were having their frames produced in the same factory.  1bike4life was worried that such a large financial hit could lead to stability issues for the factory’s finances so stepped in to buy the frames and create the Stanton Europe brand since, even according to Dan Stanton, the Stanton brand was dead and buried so who cares if someone ‘steals’ it.

The problem was that Stanton was able to rise like a phoenix having written off it’s main debt and with it’s frames owned by Dave Loughran and sold to Dan as and when needed.

I’m not sure exactly how accurate all the above is.  Like I said, that’s just what I’ve been able to piece together and the sources have obviously been biased and only interested in telling one side of the story.  But going into administration always leaves someone in the lurch and those people will do what they have to so their businesses can survive.

Obviously this exact situation isn’t going to repeat itself but someone has been left in the lurch by this and having a new Orange able to rise like a phoenix like nothing has happened is possibly going to cause issues, we just don’t know what.

No one has benefitted inappropriately

I guess we don’t have the full facts, but administration is a legal formal process and only happens when businesses are no longer financially viable and in debt.

Looks to me that someone has saddled one company with debt, put it in to administration at which point it’s been sold to the other company for 1p or something. Company owner walks away happy but creditors and staff get shafted

Morally not a great way to operate in my mind 

The accountant has earned their fee with this one. Both companies in administration but the one with most assets and the greatest stability gets bought out by the other.

Great news for those who managed to keep their jobs but someone somewhere is going to be taking a big financial hit.

even according to Dan Stanton, the Stanton brand was dead and buried so who cares if someone ‘steals’ it.

That’s one way of putting it.

Another would be to say he never said that at any point.