Planet X – In Administration

Anyway – PX won’t be to do with over-extending itself site-wise with onerous leases. It is going to be, largely, sales and stock related, I would think – presumably with HMRC as a major creditor.

Possibly, but am I wrong in thinking that they had some Private Equity backing?  Those guys often highly leverage their investments so actually there’s a huge debt element, which may have been tied to base rates and is now crippling.  If the company isn’t looking rosy and they don’t see a way to get their money back quickly the vultures circle and rip it apart – taking whatever assets they’ve secured their loan against to mitigate their losses.   If HMRC were the largest creditor the business was being mismanaged as PAYE and VAT are only due after the event for a consumer business like this and input VAT can be reclaimed from the moment of invoice so HMRC doesn’t cause a cashflow issue.

Yes. You’re wrong.

2

brant
Free Member
Strike off action has been discontinued – see companies house website.
As is usual, there is no further/supporting information in the public domain.

Strike off action was due to them not filing a confirmation statement. That had nothing to do with the administration process.

As mentioned on Page1:

FB-ATB
Full Member
If they’re appointing administrators then there would be a filing about that and no gazette re write off.

The gazette looks like its a result of the late filing of the company statement. It should have been done by end of March so they would have had plenty of warning letters and then the “do it by dd/mm/yy or you’ll be struck off” notice has spurred them to action & it was filed on Friday but the gazette was already primed.

recase load

looks like the administration has started- once appointed, the administrator has to be approved by the court

Last years accounts look reasonably healthy I must say:

Here

I am not an accountant, but there doesn’t seem to have been much debt – £94k paid in interest (admittedly only £10k the year previous), which is small vs any of the other numbers. £1.4m profit, and £3m divis paid to the employee trust, so you would think there’s a lot of financial wriggle room.

The one blot is bank loans £2.2m vs £0.75m in 2021 and trade creditors £1.23m vs £0.6m due within one year.

But, ahhh. Another £3.75m due after more than one year, vs £0m 2022.

Total £5.6m due vs £0.75m in 2021. Presumably that has gone wrong. Some of that £5.6m went to fund increased stock holding it seems, but can’t help thinking that the £3m to the employee trust seems a mistake in hindsight, although there must have been an accompanied nose dive in turnover in the last year, as there was still seems to have been a pretty healthy cashflow previously.

but can’t help thinking that the £3m to the employee trust seems a mistake in hindsight,

Owners taking money out of a company and making it unstable… You shouldn’t be able to take up a management position in any company until you’ve read the goose that laid the golden egg story and been able to explain its meaning.

Owners taking money out of a company and making it unstable… You shouldn’t be able to take up a management position in any company until you’ve read the goose that laid the golden egg story and been able to explain its meaning.

Speculation as to their motivations but ………..

Slightly different in that there’s they employees trust involved. It seems slightly less unreasonable to say that the people on the shop floor who’d worked all through the pandemic deserved a bonus. There’s also the inflation crisis. A fair number of staff in the warehouse will be on low wages. Employee turnover might mean they miss out. All of which when taken as a whole I think fairly justify paying dividends in the year they were earnt.

It’s not like a director took £3million to buy a private jet.

And having large amounts of cash in the business accounts tends to encourage takeover bids from rivals. It’s one of the reasons companies pay dividends, to get rid of cash from their balance sheet that they’re unable to invest back into the company for whatever reason. e.g. you foresee a bit of a downturn and it’s not prudent to buy up even more stock. The two big-business examples would be
Amazon, big company in a growth market, – doesn’t pay a dividend because it re-invests everything.
Shell, BP, other big engineering companies in mature markets – do pay dividends because if they tried to spend it all on investments it would actually be detrimental both because it would drive up the price of those projects, and drive down the price of the end products.

Really not surprised by this news, but surprised they made it this long, seriously lacking when looking at components on there site, hardly anything of interest and I’ve always been disappointed when my order arrives, I remember when their postage was about £7 totally offsetting any discount on the part I wanted, I added some rims to the basket once and the postage added at the checkout was more than the rims, sod that.

seriously lacking when looking at components on there site

Fighting over the components market with wiggle, crc, merlin, Germany etc wasn’t their business model although I have in the past bought a bike for the components, sold the frame, wheels and forks etc and almost got the drive train for free. They have had some amazing deals over the years.  Selling good bikes, direct to customer with good kit on at competitive prices was where they excelled. Customer service, not so much but that seemed to be a lot better after the employee buy out. About 8 years ago there seemed to be a new thread every week bashing px/oo. Haven’t seen one of those in years!

In fact, I can’t remember any since the wrong size London Road seat post or the misaligned rear brake mount where you had to file it down to make it fit. 😂

Hopefully there is a place in the market for these kind of bikes and prices and other companies will pick up the gap in the market.

Oh, and it absolutely cannot be phrased as ‘restarting’. That implies it is a continuation of Oldco and Oldco owes money.

You are confusing the business and the company. The business carries on. The company dies.

Yep, in our case, all that changed was the Company Number at Companies house. The NewCo traded as the OldCo, using the same company name, website, branding etc. We kept the same customers and even the same suppliers (who’d just lost $20m), although the new payment terms were “100% up front and then we might think about starting work on your order”. Amazingly, they did carry on making stuff for us! Just business, objective and professional.

surprised they made it this long, seriously lacking when looking at components on there site, hardly anything of interest /blockquote>

Bike company in mostly selling bikes (and their own branded kit) scandal.

I remember when their postage was about £7 totally offsetting any discount on the part I wanted, I added some rims to the basket once and the postage added at the checkout was more than the rims, sod that.

Actually charging what it costs to post something, it’ll never catch on, of course something bulky like rims
cost more than the normal jiffy bag rate to post!

Just add socks to your order like everyone else if you want to avoid the postage charge.

Anyone tried their down sleeping bags? Under £100 for a 4 season one that weighs 1kg seems a great deal!

a lot of folk seem to be here just for the lolz.

Tinas, pardon me for having an opinion and pointing out a couple of reasons for their demise, pointless defending and arguing their reasoning, they’ve sunk. I’m not really a fan of garish hideous socks, and the jiffy bag rate to post should never have been 7 quid, that was R2’s big box from Germany price.

I have chanced it on a £80 3 season down bag, it’s not arrived yet, hoping it’s decent, planning on a couple of overnight bike packing trips this year. Was planning on using my old blacks synthetic one but it weighs about 2kg.

original message deleted.

confirmation email has arrived.

I’ve taken the gamble on the 4 season down bag, been needing another for ages (expanding family) and the Alpkit pair of similar bags I bought almost 20 years ago are still doing sterling service. Fingers crossed…

(Does anyone else find they need a far warmer sleeping bag than the temp ratings to be comfy at night? When I’m awake I rarely get cold, when I’m asleep I freeze!)

What are you wearing in the bag?
What is the rating of your sleeping mat?
Do you eat before sleep?

(Does anyone else find they need a far warmer sleeping bag than the temp ratings to be comfy at night? When I’m awake I rarely get cold, when I’m asleep I freeze!)

Varies massively by person. I find I can get a decent nights sleep in a tent a few degrees below the “limit” temperature, but might wake up cold in a bivi. Others struggle at the comfort rating. One friend I swear could use a summer bag in a frost. Only way to know is to go out a few times and note the bags rating and how cold it got, generally I’ve found it’s consistent between bags/ratings at least, a 10C limit bag on an 8C night feels like a 0C limit bag on a -2 night.

One of the reasons for Plant-X struggling could be the rise of other direct-to-consumer and “in-house” brands. I’m thinking th likes of Vitus, Canyon(?) etc offering similarly good value offerings, on essentially the same business model thus eroding the USP of On-One/Planet-X.

This combined with the upper end of the market moving to e-bikes, probably contributed to a demise in their sales. When you add in cost/inflation/supply chain issues then it must be a pretty tough world in retail…

Also, the ever shifting industry “standards” mean that frames themselves become obsolete more quickly, so continual re-design is required, just to keep up with the current headset/BB/Axle/hub/chainline/cable routing/mech hanger/wheel/tyre width “standard”. Bikes and frames only have a very short potential lifespan, with built-in obslescence and potentially being out-of date by the time they launch, which for small company targetting a specialist market must be challenging.

I placed an order for a helmet and glasses on Monday that arrived inside 48 hours. However I had a bit of “faff” with a second order from last night. The credit card verification came via my rarely used Hotmail rather than SMS to my phone. In trying to get to my Hotmail I got dumped out of the PX website. Tried again and failed again. This was late last night, and I was getting pissed off so I abandoned it.

This morning I had a lengthy call from my credit card fraud dept checking that all of the failed transactions were not suspicious. They had frozen my card after the first attempt. The credit card company then said that they would terminate later attempts and I should wait a few minutes before the card was unlocked. This I did, and re-ordered the stuff without any bother.

A confirmation email arrived… as did another one for all of the kit that I bought last night!

So, I had to then deal with PX to try and cancel the original order. I girded myself up for a load off faff and bollocks, especially when I found out that they didn’t have a phone line so it would have to be done via WhatsApp.

Well, to PX’s credit it was all sorted in minutes. Funds from last night returned. Original order cancelled. New order confirmed.

I really hope that they don’t go under. Buying stuff isn’t as straight forward as it could be, but the kit is usually spot on.

Rode in this morning wearing PX socks, jersey, glasses and the helmet that arrived yesterday. Ordered another helmet for my lad as the fit of mine works for him.

On reflection I should have bought a road helmet too.

My bibs (x2) and lid arrived promptly. Just hope they keep afloat. Bibs are excellent – will be used this weekend, and the lid. Now have 4 PX lids, 1 XC, 1 road and 2 Enduro !

Ahhhh, **** it. Just ordered a road helmet.

You can see how much PX we’re affected by Brexit. Couple that with Vitus, Genesis and Ribble all starting to do similar things but with less reputational baggage alongside the period where there was no C2W for PX, all led to a decreasing market share in which their primary attractor now MUST be price. When parts became scarce, this must have further limited their ability to compete on price meaning either a further reduction in market share or a need to buy in greater bulk to get better savings. Death by a thousand cuts.

I really hope they stay. I’ve had great bikes and service from PX.

The road.cc article suggests there have been 13 recent redundancies. How many employees were there and how exactly does that work in an employee-owned company.

“What are you wearing in the bag?
What is the rating of your sleeping mat?
Do you eat before sleep?”

Base layer type stuff. Sleeping mats have been thick thermarest-style ones for years. I’m always eating! 😉

Bikes and frames only have a very short potential lifespan, with built-in obslescence and potentially being out-of date by the time they launch

What?

Bikes and frames only have a very short potential lifespan, with built-in obslescence and potentially being out-of date by the time they launch

What?

See ‘plus bikes’ for an example of where a bike could be out of date by the time you launch it if you were not in the market at the start.

The Turner Enduro bike that came out in 27.5 after years of wait another good example.

See ‘plus bikes’ for an example of where a bike could be out of date by the time you launch it if you were not in the market at the start.

Ah right, you mean ‘fashionable’ rather than genuine obsolescence or shelf lives.

Not really the same thing is it?

(that said I thought plus bikes were still a thing since fat bikes went out of fashion, shows what I know)

Every expensive 26 inch bike or part ever is a good example tbh.

Today’s news is tomorrow’s fish and chip papers.

Cycle manufacturers marketing to keep us buying new bikes makes sure that ‘obsolescence’ is built in by design.

Yeah, sorry, by frames having a short lifespan I meant as a saleable product in the market. If you launch a frame/bike around one set of standards, but the big players shift the market so the design standards make it look outdated then it’ll struggle to sell. Particularly asno one knows how long any particular standard will last. See 20mm axles, boost, super boost, Myriad BB sizes etc. Any of those change then your entire development and stock is worthless, or at least substantially devalued.

^^^

But still not as daft as speccing a press-fit BB into any frame ever, though.

For clarity as it appears people generally don’t understand an “employee owned company” is not owned by the employees but owned on the “current employees” behalf by the trust. Its basically run by a board of directors like any company. Once you leave the business you are no longer an employee and no longer part of the trust benefits, you don’t leave with shares. In most cases it makes naff all difference to the actually employees but gives a fuzzy feeling to the government and business owners when they sell up as it sounds better than bought by an overseas competitor, offshored and gutted for assets (grumpy mode off).

There may be some incentives/bonuses/ability for employees to have a say but this is exactly the same for a normal company, you may get nothing as an employee of an EOT. Its a variation of a management buyout but not done by the management.

The reason they exist is an easy way for the original owner to sell up tax efficiently. Basically the trust raises money either through loans from banks or usually just by the original owner selling the company to them with an IOU loan. This way the trust doesn’t need to find any cash so the transaction can just happen easily and quickly, and the original owner gets payed back over the years from the profits of the company till the loan is settled. In times where getting someone to stump up £10 million in cash right now it is a nice exit plan for owners.

Where people are saying the trust has paid out millions to its employees, it hasn’t. I strongly suspect the majority of this is paying back the loan from the sale of the business to the original owner as agreed with them.

obviously Ive not seen the documents of this particular transaction but this is a generalization of how it normally happens.

I hope this is interesting to you all and helps you understand the situation better

Neil (SuperstarComponents)

Thanks Neil.

OK, that’s Planet X on my shit list, ironic after me singing the praises of their bikes earlier.

Titus Mutsu, 3.5 years old, discovered a crack leading from the edge of cable port at top of downtube. Clearly manufacturing issue. Won’t be warrantied as apparently only two year warranty on Titus titanium frames at time of purchase, although it’s now a lifetime warranty which was introduced sometime after I bought mine, apparently.

Who can weld titanium? And is it really worth it? Confidence totally gone in this frame now.

That’s a bummer, eh?

I’d never heard of a “Titus Mutsu”, but I assume it was one of their many, many titanium frames that all seemed suspiciously similar.

The reason they exist is an easy way for the original owner to sell up tax efficiently.

Why is an employee buyout any more tax efficient for the seller than any other kind of share sale?

gives a fuzzy feeling to the government and business owners when they sell up as it sounds better than bought by an overseas competitor, offshored and gutted for assets (grumpy mode off).

It IS better than selling the company to someone that will offshore it and strip the assets (if any), at least from the perspective of the worker.

If the old owner gets paid by earn-out over time, then that shows they’ve got confidence in the long term viability of the business – because if it fails, they won’t get paid!

That’s a bummer, eh?
I’d never heard of a “Titus Mutsu”, but I assume it was one of their many, many titanium frames that all seemed suspiciously similar.

Yup. Bloody perfect frame for what I used it for too. Other than the Sonder Broken Road (which the Mutsu appeared to be a very close copy of…) I’m not aware of anything better suited for me.

RIP:

Looks awesome, hope you can get it fixed (or just put a sticker over the crack and forget about it).