5/6/2023 0 Comments Chip foose vs boyd coddington![]() ![]() ![]() The size of the operation made it one of Stanton’s largest employers. It is unlikely, he said, that any single buyer would be interested in acquiring the entire operation-which includes 156,000 square feet of manufacturing, warehouse and office buildings spread out on 14 acres in the city of Stanton. He said Monday he should have more information about potential deals “in two to four weeks.” That process should take about 45 days.Īsher has fielded several inquiries from businesses interested in acquiring various pieces of the operation. Asher said they took the action “to protect the collateral of the bank creditors and the investors.”Ī crew of 45 employees was kept on to complete production and shipping of pending orders, Asher said. The plan to liquidate Boyds Wheels’ assets was developed over the past month and approved late last week by the company’s directors. The company’s stock, which has fallen steadily, closed Monday at $1.28, down 3 cents a share, on the Nasdaq market.Īsher, a manufacturing industry specialist brought in last summer to orchestrate a turnaround, said the company had only $500,000 in cash and no bank credit when he was hired. Revenue plummeted to $16 million last year, and the company racked up $7.5 million in losses by the end of the third quarter-the last period for which financial results have been reported. The company’s woes began late in 1996 when a critical piece of new equipment malfunctioned, forcing it to scrap hundreds of orders and delay shipments to customers.īy early last year it also became apparent that the market for custom wheels had softened as auto manufacturers increasingly equipped vehicles with fancy wheels at the factory.īoyds, which offers some of the priciest products in the $740 million specialty wheel market, was hit hard. That explosive growth led Coddington to pump more than $15 million-most of the company’s cash and the bulk of its bank credit-into an expansion that doubled the size and capacity of its wheel manufacturing operation. The stock price surged to a high of $16.63 in November 1996, the same year revenue hit a record $27.9 million. He took Boyds Wheels public in 1995 at $6.25 a share. Demand for “Boyd’s wheels” grew and the company’s sales soon overshadowed Coddington’s custom car business. Unfortunately, we ran out of time to do both.”Ĭoddington, a renowned hot rod designer and builder, started Boyds Wheels in 1988 as an in-house supplier to his hot rod business because he didn’t like any of the custom wheels he was buying from outside vendors. “I don’t think they moved fast enough to do the things they had to do,” he said.Īsher disagrees: “Our objective came to downsizing the operation as rapidly as possible and looking at securing new business. “The relationships we built with the other employees, to see them all go, doesn’t make anybody happy.”įoose said he is certain that the current management team did what it could to keep the business going.īut Coddington, who shoulders the blame for getting the company into financial trouble, said in a brief interview Monday that he doesn’t believe the shutdown had to happen. “It saddens me very much to see all of this go,” he said. Chip Foose, design director at the 14-employee hot rod unit, helped develop the company over the past seven years. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |