Nobody seems to want to be direct about this...
The GS accepted deposits on orders, but never actually had any plans to place those orders with Fodera. That is a big difference from just running out of money and filing for some sort of insolvency. If that's the case it's a criminal act plain and simple. It's nobel for you, Joel, to stand up and be up front as you can but I'm guessing you're not happy about it.
If I misread and am way off base I apologize in advance and will delete my post...
Peter,
I appreciate your point but, fortunately, the situation is something much less devious/calculated.
Essentially what is happening is TGS is disengaging from what has become a increasingly difficult situation with Fodera under its previous management team. We have a back order of around 8-9 basses that Fodera has just not delivered on. We've met and talked through this numerous times with Vinnie and Joey over the past few years - but they have host of historical production practices & issues that they,
previously, just could not resolve.
The long and short of it is this: Vinnie Fodera and David Beasley had a relationship and understanding where Vinnie would only work on four TGS orders at a time. Vinnie maintained a separate queue for David's orders and would only keep four in it at a time. The beauty of this was that those orders got all of Vinnie's undivided attention - which was important if you knew some of the specs that David was managing for customer orders (
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Link Removed, [Invalid or Expired Link Removed].) The down side was that anything outside of that queue was never entered into Fodera's books.
It's my belief that Vinnie extended this special arrangement because his previous relationship with David - who managed their custom in-house sales as a Fodera employee for a number of years. He was doing it as a kind, personal gesture but unfortunately, when looking at the details out of context and through the rearview mirror, it's easy to paint TGS as purposefully negligent - which frankly is not the reality.
One other important point to note: The issue around Fodera never receiving deposits on any of the outstanding TGS orders is not unique to those orders - Vinnie never took deposits on any of David's orders. Out of approximately 50 GS custom orders dating back to 2003, Fodera never took one deposit.
Without me going into a lot of detail about their historical operations and production practices (or lack thereof), this was just another non-standard (i.e. odd) arrangement that Fodera offered up as a "one off" to TGS.
That is the root of the much contested language in "Just Thumpin's" original post about never receiving orders or deposits -- This was the old Fodera regime's arrangement and it worked for a long time. Where it became a problem was when the new ownership took over the business and did their due diligence (as they should have) regarding open orders and discovered there were a number of "outstanding" orders that were not actually on their books. They were right to be concerned -- I would be also.
Jason and the team are doing a great job getting all of Fodera's operational issue's resolved. Clearly, Jason and I were furthest from the situation but we were brought up to speed over the last two weeks and agreed to address the issue collaboratively. We both recognized the sensitivity and unfortunate nature of the situation and worked separately from the others involved to identify a resolution that was fair and above all would ultimately get instruments into the hands of those impacted.
I hope that helps. Feel free to PM me if you wish.
Thanks,
JC
It's anyone's guess!!
Err....um.....I CAN wait. But only until then!!!
