Wonder if this is going to impact Team USA uniforms that tri sports was supplying for ITU worlds races coming up?

I am guessing my USAT TriSports discount coupon isn't worth the paper it is printed on!!

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Rich G.
Proud member of the Geritol wave!

Used it to get my Profile Design water bottle. Arrived yesterday. *phew*

I would think so. I ordered USAT Certified coaching gear, and it was months and months of excuses, with me never getting what I wanted. They seemed to blame TYR, but now it makes more sense why I could never get my order filled.....

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Gary Geiger
http://www.geigerphoto.com Professional photographer

TEAM KiWAMi NORTH AMERICA http://www.kiwamitri.com, Rudy Project http://www.rudyprojectusa.com, GU https://guenergy.com/shop/ ; Salming World Ambassador; https://www.shopsalming.com

sad day when anyone goes out of business.

Chapter 11 would most likely get them out of the lease in the Tempe store. Otherwise, they would probably be on the hook for hundreds of thousands of dollars in rent on an empty building. That could be the major factor in their decision to go this way. Vendors are not going to cut them off because they are a little slow paying, especially after millions of dollars worth of purchases. They are all hurting for business too. I suspect that after they get this behind them, they will come out stronger than ever.

Gary - you have now opened a whole new can of worms. You reply with facts....TriSports has had a few months of luxury waiting for the inevitable. Now, they will get the trial by internet - isnt it odd that ST did not break the story? You did not flame them on the forum...however, you did point out a contention. We wait...we wait for promises and what not...

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kGRNHiMN9ZI

Agreed, very well played!

Unfortunately there are way too many online retailers that are horrible businesses. There are various sites that are notorious for having product in back order despite showing "in stock". It's false advertising and I view it as fraudulent.

These companies never have the product and most likely simply order/buy/try to get the product after you place your order. When they have trouble finding it (mind you they don't actually tell you all of this...you simply assume it already shipped)...nevertheless when they have trouble finding it, they may give you a call about it. Most likely, you have to call for them to say its on back order. Many of these shady online stores don't have the financial capital to keep much inventory. The basic premise in this whole saga is cash flow management - timing cash inflow with various cash outflows, all the while using short-term funds for personal compensation etc. Once time has run the course, the business declares bankruptcy yet the owners move on.

In my case, I cancelled my order immediately and went to an online store where I called one of the workers and had them physically walk to their warehouse to check to see if they had the product, which they did and said yes.

Never, ever, buy something on back order. Doesn't apply just to triathlon gear, but anything.

P.S. This trisports site charges excessive amounts for shipping. Never came close to placing an order with them since there is no reason.

This will take a little pressure off my inbox.

If you were a banker, doesn't sound as though you worked on distressed debt or workouts.

Bank can opt not to mature for any reason. I think you mean bank can opt to not to renew.

Blown covenants can trip default, however rarely do. Absolutely false, I can tell you blown covenants result in a minimum of a reservation of rights letter about 80-90% of the time. It rarely results in acceleration or litigation, but a covenant default is still a default and triggers action and often times an amendment only after the default has been noticed.

Contrary to public opinion, banks do not like seeing their clients in bankruptcy (or foreclosures). Again false, if the bank is fully secured they may prefer bankruptcy.

The rest I agree with to a large extent.

It's always sad to see small businesses file. I've been in the banking world for 20 years covering a wide range of industries. Their letter was well crafted. It's never the borrower's fault and the bank is always made out to be the bad guy. After reading the letter and knowing about their expansion, it looks like they took on a little too much debt, second store failed, probably could not sublease it, first store was still underperforming, liquidty and free cash flow getting tight, bank getting nervous, borrower started to live off the line of credit to support other financial obligations (lease payments, term payments) and losses, both parties probably met on several occasions about the Claggett family stepping up on the personal side (no personal guaranty it looks like), them knowing it was too late to fix the cap structure, trends, lease agreements they said no way, blew a covenant or two, bank sent reservations of rights letter, asked them one more time about a capital call, they refused, froze line (which is usually the last straw), cash flow and liquidty not enough to support business, had some other local banks tell them no way on a refi, probably rode the payables a bit the last month to buy some time, then filed. This is a tough industry for DIP lending. Depending on how bad they rode the payables and treat vendors post-petitiion, it could be a long rode for them. They were lucky the bank did not have a personal guaranty. Most small businesses have to give one. Interesting to see they had enough personal liquidity to keep the company going post bankruptcy. Looks like the bank was the one taking the equity risk on their deal.

Got received mine with my renewal. Problem I've always found is that it's not such a deal to begin with since can't use any freeshipping & prices are higher to begin with. Works out to many be $2-3 on the minium $40 order.

Agreed. The bogus discount, in my opinion, reflects equally poorly on USAT.

~~ kate

I'm going to step in on this one. I own an internet retail business. We sell bodyboarding gear. We are experts in this field since both my wife and I were full time pro bodyboarders. There are SO MANY different products we sell that we would go bankrupt if we tried to stock every item we have on the site. HOWEVER...we don't have "in stock" or "out of stock" messages at all on our site. 90% of the products we carry, the ones that consistently sell well, we stock, but the other 10% are more specialized items that customers may want, but it's not cost-effective to stock if I only sell one every 2-3 months, so in most of those cases, we'll have a notice on the item that says something like, "We do not stock this item. Please allow 2-3 days for us to get it for you once you've ordered." Additionally, keeping a website with other 2,000 products constantly updated when, for example, a blue, size large t-shirt sells out is a full-time job in itself. Sometimes, we'll have one left of an item, and someone orders it at 2am when we're all sleeping, so that item isn't removed from the site until the next business day. If a second customer orders it before we've had the chance to remove it, we immediately contact that customer to let them know it's out of stock and give them options.

Now, in your defense, if they are displaying "in stock" messages and NOT contacting their customers immediately when something's missing, THAT is not good business in my opinion, but until you try to run a small internet business (my wife and I have 2 year 'round employees and 1 seasonal employee), don't knock it.

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My business-eBodyboarding.com

My experience with trisports is that on a (very) few occasions, they didn't have an item in stock even though it was listed as is, but I typically got an email within a couple of hours saying the item wasn't in stock...

We use a system called Netsuite. I don't even know what "FTE" means. Netsuite is a cloud-based ecommerce system, and does have the capability to remove sold items, but it would take me several paragraphs to explain why we don't do that. Long story!

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My business-eBodyboarding.com

First off: Hi Gail!

Second: Everyone needs to calm down. What was posted at Xtri wasn't a press release; it was the email that Seton sent to his vendors to appraise them of what was going on. It wasn't meant for public release. Sadly, Xtri decided to put it out there. Bummer.

I kindly received a call from Seton just a few days ago, just so I heard it from the horse's mouth on what really was going on and didn't get sucked into what happens here 100 percent of the time: inaccurate "sky is falling" conjecture.

What happened? Trisports received a loan to open the Tempe location, the bank decided after the opening to repeal the loan and Trisports had to file in order to close the Tempe location and reorganize the debt for that location. That's it. The Tucson store and online operations continue status quo.

I asked whether he wanted to do a release, but we both agreed it wasn't really worth creating a stir; they are not out of business, vendors are being paid, consumers are buying product out of their Tucson location, orders are being fulfilled. Seton said he's spoken directly to probably 2/3s of his vendors to let them know, and all of them are being looked after; nobody is being left out in the cold after this.

So long story short, Trisports are not going out of business; they simply had to shutter the Tempe location and reorganize the debt. All is status quo with their flagship Tucson location. Everyone will have to look elsewhere for their pre-race gear at Ironman Arizona this fall. That's about it. You can still shop online and shop in-store in Tucson. The worst is that a handful of Tempe location employees are out of a job. Seton said he offered jobs to some in Tucson, but being Phoenix people, some maybe ASU students, etc., they opted to stay.

As other have said, Seton and Debbie are as stand-up as they come. I've known them forever, and as a fellow Tucsonan I have a kinship. They're invested in this sport in a way few other retailers are. They're lifers, and have built an amazing reputation, both personally and professionally. That will continue.

So... everyone can cease running around in circles flapping their arms wildly. Sorry, had to step in and stop this rumor mill from spinning wildly out of control.

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Jay Prasuhn
Marketing Specialist, American Bicycle Group (Quintana Roo//Litespeed//Obed)
twitter.com/jayprasuhn

FTE=Full Time Equivalent(or 40 hrs/week). Just trying to save you some time :). Very nice website by the way.

FTE - Full Time Employee

I think the cost of a back end system to really reconcile online inventory vs in store inventory is quite pricey and really only worth it if a large part of your business is generated that way. Otherwise, a nice disclaimer at check-out that if an item turns out to be out of stock the buyer will be notified and the item put on back-order unless the buyer notifies the seller to cancel the order.

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Jen

"In order to keep a true perspective on one's importance, everyone should have a dog that worships him and a cat that will ignore him." - Dereke Bruce

Banks don't just decide to repeal a loan. A loan is a binding contract. The only way to 'repeal' a loan is for clauses within the contract to be broken. When that happens, it's not a 'repealed' loan it's a 'called' loan. Big difference. How you worded it implies that it was the banks fault. It's easy, and typical, to blame the bank because it's a faceless corporation. But there is more to the story than the bank just 'repealing' the loan.

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The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design.

1) That's a nice story but not how banks operate.

2) Bad things happen to good people too, nobody on here has questioned the character of the owners.

3) Chapter 11 allows them to continue to operate, but they have to file a plan that will satisfy the debt holders, period. They can't just file and ignore the debt problem and go on living happily ever after.

In today's environment, people like to blame banks when things go wrong, especially after this past recession. People blamed the banks for collapsing the economy, yet they don't see any fault in the homeowners who purchased a house based on loan structure instead of cash flow. Homeowners share just as much blame as the investment banks.

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The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design.

Well, we don't run press releases on slowtwitch, nor do we copy and paste articles from other sites. :-)