Shopsmith Forums

As a Shopsmith supporter I would expect to see a message on here Monday.

Wow! All this in a day trip to Ga. I am staying home from now on.
good luck "RLF Shop, LLC". I will support them 100% although it is harder to type!:)

cincinnati wrote:As a Shopsmith supporter I would expect to see a message on here Monday.

I hope you won't be disappointed. Having gone thru a reorganization or two in my time I can relate that the stress and demands on all involved are truly over the top. This is to say that what seems sensible and necessary to you and I may be beyond consideration for the man bouncing all the balls on the front of the stage.

I for one propose we wish them the best and be a bit patient. This is one fan who will be supportive regardless of what we hear or don't her on Monday. fjimp

I will add my support to the Company as well. I would miss being able to get the parts ect from them, but losing this forum would be a real blow to me. Nick has said he would do a place on his site. lets hope it doesn't come to that.

It will be interesting to see this develop. These are my speculations only, and I hope I am wrong. I feel that the release of the new headstock under a new company will mean that SS parts for the current and older Shopsmith products may no longer be available. Along with patents, copyrights etc, they will be owned by the no longer Shopsmith Inc. I am no lawyer but have been around a couple of cabinet companies that went under. Most of the holdings were auctioned off to go against the debt of the unfortunate companies.

I have no clue about the reorginization laws, but if they sell the patents, ect who would buy them and why? I assume any value they would have would be related to being able to make and sell parts, am I right? Perhaps whoever makes parts now would be able to use the patents to make more? Some one make parts for Oldsmobiles. Don't know, just speculating.
I have a friend who restores old Packards. The tooling was sold long ago to some one in south america. but has been sold back to some one in the US who now makes replacement parts for 1920-30 vintage cars. All at a pretty hefty profit I'm told.

mbcabinetmaker wrote: It will be interesting to see this develop. These are my speculations only, and I hope I am wrong. I feel that the release of the new headstock under a new company will mean that SS parts for the current and older Shopsmith products may no longer be available. Along with patents, copyrights etc, they will be owned by the no longer Shopsmith Inc. I am no lawyer but have been around a couple of cabinet companies that went under. Most of the holdings were auctioned off to go against the debt of the unfortunate companies.

Maybe I am just being optomistic, but I think that knot supporting their old machines wood be tantamount to shooting themselves in the foot: As long as we are speculating, I think they will continue to support the 505/510/520 and all the current SPT's.

cincinnati wrote:As a Shopsmith supporter I would expect to see a message on here Monday.

I am next to 100% sure that you will knot see such a message. I will still support them regardless of a name change. My mantra is "TRY" and that is what they are doing. All the best to them and good luck added in.

I would agree that we won't see a message. This is a tricky one. How intimate does one want to be with its customers?

I notice their website is still operational. It seems like they can continue to promote the brand under a different legal company. If so, why announce anything? Why not just keep the internet presence going?

On the other hand, why not say something to your closest customers? I've spend thousands of dollars in the past few years (not including the several thousand back in the 90s). I had (have?) at least $600 on backorder. I would suspect that qualifies me a close customer. There are others in this forum even closer than me. But if it weren't for the internet and this forum, I would have no idea any change was made.

No, in these times I believe you need to be more intimate. This is now public, as our all our comments, and every search engine has picked up this info. But, this is only my opinion and very likely is not shared by Shopsmith. They have never been intimate with their customers via the internet and they, like so many other companies, do not know how to tap the power of the internet. I can't blame them - the internet is tricky and risky; too easy to really mess things up in communicating to customers and prospects.

I would expect, instead, to receive a letter in the mail. But somehow I don't think I'll see that either. We'll see.

Paul

Paul you brought up an interesting observation and one that I don't understand. How can they change names under bankruptcy and just continue business as usual? I hope that is the case however. I am in agreement with you that they should be more intimate with their strongest group of supporters. On the other hand I am sure they have a legal team guiding their every move.

This is especially frustrating for those of us that recently picked up used Shopsmiths that need repair parts. I just received my speed control assy Saturday, but I'm still waiting for the control sheave assy. Meanwhile, my machine is torn apart and unusable. I really hope that we get some information soon regarding current backorders and availability of parts. If parts won't be available from SS/RLF Shop, are there any other outlets besides ebay?

Loren