When VanMoof declared chapter final yr, it left round 5,000 prospects who had pre-ordered e-bikes within the lurch. Now VanMoof is up and operating below new administration, and the corporate’s present house owners are courting those self same prospects by providing them a €1,000 low cost off a brand new bike.
It’s an audacious technique, one which bets on jilted prospects loving VanMoof’s bikes a lot that they’ll shell out a number of thousand extra euro for them.
Before it went bust, VanMoof had requested prospects to pay near the total quantity once they pre-ordered, in a transfer designed to provide the startup working capital that additionally resulted in lengthy wait occasions for supply. The bikes price anyplace from €2,300 to €2,500, relying on the mannequin and yr.
Today’s fashions – the full-sized S5 with 27.5-inch wheels and a straight body, in addition to the smaller A5 with 24-inch wheels and a step-through body – price €3,298. Which means prospects who need to make the most of this low cost should put down one other €2,298 on prime of what they already paid for his or her undelivered e-bike. Simply put, they’d be spending near €5,600 all collectively for one VanMoof bike.
“Obviously it’s not a full resolution. We’re very much aware of that,” Eliott Wertheimer, VanMoof’s co-CEO, advised TechCrunch. “The way we see it is this is a gesture to help people get back on the road who still believe in [VanMoof].”
Before going bankrupt in July 2023, VanMoof had raised near $200 million in enterprise capital and gained a cult following on the imaginative and prescient of its smooth, fashionable, uncluttered e-bikes designed end-to-end and managed by an built-in app. The model was there, however the startup lacked execution. Using bespoke components meant the bikes usually broke, and it was troublesome to exchange these components in a well timed method, particularly and not using a strong servicing community in place. The firm additionally used its VC cash to artificially decrease costs in a manner that shortly turned unsustainable, in response to Wertheimer.
Lavoie, a division of McLaren Applied that was fashioned in 2022 to construct e-scooters, acquired VanMoof in August 2023. Since then, Lavoie has labored to re-establish VanMoof’s provide chain and arrange a large service community all through Europe and components of the U.S.; reinvigorate VanMoof’s technical ecosystem, together with its apps and web site; and re-engineer VanMoof’s core merchandise. In different phrases, in the present day VanMoof claims to supply extra dependable, repairable e-bikes which have gone via McLaren’s testing and design iteration course of.
“We’re past restructuring, we’re past restarting. We’re getting into how we re-establish the brand and relaunch,” mentioned Wertheimer. “An ongoing consideration throughout this whole journey was what can we do for people who didn’t get their bikes?”
Apparently, the reply to that query is to try to hook prospects with reductions as an alternative of giving them their a reimbursement as a result of that cash is tied up in chapter proceedings. Wertheimer advised TechCrunch the cash prospects used to pay for his or her bikes, in addition to the bikes themselves, are a part of the chapter property, which is being managed by the property’s directors within the Netherlands. That means Lavoie doesn’t have entry to these funds.
“So anything we could do to support people who didn’t get their bikes from the old company will effectively has to come out of our own pocket,” mentioned Wertheimer, noting that €1,000 is essentially the most Lavoie may afford “without threatening our existence.”
Wertheimer additionally famous that the chapter course of is ongoing, and prospects nonetheless stand to get partial refunds via that when it’s resolved. Although, given what is probably going an extended line of secured collectors and precedence unsecured collectors forward of these prospects (to not point out authorized charges related to the chapter course of), prospects in all probability shouldn’t maintain their breath.
For those that do need to…
