Doesn’t bother me one way or other as couldn’t afford one though not sure I would want to even if I could. What perks my interest is the ‘The default of a large account’ . So why not say who, might be of intrest to anyone dealing with the mysterious company.
I’m assuming legal reasons.
Tack that on to just enough of a materials increase and the large default and it sounds like a perfect storm. One that could likely have been sailed around.
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I’ve got a hunch this large default was a significant figure in their budget.
Really sad to hear, but sometimes that happens.
I’m willing to bet there was no materials increase that had any significant effect on them. I’m having trouble finding evidence of a unmanageable increase in aluminium costs anywhere.
I think this is more to do with poor long term mis-management for their business. Who goes bust because of one account default and and increase (apparently…) in metal costs in a month.
I’ve heard of lots of machine shops getting increased materials costs actually, but nothing that’s sunk anyone that I’m aware of.
There was a hike in price for a short period but as the link shows earlier that price came back down. I’m not familiar with how metal trading works but at the very least, minus 10% tariffs it came back down to normal/below normal prices.
A 10% increase in their costs shouldn’t have sunk them at all, nor would it have increased their costs by 80%. Frankly, I don’t believe them.
I don’t really have a dog in this fight. Just pointing out what I’ve heard in my industry.
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Idk, I feel like CaseLabs didn’t take all the required steps to prevent this from happening.
This tariff stuff had to be the straw that broke the camel’s back. I feel like there was management issues that go a lot deeper than the tariffs. Being completely reliant on offshore parts to make your profit margin is just bad business. They make it sound like they had no alternatives to go to, but in reality, they never planned on having alternative suppliers for their materials.
They just didn’t have the forethought to plan for something like this. If they hadn’t put themselves in such a corner by selling overpriced boutique style cases, they might have made out ok.
TLDR: They didn’t expand their product lines to more affordable cases, they didn’t plan to have a secondary supply chain, they didn’t have any plans for economic hardship, and their margins were probably bad to begin with.
Taking 4-5 months to ship a single case wasn’t a help either. Just going by threads on OCN, a lot people weren’t happy with the lead time.
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I cant speak to aluminum… In the hydronics industry where I work, boilers and tanks have gone up 5-10% for everyone across the board. That is due to steel of course. We saw price increases before the tariffs took affect. It seemed as if manufacturers knew it was coming and preemptively raised prices to compensate. Currently those price increases are still in effect.
Again, I have no idea how the aluminum market actually is but I would imagine its probably about the same.
if they would have built a case similar to the one i have and it was reasonably priced i would have bought it from them… but now hindsight i am glad they didnt due to their leftist attitudes couldnt happen to a better group of people… hope the descent workers who lost their jobs easily locate new jobs…
So you’re glad the business went under because they may not agree with you on political issues? Is this who we’ve turned into?
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Them, or Thermaltake, if they want to redeem themselves.
Well honnestlly if you sell just average cases for wayy too much money.
then there is allways a risk to get bankrupt i guess.
Especially wenn the competition can offer very similar cases for only a fraction of the price.
This is a big OOF!
It’s sad but funny, if they had partnered with ThermalTake to make more affordable version of their cases, then this probably would not have happened.
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I mean, just because you fill a niche part of the market, doesn’t mean that niche can’t collapse.
Someone else sited that one of their contracts defaulted on payment. That, combined with tariffs shouldn’t be what collapses you as a business. Too many eggs in the high-end basket.
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Indeed.
Their documentation of how certain add ons for their cases went together, could have been better.
Currently I can’t find another case that offers the same level of support for water cooling as my current SMA8, as well as the potential to hold as many drives at the same time. Manage to get the side mount that I need, now I’ve just got to find some after market drive cages that mount to 120mm fans.
Luckily, Lian Li has got me covered.
Then all I’ll need is a JBOD card
Now I’m gonna need to get an sma-8 from ebay or something and practically pay double the cost.