I’m not the type to give up and trash my life’s work so I don’t, and will never, understand this thought process. Auctioning these molds would certainly generate some income. I can’t expect everyone to think like I do, but this won’t stop me from commenting on ridiculous behavior when I see it. Any idiot can see the value in a large quantity of motorcycle racing bodywork molds that spans decades. Id have to know you, care about you and respect you for you to have the power to offend me. You’ll never offend me
Without someone the owner(s) trust to continue the brand, it makes sense to not sell the tooling. Some would rather destroy the molds rather than someone else make potentially an inferior product with them. It's a shame, but it's the owner's right to do.
He shouldn't care, IMO. He'd be selling the molds, not the company and the name. Anything made by the next guy is technically a knockoff. Why not take the cash?
The owner also gets to deal with rent, or not being able to rent the building if he owns it, vs how muchh $ he would expect from selling molds and how long that would take. If missed rent is a lot more than mold sales, the dumpster wins.
Some people are like that... Don't want others to profit off their countless hours of design, development, and fabrication of their tooling. It's not worth the hassle of going through literally over 5-7,000 molds. Some people just don't care about it like that.
Auction off the whole thing in one lot. Buyer responsible for picking it up. If it doesn't sell, you've lost a week or two.
When the financials don't allow you to continue, then the choice is very easy. Painful, but easy. You can have your feelings about what is or isn't ridiculous, but when shuttering a business, there are multiple factors that impact selling/auctioning off assets. That process is not like having a yard sale. Quite honestly, if there was a significant value in it, he would have been able to sell it or merge it with another bodywork vendor like ionemoto or another might have picked it up. Modern bikes fill up volume and older bikes do not. Airtech focuses more on older bikes.
Some of the Beasley Composites molds were sold to dmeracing.com. I just ordered some stuff from them. They apparently bought them a few years ago and just got the line up and running. I really hope I get my order from Airtech. I bought some stuff a month ago. Keeping my fingers crossed I don't get stiffed.
Does anyone know an approx cost? I know he said offers, whatnot. Where are all these? I guess I could look up the website and find out.
I just emailed Airtech asking about buying molds. Ill see what/if they respond and post a followup. Luckily I ordered/got bodywork for my CBR600F3 last year.
They replied with the below prices, this was for the F3 they are for sale upper $2000 Lower $1500 tail $1500
I heard from a reliable source that the company that makes the windshields is buying some if not all the remaining molds.