Serpent for sale
 

Well the rumours circulating for a long time are apparently true - Serpent model racing cars is officially no longer and the companys assets are being sold off this month in auction.
A victim of the recession or their own over expansion into new lines - it's not clear. Over the past couple of years Serpent went from a fairly low key company producing excellent niche 8th scale cars - to announcing and releasing a number of new and exciting lines. With even bigger (and more expensive) projects on the way including the fabulous S500 electric buggy things looked ever-so-bright for the Dutch RC manufacturer.

The main offices moved a little while ago to save money and it's not clear what's happening to the brand itself - though Neobuggy.net report the name being sold to a company in Asia.

Neo buggy story now says that Serpant Asia, Serpant America and Serpant Europa have been/will be created by the 2 guys that previously owned "serpant".

Hard to tell what's happening from the neobuggy article. They assume Serpent are closed because they are auctioning off the factory contents, such as machinery. As Serpent have previously stated several times they have moved production to Asia, then they would be selling off the factory machinery anyway.

I notice Serpents own website (the news section was updated today) makes no reference to them shutting down, nor does anywhere else. If they had been bankrupt I don't think they would be too worried about getting last weekends race results on to the website http://www.serpent.com/news/

Agreed, though the neobuggy article was also referencing a news item on a dutch rc website. Whatever the truth the appearance of 'business as usual' is absolutely key.

The 'Facts' as posted on the Serpent website tonight:

The facts
Serpent Headquarters remains based in Heemstede, Holland, at a smaller location than before.. At Serpent head-quarters general project-management, r&d, marketing and sales are being done. Michael Salven works on all designs of current and new projects. Billy Easton works on r&d too, but then based in the USA.

Serpent has moved all the production to Asia. In the last 5-10 years already most parts were made in Asia and we focused production in Holland on injection moulding of all nylon parts, logistics and packing of car-kits and spare parts. To make things more efficient and flexible we decided to move all production to one expert production location in Asia. This facility is fully operational and kits and parts are made available from there.

Before the main warehouse was in Holland. In the new structure it is managed in 3 locations SerpentAsia, SerpentAmerica and SerpentEurope ( in the making). Ofcourse the network of Serpent Distributors (over 45 worldwide) will continue to operate as before.

Serpent is working on some exciting new projects, which will be revealed in the time to come, we will keep you posted, as usual. Some more info on the development of the Serpent company will follow too.

Ronald Baar / Michael Salven
Serpent MRC

i did try to say thats what was happening!!

http://www.oople.com/forums/showthre...286#post169286

http://www.oople.com/forums/showpost...9&postcount=18

Hmm, so is the original serpent business name still alive, or is the old one gone and 3 new ones in its place?

the answer to that question may also tell us quite a lot about the truth of it all...

To be fair Mark - I've also been to the factory and you said nothing I didn't personally already know.

so why does every one say "thier bust" "thier sold up" or as in your 1st post?

http://www.oople.com/forums/showpost...5&postcount=10is what im referinging to

i can not say all i know but there was allot of legal wrangling going on the the dutch goverment, hence the public silence, however i did say serpent would not be gone!


jimmy do you need a psu for sunday?

http://bva-auctions.com/auction/auct...04C8C8&did=638

Bad news...

not really


statement from Ronald Baar of Serpent.
Baar's statement on serpent.com

Serpent is moving ahead with full power
Michael Salven and Ronald Baar (me) own the Serpent name, domain-names, brand-rights, the stock and designs. We have established Serpent Asia, Serpent America (booth in Chicago I-Hobby show) and next month Serpent Europa too. We have an office in Holland (Heemstede) to do general management, design and marketing.
As advised before merely the full production-line has been moved to Asia and its already in full operation. Serpent S120, S720 and S960 are made and are being sold, same with spare parts and optionals for same. The auction this person is talking about is the sales of all remaining machines, tables and other stuff, not related to products (except some very old stuff, we did not bother to take along).
Ronald Baar<!-- / message --><!-- sig -->

To me sounds like they transferred certain brand names etc to a new company in advance. So the company did go bust, hence the massive amount of stuff being put through this liquidation style auction...

A clever way of getting rid of debt and starting afresh at the expense of your creditors, of course just an opinion and no fact being this.

I will let you know Jason :woot: Just emailed again - obviously not getting a reply for months doesn't exactly fill you with confidence.

do a bit of research on how companies and the dutch goverment work ;)

Does the original company still exist then and they've just added these brands?

what brands do you mean?

as i understand it the factory closed to move production to asia, in doing that there were redundancies and from what im told the dutch goverment then gets involved (such as auction the old stuff thats left)has to happen.

ronald has said that him and micheal own the brand name etc,

to me it makes no diference what happened, im happy that Serpent are still alive and a company thats giving us cars to race

definatly wont be the first company to re organize thier operation and adapt to the current market/climate

I know perfectly well how companies work, hence I made the post above. Unsurprisingly I don't know the specifics of Dutch Government and Legislation, so please rather than just posting a smug remark why not let me know what is so important about the Dutch Government?

If is perfectly reasonable for say a company, lets call it 'Company N.V.' to produce a product under 'Brand A'. Lets say you keep 'Brand A' associated to a person or separate company so that 'Company N.V.' can still produce products under name 'Brand A' just with permission. Say that 'Company N.V.' gets intro financial difficulties, as such liquidators seize their assets for sale at auction. It would be perfectly possible for that separate entity or indeed a person that owns 'Brand A' to set up another company, say in the far east called 'Company Ltd.' and then grant 'Company Ltd.' to make products under the same 'Brand A' and really there is nothing anyone can do about it, as legally the brand doesn't have to be associated with the business.

This isn't foul play, but it's not a great way of doing business as it leaves lots of people out of pocket.

Again I will clarify this is just theory, and I am not accusing Serpent of anything.

This is what I was getting at to, no idea how Dutch law works but have had family members suffer personally from being a creditor to such a company.

I'm interested if Serpent have done this or not because lots of rumours/emails/notices have flown around, and if a company deals in a way as described above it would certainly influence whether I'd be a customer of them!

Although without an S500 that's probably moot for me anyway!!

Hate to beat a dead horse here, but everyone needs to read the release from Serpent again. They no longer be producing the cars outside of Asia. All the manufacturing equipment will be collecting dust and thus not useful so they are selling it off. I would imagine they are keeping some stuff for prototyping but other then that why keep an $80k injection molder or $105k CNC machine if you don't need it. Just my take on what was said. Also the Serpent name/products don't belong to the company. They belong to the brain trust. Not sure how that works into EU law.

Anyone seen that the reserve has been met on the cnc lot at 2000 euros :o