Saturday, March 17, 2018

Hobbico Bankrupcy Comments From John Boren

Lots of conjecture on the forums about the future of Estes and the Hobbico bankruptcy. Some of this below relates to how many trademarks names Estes owns.
Here's an exchange from YORF:


LeeR
"I thought the list of trademarked kit names was surprising small. Lots of kits not listed. About the only classics I saw listed were Alpha and Bertha. No Farsides, Tridents, Orbital Transports, Goblins,"

Astronwolf
"I believe that Semroc owns them. I may be wrong, but not far off wrong."

LeeR
"Interesting. I had assumed it was a “gentleman’s” agreement, but it makes more sense if it’s a more formal agreement. I wondered about trademarks when I’ve seen releases like the Spaceman and Farside-X."

Sheryl@Semroc
"Randy does own many now. Most of you might remember Carl's letter on the forum when Hobbico first took over. They wanted to stop our production of the OOP kits (which was most of our kits). Barry Tunic comes into play here as when he first took over Estes, he did not reapply for any of the trademark names. After the dust settled, Carl and John communicated often about kits Semroc was going to "bring back". If Estes was going to do a certain kit then we wouldn't and vice versa. All worked out well. Estes/Hobbico does own all the instructions for their kits."

Astronwolf
"Everything that Estes owns and owes, all of its assets and liabilities are visible now. Read for yourself the hand full of kit names Estes owns; names like the Alpha, Big Bertha, Sizzler, and others. And if names like "Goblin," or "Nike-X," or any Centuri kit names aren't on the list, then who has rights to them? Shrewd and careful businessmen like Carl and Randy got them."

The bidding rules have been posted. Anyone want to make a bid on the rest of the kit names or any of Estes intellectual property rights? You can do that. Somewhere within the $320,000 of tooling assets are the motor making machines. You can bid on those too. Makes me wonder what sort of Estes Industries is going to emerge by summer.

Jumpjet
 "You can bid on those too. Makes me wonder what sort of Estes Industries is going to emerge by summer.”  

"This is NOT true. Parts of Estes are NOT being sold separately. Someone or group of people out there will soon be the new owners of Estes and product will continue to be produced as before. This new owner may have ideas on what direction to take the company like getting back into Pro Series II models or bringing back the old B14 motor, or only making ARF models, you simply never know. This will all be over in a few weeks, so lets just wait and see what happens.

I will say the ONLY reason Estes is in Chapter 11 is because we are owned by Hobbico."
John Boren
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My thoughts:
With all the rumors flying, it's nice to see some optimism from John Boren. He is there, he would know.
I did think it was interesting that Estes/Hobbico still owns all the old instructions for their kits. There is (and has been in the past) small vendors who simply copy the older Estes and Centuri instructions and use them in their clone kits. 

2 comments:

  1. Hope for the best and prepare for the worst.
    I recently retired from a large company worth 6.4 billion. They acquired 2 or 3 companies per year for the last 17 years. All of these acquisitions pushed the spin that the change was good for them and they would become an even stronger entity. Many were stripped of some product lines our company desired and they dumped the rest before closing down their new acquisition in a one to five years. Remember when Estes did this to Cox? Their employees were assured of a solid future only to find that Estes just wanted the RTF r/c planes line and closed down the model engine plant and the plastic division that made glow engined control line planes.
    Also I 'm sure you may recall the stories of how disheartening it was for the original Estes crew to make presentations to their new Damon executives who seemed somewhat clueless and indifferent to the items in the presentations. The new owners may very well be the same unless they have a solid background in the model rocketry industry.
    No one can say with any degree of certanty whatsoever what will or will become of Estes. Only well after March 26th will anyone have an idea of what will happen.
    Unless one of us has Half a billion hide in their mattress all we can do is hope for the best and prepare for the worst.

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    1. Hi Racinoto,
      I tend to be an optimist and hope for the best. I didn't know the story about the Damon presentations. I did hear that when Damon bought Estes the government offered incentives to corporations that invested or bought educational companies.
      In my own experience, I've seen large corporations buy up smaller theme parks. Sometimes the big ideas fail, then rides and attractions were sold off separately.

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