Announcement
Ben Knebel
>ANNOUNCEMENT
This announcement will appear on the Shepherd home page shortly.
It is with the deepest regret that we must announce that The Shepherd Tool Company Inc. has ceased business operations--it is insolvent.
Although wholly inadequate, an apology is all we can offer those customers that may not have received their products. There are simply no funds--business or personal--available to do anything else at this time.
For those that may be interested in purchasing Shepherd and/or any of its assets please contact Rick Whittacker of WWCFDC---519-846-9839 or rick@wwcfdc.com NOTE: Please do not contact Rick regarding unfulfilled orders--- there is nothing he can or will do for you.
Although orders have continued to come in we have NOT processed any since we realized that we no longer had a viable business.
Many folks have wondered how this could happen and there has been much speculation as to the "real" cost of these products.
The best way to describe what happened is an analogy to personal finances:
Imagine it this way--month to month your pay check just covers your
bills---you have nothing in the bank---no savings of any kind---indeed
you've borrowed on credit just to live and are always a little behind on
your payments.
Now lose your job and have no income for a few months---boom --you are
insolvent-- the electricity gets cut off as does the heat--the phones go
off---the landlord has started eviction proceedings---your creditors are
after you----happens very quickly when it happens---all it takes is 60-90
days of no income and you're done. That is what happened to Shepherd. Did we
expect Jan and Feb to be slow--yes--did we expect sales to be virtually
zero-no.
We were, as a business, under-capitalized from the beginning. I used personal resources to fund much of Shepherd's activities-- in the early years---hence I have lost everything including a home, a car and a personal, very valuable, tool collection. I am personally bankrupt as a result--Doug may follow that path shortly. Many folks have called Doug and I crazy but we believed in what we were doing. I have a personal philosophy that says " If you believe in something--then believe in it and commit--not a little--everything" Doug and I did just that. In that philosophy lies greatness--great success and great failure. Shepherd tool was both.
We regret nothing we have done excepting our inability--at the end--to deliver the outstanding customer orders. That has been our greatest pain and please believe we deeply regret that aspect of our demise.
There has been much said on the chat-lines that is hurtful and while we understand the anger we are not dishonest people. Indeed we were delivering what we could to customers right up to our last day of operations--using what little we had left of personal resources to deliver what we could. In fact we had some customers in the shop, while we were shutting down, helping them build their planes and providing what parts we could still make.
Cost of production for these planes is high--there has been speculation that these plane components could be manufactured for between 50 and 100 bucks and that we were making a fortune on these planes. I'll just throw up a few numbers noting that the actual cost of the materials themselves was the lowest of the cost elements. All of the cost was in production. The costs vary by plane but generally--for the bench planes:
Lever cap and screw -----65.00
Iron and cap iron and screw-----45.00
Adjuster-----56.00
Wood infills ---47.00-100.00
And that is just some of the components
While there is still some inventory in the shop we no longer have the ability--or the legal right --to ship any of it. All of it belongs to the primary lender. We no longer have the right to touch it.
Some folks have speculated that we are personally protected because we were an incorporated business--while generally true, insofar as unsecured creditors are concerned, you cannot, as a small startup, get business loans--at least not in this country--- without signing a general security agreement and without a personal guarantee. Basically you pledge your personal assets as well as all of the assets of the business as security against the loan to the business. No personal guarantee--no loan.
Much has been made of the fact that we announced at the end of last summer that we had secured additional financing and that we could finally address and fix delivery issues. We did indeed fix much of it--we had 105 customers to deliver and delivered 80 of those customers in the subsequent weeks. 2 things happened that prevented us from delivering the rest--mostly adjustered planes. Our adjuster supplier--that was to have delivered the adjusters by the end of October-- didn't actually deliver the last of the components till January. We had to go to our previous supplier--at additional cost--to get at least some made but he was only able to produce 3-5 adjusters per week--not enough. In addition--because of some very nasty and in some parts patently untrue posts on some chat-lines we had to refund a substantial amount of money--amounting to about 25% of the funds we had just received---a disaster.
You will notice that I have restored some of the links on the home page to allow access to information that customers may find useful. We will keep this site alive as long as we can but be aware that this may shutdown at any time. So if there is information you want--get it soon.
Doug and I wish to thank all those customers who have supported us over the years for their loyalty and understanding.
Sincerely
Ben and Doug
