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I was going to ask a question here but I've forgotten it for the moment.

I'm guessing that the 'doomsday' scenario would have been that Maelstrom being unable to pay Simple miniatures, may have meant that they would be in debt to their manufacturers... ETC etc and half the uk wargaming ecosystem may have gone splat?

Oh, the question!

Was maelstrom even in a state in say, September, to even still actually *be* competition to Wayland? If it wasn't for the supply chain issues, they could have quite easily kept their ohr out of the whole thing and maelstrom would have gone down the tubes later anyhow. Looking at my own orders from maelstrom, problems had started affecting the customers (or at least me) in mid July.

In any case, if you're a bit miffed at wayland about the goings on, Rockethobbies seems to have just started up and there's 'total wargamer' too.

MarkyMark wrote:
They did indeed buy the debt from a third party. Maybe because the debt was being serviced then, maybe because simple mini's did not relise the extent of Maelstroms overall debts.

Also buying the debt then could have used up a large chunk of Waylands cash reserves that they wanted to use to buy Maelstrom with.

Theres plently of maybes and probables but we will not know the whole story probably for ever sadly.

I think you are correct on all counts there.

Hi,

I have created a form which I hope people will fill in.

It is too start a campaign against the outstanding orders we have with Maelstrom.

I am hoping people will post the form in other forums and blogs they visit.

Please go to ...

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/viewform?fromEmail=true&formkey=dGlRUGhDcDhUT21FMkF1Ymp4alQ4Z1E6MQ

To fill in the form and join the campaign. I personally had a huge order with them, over £400, I am not likely to see this money again, but I think its worth the efforts of us getting together as a group. I think we can do something providing we have the numbers.

Please note that only this forum will not be enough, to be effect you have to be willing to post this link in other places you visit. One person alone cannot do this, please do not sit idly by, you can help by passing the link to friends, posting it in other forums and blogs you visit etc

I'm a little rusty on the process however the bit of Maelstroms announcement that strikes me as odd is this.

"Maelstrom Games Ltd. has ceased trading and will enter liquidation at some point over the next few months."

Why are they waiting for a few months before liquidation when they state that the company has ceased trading now?

Also it appears that Maelstrom going strictly by the definition and the information they provided traded insolvently after the 17th October 2012 when they continued to send sale emails and sell product through the site.
On that note quick question to people who are still receiving goods or can log onto EOTS and see orders made with maelstrom, you did not happen to make those orders on or after the 17th by any chance?

I ordered 2 Dark Vengeance Starter sets, I had set up a Wanted add here on dakka to find someone to split it with. A person responded and sent me the money to buy a second set. I placed the order but was first told the collectors editions were sold out, then that GW had been causing delays and finally that the boxes would arrive the next week.

Then they stopped responding to emails and I started looking around the forums, I found these threads and tried to cancel my order but got no response from Maelstrom. By this time it was to late to do a paypal dispute but I did one anyway, nothing happened because I was too late so I wont be seeing the money or the miniatures.

People call me a pessimist but I prefer the term realist.
Here is what I think happened.

Maelstrom has allot of debt, they are trying desperately to work it off which is why the started the banelegions and other resin miniature ranges. They may or may not have been slowly paying off their debt. If they were paying off £500 a day that is still £15 000 a month, it would have taken about 7 months to pay off the whole debt (if the debt was around £100K).

Wayland saw an opportunity to eliminate another competitor so offered to buy Maelstrom Games, they obviously wanted the Banelegions and Banelords rights with that offer.

Maelstrom said no as they probably felt they had spent too much money developing the Bane product line to sell it off for what they felt was a too low offer or perhaps Rob was too stubborn to sell.

Wayland offered to buy the debt, at a higher rate than a normal creditor would buy for or at a normal rate with the promise of paying instantly instead of the drawn out process that would otherwise have taken place. In either case this was obviously a quick deal.

Since Maelstrom refused to sell Wayland figured they could just drive them out of business by demanding the debt be paid.
Rob at Maelstrom basically said FETH YOU and started having huge sales to try and get rid of any physical assets that Maelstrom had left which would have been taken from them once the time limit was over and liquidation started.

Rob figured that if he couldn't have Maelstrom then no one could so he emptied all assets out of the company and transferred them over to his other businesses. There is probably paperwork stating how all these funds were transferred, all with "legit" reasons like debts, work relate or anything else you can think of.

As Rob didn't want to hand over any Bane miniatures to Wayland they honoured the sales and sent everything they could out to the people who bought from them. Rather sell them at 80% off than hand them over to Wayland for nothing.

In the end Wayland received nothing as all assets were transferred over to Robs other businesses before liquidation could start.

Angry over the whole affair Rob puts up the notice we can now see on Maelstroms website, portraying themselves as the victims of unjust business practises.

Waylands response is the pdf on their site where they claim they were trying to protect their own interests and the industry as a whole.


This is basically how the story goes so far. I'm 100% convinced Wayland will try to take Maelstrom to court for fraudulent behaviour over the transfer of assets from Maelstrom to EotS, Mierce and Maunsfeld.

Robs goal is to start over from scratch and build up his webstore and the Mierce product line. Which will take a very LONG time due to having his reputation ruined. He may or may not try to honour any outstanding orders to try and win some cred back and make Wayland stand out as a business bully who ruined Maelstrom.

Waylands goal is to make sure there is absolutely nothing left of Rob and his game stores and product lines. If Wayland can't have it then no one shall (reverse roles now).

How will it end?

If I'm right about Rob then perhaps he will get back on his feet again, build up the new webstore and by some miracle honour all outstanding orders either with refunds or the orders themselves. I'd say this will be nearly impossible as I'm sure very few will be willing to deal with EotS, Maunsfeld etc.
The only salvation I see is if he can find some big sponsor as he needs a large injection of cash. Perhaps all the money he managed to siphon off from Maelstrom will be enough.
With the debt no longer his responsibility perhaps there is enough capitol to buy everything with cash up front from now on.

If I'm wrong (which I'm 100% sure I am) then Rob will do nothing to honour the outstanding orders, will keep to the brick and mortar store or sell off the whole thing to anyone other than Wayland Games. Then taking the money from the sale and simply retiring.


Wayland on the other hand will pursue Maelstrom for all it's worth, they will try to drive EotS, Mierce and Maunsfeld out of business by demanding the outstanding debt and claiming fraudulent behaviour on Robs part. Will probably be a drawn out process which will probably lead to the bankruptcy of Rob forcing him to sell all his companies, he will do so (or burn them to the ground) but to anyone other than Wayland Games.



I'm looking at the whole situation with a pessimistic/realistic point of view. I could of course be wrong but in the end I believe I will never see my money or my miniatures.

My terms are a bit rusty here so bear with me.

A Ltd company has three basic methods of winding up.

Receivership
Adminstration
Liquidation.

Receivership is usually at the behest of a creditor, Administration is usually at the behest of a secured or preferential creditor IE a bank or IRS. Liquidation is usually at the behest of the company for one reason or another. While a company can and may take that decision it will take a few weeks/months for that company to seek and request the appointment of a 'Liquidator', or they can seek the aid of the 'Official Receiver' to appoint a 'Liquidator' aka an Accountant licenced to practice Insolvency.

It's not a quick process.

However, it will show up any practise by Maelstrom to transfer assets, the Liquidator has the right to seize assets unfairly transferred and they will report fairly on the reasons behind the liquidation. The liquidator also has the ability to accept a payment schedule for debts and convert it to a receivership. However this option seems unlikely in the face of the statement on Maelstroms webpage. Wayland may actually precipitate the actual event they were worried about as a lot of suppliers will have to write off debts that previously may/would have been paid off. The Preliminary/Final Statement of Affairs and the Narrative would be interesting to see. Anyone going to register an unsecured claim?


@ForTheEmperor while your efforts are laudable they are, unfortunately, not worth the effort as legally it wont do anything.

Cheers

Andrew

The other thing to remember in this discussion is that this figure of 100K being tossed around is only what they owed to one creditor/supplier.

If some of the information that was posted much earlier in this thread is accurate there's at least half a million outstanding - could be much higher by the time that they went under.

There was no chance that they were going to make this money back in the fire sale (which would have left many with unfulfilled orders anyway - for items which MG could no longer obtain). Plus all the lies about the warehouse move and them moving all the assets into shell companies.

And I do believe Wayland that one of the reasons for taking the debt was to make sure that Simple was sound, and could continue on.

@MadCowCrazy

you're overlooking something important here: it's *not* that Rob Lane started siphoning off assets after wayland went after their debt; no way that if SMG was looking to sell that debt (which would be the only way it could actually be useful to WL as as a tool to threaten MG) back when mierce, EoTS etc. were established as separate entities and mr. Lane started funneling assets there that it would have taken so long to come to this.
rather, SMG kept supplying MG for quite some time longer, meaning they were still hoping MG could dig themselves out. now remember, this was in **may**.
Maelstrom's filing of accounts (see duedil ) on april 29th. showed a book value of -132,432 GBP already.
if they'd have shown improvement, SMG would not have sold that debt (rather, they'd have given MG time to pay them in full!) so we can safely assume that MG was moving further and further down the drain. even if that only meant, say, ~150.000 GBP debt - how the ^&&* is a company already struggling to not *lose* money going to dig itself out of that? they were dead at that point, no matter what WL did.

now further consider that 'activating' Mierce started back in march at the latest (duedil, Mierce, name change filed march 23rd but that's not something you do on a whim, that means you had a plan brewing) and they incorporated Maunsfeld Gaming Ltd (then EoTS) june 20th, they were *clearly* moving assets to safe harbors.
those suppliers wouldn't have gotten paid a dime if Rob Lane had had a thing to say about it and the last round of customers would have gotten screwed just the same in what is precisely the game of miniatures ponzi, if you will, you're seeing here.
and really, is getting a competitor like this which would have died soon anyway gonna be worth ~60.000 GBP to WL? because that's about what they'll have paid for that debt, and I'll be damned if they're going to see much of anything of it.
again, *sure* WL has some benefit from this. largely though, it prevented a much larger Charlie Foxtrot than has happened now and with some luck, the transfer of assets from MG to Mierce will be found to be improper and those assets will (as a whole, since it's worth most that way) be sold off to someone else. it can't really get into worse hands than mr. Lane's, as far as customers are concerned.

Ashitaka wrote:The other thing to remember in this discussion is that this figure of 100K being tossed around is only what they owed to one creditor/supplier.

If some of the information that was posted much earlier in this thread is accurate there's at least half a million outstanding - could be much higher by the time that they went under.

There was no chance that they were going to make this money back in the fire sale (which would have left many with unfulfilled orders anyway - for items which MG could no longer obtain). Plus all the lies about the warehouse move and them moving all the assets into shell companies.

And I do believe Wayland that one of the reasons for taking the debt was to make sure that Simple was sound, and could continue on.

Didn't someone post a link to a website which stated how much liabilities Maelstrom had? Some duedil.org link
Found it "They owe £567,388 to creditors and are due £130,137 from trade debtors"
https://www.duedil.com/company/04724863/maelstrom-games-limited/financials

I'll be very honest. I don't think Wayland games is the cause of Maelstrom going down, no matter WHAT maelstrom says. The company OWES 1/2 a MILLION pounds in debt and Waylands only has 100k of that.

MadCowCrazy wrote:
Maelstrom has allot of debt, they are trying desperately to work it off which is why the started the banelegions and other resin miniature ranges. They may or may not have been slowly paying off their debt. If they were paying off £500 a day that is still £15 000 a month, it would have taken
about 7 months to pay off the whole debt (if the debt was around £100K).

Generally people do not try and raise money for a sinking business by starting new capital intensive ventures. Plus they owed 500k in debt, not 100k.

Wayland offered to buy the debt, at a higher rate than a normal creditor would buy for or at a normal rate with the promise of paying instantly instead of the drawn out process that would otherwise have taken place. In either case this was obviously a quick deal.

This is probably true that Wayland bought the debt at a higher rate than a normal bank/institution would. It makes the most sense.

Rob at Maelstrom basically said FETH YOU and started having huge sales to try and get rid of any physical assets that Maelstrom had left which would have been taken from them once the time limit was over and liquidation started.

Rob figured that if he couldn't have Maelstrom then no one could so he emptied all assets out of the company and transferred them over to his other businesses. There is probably paperwork stating how all these funds were transferred, all with "legit" reasons like debts, work relate or anything else you can think of.

As Rob didn't want to hand over any Bane miniatures to Wayland they honoured the sales and sent everything they could out to the people who bought from them. Rather sell them at 80% off than hand them over to Wayland for nothing.

In the end Wayland received nothing as all assets were transferred over to Robs other businesses before liquidation could start.

Angry over the whole affair Rob puts up the notice we can now see on Maelstroms website, portraying themselves as the victims of unjust business practises.

Waylands response is the pdf on their site where they claim they were trying to protect their own interests and the industry as a whole.

After all the shenanigans, I can see the owner of Maelstrom doing something like this...

Is it usual for companies such as Simple Miniatures to give their clients such a massive tab ?
sounds a bit much for me !
Its sad to see them finally go, it was good while it lasted but i will leave EotS well alone after this debacle, Wayland too i think.

 Rayvon wrote:

Is it usual for companies such as Simple Miniatures to give their clients such a massive tab ?
sounds a bit much for me !

If you owe me £10 and can't pay - you have a problem

If you owe me £100,000 and can't pay - I have a problem

Just as we are seeing in Greece(!) people will keep extending credit in the hopes that it will "all come right".

Clearly Simple Miniatures guessed wrong - a fact possibly not helped by the fact that the growng debt pile at MG was not solely derived from poor sales but the use of MG assests to start-up new ventures which could then be "spun off" leaving the debt with MG whilst the new ventures got a clean balance sheet and no start-up costs.

MG had debts of over £500K and was owed less than £140K - so the net debt was in excess of £360K.

Wayland only bought up £100K of that debt - that means there was still £250K+ of debt to be called in by others at any time.

Blaming Wayland for the fact that MG didn't honour their promises is fatuous in the extreme - if it hadn't been them it would have been someone else or in the end it would have MG itself pulling the plug once they had transferred enough out of the business to their new ventures.

MG was being run as a ponzi scheme and a feature of a ponzi scheme is that when the music stops the last people in get left holding the gakky end of the stick.

Those people who paid by Credit Card and/or PayPal and who claimed in time should get their money back hopefully, the others will have to hope the courts maybe sort it out - but I'm afraid customers are at the back of the queue in these situations - and as MG had a net debt of £360K+ you'd have to be over the optimism event horizon and accelerating madly to believe you will ever see either your goods or a penny of your money again.


I do also wish people would stop going on about "traders having a loyalty to the gaming community".

There is no such thing - traders are businesses - they are in it to make money, feed the family, have a nice life. They may share your passions, but they are not a charity.

How would people feel if traders kept popping up demanding "loyalty from the gaming community" and suggesting we all agreed to buy set amounts of figures from them every month to guarantee their cash flow?

Traders are businesses - and customers need to be business-like in the way they make their purchases - not just assume because Mr Bloggs Ltd does a good line in Space Halfings with Tutus and talked to you for 2 hours at a show about them he's automatically trustworthy.

The one thing everyone can (and should) take from this debacle is the intention to make their purchases in a business-like manner using the various consumer and financial safeguards to protect their own financial interests so that at least if the the worst happens their money is safe.

Caveat Emptor - and if it seems to good to be true it almost certainly is....

You speculate to accumulate, especially with credit.

I'm guessing in Simples position, why wouldn't you extend allot of credit to one of the three biggest international wargames retailers?

Thus is the story of many failing business, over extending themselves.

Well done Wayland for holding up Simples end but his was onl one debt of many. However you judge Wayland actions (correct IMHO), all of this is precipitated by Maelstrom's poor business decisions and management.

I will take measures to avoid any Rob Lane company, clearly no great business man but MG's last missive shows him to be a schister and charlatan of the grandest order. MG have always had live stock levels so no reason not to forfill all orders and refund advance orders.

So in the end, Simple Miniatures' decision to give Maelstrom a 100,000 £ credit brought the UK tabletop gaming industry into trouble. Any background, why Simple Miniatures did such a thing? Sounds like a bad idea and indeed proved to be one. Esp. when giving the money to a company whose business model is based on undercutting its global competitors in profit marges.

The thing is that starting up a miniature range isn't going to be cheap. Especially not if you hire the top talents in the industry for sculpting and painting. That tells me that MG wanted Banelegion/Mierce Miniatures to take a share of the market quickly. To do this, they had to spend quite a lot of money on it in the beginning, which they took from MG, which also caused a bigger debt. They most likely calculated that with Mierce Miniatures, they would earn the money back.

Wayland, obviously picked up on this, and figured they wanted a piece of the cake. They attempted to buy MG. When their offer was refused, they instead wanted to remove a competetor, which was growing larger quickly. As someone mentioned above, when they realised MG had over-stretched with Mierce Miniatures, they went in for the kill.

For the hobby, what Wayland did isn't benefitting us, the customers.
1.) MG went under, meaning less options to chose from for us, the customers.
2.) When MG went under, it's a big risk that Mierce Miniatures will bite the dust too. So, perhaps a promising range of miniatures will go down the drain. It's a shame because they had some really great stuff.
3.) When MG went under, the customers with standing orders got shafted. If Wayland wanted to help the community, they would have worked out a way for the debt to be paid off.
4.) When Wayland demanded their newly collected debt to be paid right away, but what happens now with the other that MG owns? There is no way in hell any of them will get anything back now. Before Wayland sunk MG, there still was a chance. How will this affect the customers?

Without having in depth knoledge of simples business, past history with MG, turnover, payment history etc we will never know. MG might have been paying Simple in full every month for years. They then get in to trouble and stop paying, buy which point it is too late to know there is a problem.

Without access to simples sales ledger and credit policy you will never know if they made a right or wrong choice giving £100k of credit. It may have been a very reasonable credit limit being paid every month. By all accounts it seems MG were on 90 days terms. £30k turnover a month is not that much. It means that MG had a turnover of about £400k with one of the biggest distributors in the UK. Not that big at all.

Blaiming simple is wrong. Blaiming Wayland, whatever they may or may not have done is wrong. Only MG are responsble for there debt. Even if a big chunk of there market went they were already dependant on future trade to pay past debt before they got in to trouble.

As for the debt, all we have is MGs word that they were paying it and lets face it, how can anyone give them any credibility any more. I'm much more likely to believe Wayland when they say MG were not paying there debt and were not willing to talk about it.

infoengineering wrote:
"Info Engineering is a leading manufacturers and Exporters of Biscuit die, Bakery equipment accessories and Biscuit die in India."


For More Details
Please Contact:
http://www.infoengineering.in

Hehe, hehehehe, heh.. Biscuits. Only took us what? 42 pages? But finally, there's biscuits!

If you believe that there was a chance that MG would some how have mysteriously recovered then sorry I have to disagree. You also seem intend on painting this as Wayland fault when no one ran up this and other debts other than MG/Rob Lane.

It appears (somewhat rarely in my experience) that MG did have a chance to save the company by another benefactor, that was Wayland Games. This was ignored. To then paint WG as the party that then ensured that customers wouldn't get their orders is rather churlish.

You seem to be unhappy as you are out an order, fine but you have the opportunity to recover your money from CC/PayPal, you should action this.

It appears WG are down to the tune of £60k and what benefit is the loss of a "competitor" which is clearly not really competing with anyone and hasn't for the last year that their operation has been getting poorer and poorer.

It appears they deal in spam as well as biscuits!

Smart move, spamming on a wargaming forum!

 Kroothawk wrote:
Esp. when giving the money to a company whose business model is based on undercutting its global competitors in profit marges.

As someone on the receiving end of GW's 80% Feth Australia surcharge, you'll forgive me if I don't see that business model as a bad thing.

Vorlon25 wrote:

If you owe me £10 and can't pay - you have a problem

If you owe me £100,000 and can't pay - I have a problem

Just as we are seeing in Greece(!) people will keep extending credit in the hopes that it will "all come right".

Clearly Simple Miniatures guessed wrong - a fact possibly not helped by the fact that the growng debt pile at MG was not solely derived from poor sales but the use of MG assests to start-up new ventures which could then be "spun off" leaving the debt with MG whilst the new ventures got a clean balance sheet and no start-up costs.

MG had debts of over £500K and was owed less than £140K - so the net debt was in excess of £360K.

Wayland only bought up £100K of that debt - that means there was still £250K+ of debt to be called in by others at any time.

Blaming Wayland for the fact that MG didn't honour their promises is fatuous in the extreme - if it hadn't been them it would have been someone else or in the end it would have MG itself pulling the plug once they had transferred enough out of the business to their new ventures.

MG was being run as a ponzi scheme and a feature of a ponzi scheme is that when the music stops the last people in get left holding the gakky end of the stick.

Those people who paid by Credit Card and/or PayPal and who claimed in time should get their money back hopefully, the others will have to hope the courts maybe sort it out - but I'm afraid customers are at the back of the queue in these situations - and as MG had a net debt of £360K+ you'd have to be over the optimism event horizon and accelerating madly to believe you will ever see either your goods or a penny of your money again.


I do also wish people would stop going on about "traders having a loyalty to the gaming community".

There is no such thing - traders are businesses - they are in it to make money, feed the family, have a nice life. They may share your passions, but they are not a charity.

How would people feel if traders kept popping up demanding "loyalty from the gaming community" and suggesting we all agreed to buy set amounts of figures from them every month to guarantee their cash flow?

Traders are businesses - and customers need to be business-like in the way they make their purchases - not just assume because Mr Bloggs Ltd does a good line in Space Halfings with Tutus and talked to you for 2 hours at a show about them he's automatically trustworthy.

The one thing everyone can (and should) take from this debacle is the intention to make their purchases in a business-like manner using the various consumer and financial safeguards to protect their own financial interests so that at least if the the worst happens their money is safe.

Caveat Emptor - and if it seems to good to be true it almost certainly is....

Wholeheartedly agree with all your points - it's just unrealistic to think the retailers are our buddies - they are a business and are in it to make money. The culprit here is MG, as they misinformed the community for months and tried to sell items which they knew they never would get - trying to assign blame to Wayland Games is just childish, although I can understand the frustration of some people.

I was lucky enough to get my money refunded by my CC company but many others are still out large sums of money - and the icing on this situation can only be MG's attempt to blame Wayland - and this little gem here: "Maelstrom Games Ltd. can only apologise to those customers whose orders have not been fulfilled as it is now impossible for Maelstrom Games Ltd. to fulfil them"

Wayland appear to have tried a buyout knowing that there were debts, they didn't find out about the debts afterwards and buy those as an alternative means to remove Maestrom.

I'm not sure what the alternative was to what was happening here. The idea that Wayland were trying to destroy competition, not really because Maelstrom were destroying themselves. If Wayland wanted their competition gone they could have just let Maelstrom carry on and go under. The problem with that is their debts would continue to rise and how many other companies would be sucked in after being left out of pocket?

Some people say that Wayland wanted Maelstrom gone which is why they called in the debt fast. I get the impression that Maelstrom needed to be shot through the head because leaving it ongoing just meant that the debts were growing and anything of value remaining was being put into other new companies belonging to Maelstrom's owners. You can't ignore the fact that debts were growing, the longer you wait the more everyone is out of pocket when it does implode, and then people on here would be complaining that no one did anything when the writing had been on the wall for a year.

Don't you just love how some people are coming up with all these extensive theories where Wayland is now somehow to blame for Maelstrom's feth-ups, even though those theories are based on nothing more than nonsense speculation on their part.

grefven wrote:
The thing is that starting up a miniature range isn't going to be cheap. Especially not if you hire the top talents in the industry for sculpting and painting. That tells me that MG wanted Banelegion/Mierce Miniatures to take a share of the market quickly. To do this, they had to spend quite a lot of money on it in the beginning, which they took from MG, which also caused a bigger debt. They most likely calculated that with Mierce Miniatures, they would earn the money back.

Wayland, obviously picked up on this, and figured they wanted a piece of the cake. They attempted to buy MG. When their offer was refused, they instead wanted to remove a competetor, which was growing larger quickly. As someone mentioned above, when they realised MG had over-stretched with Mierce Miniatures, they went in for the kill.

For the hobby, what Wayland did isn't benefitting us, the customers.
1.) MG went under, meaning less options to chose from for us, the customers.
2.) When MG went under, it's a big risk that Mierce Miniatures will bite the dust too. So, perhaps a promising range of miniatures will go down the drain. It's a shame because they had some really great stuff.
3.) When MG went under, the customers with standing orders got shafted. If Wayland wanted to help the community, they would have worked out a way for the debt to be paid off.
4.) When Wayland demanded their newly collected debt to be paid right away, but what happens now with the other that MG owns? There is no way in hell any of them will get anything back now. Before Wayland sunk MG, there still was a chance. How will this affect the customers?

This is a LOT of assumptions.

How bout you blame Maelstrom for not managing their own finances better.
And seriously, where are you getting the opinion that Wayland wanted Mierce miniatures?

I dont think Maelstrom was destroing itself. They put their chin out there to start a new miniature range. This was most likely why they were getting into debt. Rather than taking a bank loan they tried to fund it themselves. But they were never given the time to bounce back before Wayland went for the throat.

Biscuits aside.

MG would have gone under, no matter who pulled the trigger. I don't blame Wayland one bit.

Still, Imagine the impotent rage fury if it had been GW who had pulled the plug.

Sining wrote:

grefven wrote:
The thing is that starting up a miniature range isn't going to be cheap. Especially not if you hire the top talents in the industry for sculpting and painting. That tells me that MG wanted Banelegion/Mierce Miniatures to take a share of the market quickly. To do this, they had to spend quite a lot of money on it in the beginning, which they took from MG, which also caused a bigger debt. They most likely calculated that with Mierce Miniatures, they would earn the money back.

Wayland, obviously picked up on this, and figured they wanted a piece of the cake. They attempted to buy MG. When their offer was refused, they instead wanted to remove a competetor, which was growing larger quickly. As someone mentioned above, when they realised MG had over-stretched with Mierce Miniatures, they went in for the kill.

For the hobby, what Wayland did isn't benefitting us, the customers.
1.) MG went under, meaning less options to chose from for us, the customers.
2.) When MG went under, it's a big risk that Mierce Miniatures will bite the dust too. So, perhaps a promising range of miniatures will go down the drain. It's a shame because they had some really great stuff.
3.) When MG went under, the customers with standing orders got shafted. If Wayland wanted to help the community, they would have worked out a way for the debt to be paid off.
4.) When Wayland demanded their newly collected debt to be paid right away, but what happens now with the other that MG owns? There is no way in hell any of them will get anything back now. Before Wayland sunk MG, there still was a chance. How will this affect the customers?

This is a LOT of assumptions.

How bout you blame Maelstrom for not managing their own finances better.
And seriously, where are you getting the opinion that Wayland wanted Mierce miniatures?

I am saying that I believe that Wayland wanted to buy Maelstrom at several occasions, and, at the time before the split, Mierce Miniatures was a part of Maelstrom. I am sure that if they had bought Maelstrom, they wouldn't put MM to the sack.

grefven wrote:
I dont think Maelstrom was destroing itself. They put their chin out there to start a new miniature range. This was most likely why they were getting into debt. Rather than taking a bank loan they tried to fund it themselves. But they were never given the time to bounce back before Wayland went for the throat.

They couldn't fulfill customer orders nor could they pay suppliers. MG hived off the best bits and left the rest to rot.

They destroyed themselves. Wayland just took old yella out the back to try and stop the rabid backlash.

I wonder if MM is worth £99k of debt?

 Mr. Burning wrote:

grefven wrote:
I dont think Maelstrom was destroing itself. They put their chin out there to start a new miniature range. This was most likely why they were getting into debt. Rather than taking a bank loan they tried to fund it themselves. But they were never given the time to bounce back before Wayland went for the throat.

They couldn't fulfill customer orders nor could they pay suppliers. MG hived off the best bits and left the rest to rot.

They destroyed themselves. Wayland just took old yella out the back to try and stop the rabid backlash.

They just started up a brand new miniature range, hiring some of the top sculptors and painters in the business. They most likely thought that they could fund it themselves, rather than taking a bank loan or doing a Kickstarter (like everyone else). They should get some credits for trying to bring something new to us, the customers. Yes, everything went to hell, and Maelstrom did some terrible decisions. But I highly doubt that this was their intention all along.

grefven wrote:
For the hobby, what Wayland did isn't benefitting us, the customers.
1.) MG went under, meaning less options to chose from for us, the customers.
2.) When MG went under, it's a big risk that Mierce Miniatures will bite the dust too. So, perhaps a promising range of miniatures will go down the drain. It's a shame because they had some really great stuff.
3.) When MG went under, the customers with standing orders got shafted. If Wayland wanted to help the community, they would have worked out a way for the debt to be paid off.
4.) When Wayland demanded their newly collected debt to be paid right away, but what happens now with the other that MG owns? There is no way in hell any of them will get anything back now. Before Wayland sunk MG, there still was a chance. How will this affect the customers?

Since we're playing the game of assumptions... if we make the assumption that the debt owed to Simple was a threat to Simple's ability to continue trading, what do you think the impact of Simple collapsing would have had on UK wargaming, particularly the Indie stores?