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DJM - Statement of Affairs released


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It would seem possibly an all encompassing ring that fenced all projects and not individual projects.  I do not think that many will be shouting Dave a beer at the pub for a while yet.  I trust that he will not be ostracised from the hobby,  but he really does have a lot of questions to answer, but I will not be holding my breath waiting.

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2 hours ago, RedgateModels said:

 

APT deposits?

It might be interesting to look at the relative timing of a couple of things - such as the original APT payments via Paypal (never wholly refunded it would seem) and the date at which Class 17 refunds were made.  While we clearly are never likely to see any real numbers there might at the very least have been a coincidence which would give rise to speculation especially as Dave had previously said that he needed the Class 17 'deposits' in order to fund tooling because he didn't have the funds.  Only possible answers appear on the face of it to be that either the money was not paid to the factory and was subsequently refunded, or it was paid to the factory and what was refunded came from somewhere else.  The latter might have been a loan which doesn't show up as such in the micro accounts because the increase in indebtedness over two years between 2017 and 2018 year ends only grew by £7,000 which might have been little more than interest on outstandings of £80,000+?

 

So the unanswered (eternally no doubt) question is if he didn't have the funds for the Class 17 tooling work but got it as deposits which he then paid to the factory where did the money come from to refund those deposits back to the people who had paid them?  

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13 hours ago, melmoth said:

whilst i cannot go into details, i hope, for obvious reasons...

 

 

I didn't read anything that was "obvious" why production was stopped.

 

I read that DJ asked for money, got paid the money, paid the Chinese and that was it.

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1 hour ago, The Stationmaster said:

It might be interesting to look at the relative timing of a couple of things - such as the original APT payments via Paypal (never wholly refunded it would seem) and the date at which Class 17 refunds were made.  While we clearly are never likely to see any real numbers there might at the very least have been a coincidence which would give rise to speculation especially as Dave had previously said that he needed the Class 17 'deposits' in order to fund tooling because he didn't have the funds.  Only possible answers appear on the face of it to be that either the money was not paid to the factory and was subsequently refunded, or it was paid to the factory and what was refunded came from somewhere else.  The latter might have been a loan which doesn't show up as such in the micro accounts because the increase in indebtedness over two years between 2017 and 2018 year ends only grew by £7,000 which might have been little more than interest on outstandings of £80,000+?

 

So the unanswered (eternally no doubt) question is if he didn't have the funds for the Class 17 tooling work but got it as deposits which he then paid to the factory where did the money come from to refund those deposits back to the people who had paid them?  

 

If we were to follow your hypothesis:

 

- the £15K deposit listed in the assets is the payment to a Chinese factory for the Class 17 development work

 

- This is the equivalent to 60 APT deposits . Add in other sunk costs on the Class 17, and bank charges, and the shortfall in funds available to repay the Class 17 funders might have equated to at least half the APT first instalment monies, supposing DJM only had the 168 orders mentioned by Markwj 

 

I have seen reports elsewhere (I can't quite remember which forum) that someone showed a working prototype N gauge Class 17 to RevolutioN last year - and they declined to get involved , reckoning that it must be the DJM model and they would be tainted if they got involved with a proposition like that. A video clip of the thing running was posted.

 

So yes - it seems that tooling does exist for the Class 17 in China, and that the owners have sought a British partner to release and distribute the thing - presumably in order to get their money back on the tooling. So far without success. There was some suggestion from posters on the N gauge forum that there were some shape issues and the model would not be "the definitive Class 17"

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34 minutes ago, Ravenser said:

So yes - it seems that tooling does exist for the Class 17 in China, and that the owners have sought a British partner to release and distribute the thing - presumably in order to get their money back on the tooling. So far without success. There was some suggestion from posters on the N gauge forum that there were some shape issues and the model would not be "the definitive Class 17"

 

Shape issues? On a DJM product? Who would have thought it.....?

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Mainly a very thick cab roof and not quite right around the nose. It was, by all accounts, a sweet runner.

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26 minutes ago, ian said:

Mainly a very thick cab roof and not quite right around the nose. It was, by all accounts, a sweet runner.

 

On the other hand, according to "adb968008" a page back:
 

Quote

 

DJ did post some videos on youtube, it ran... kind of, I recall it needing nudge and stalling on points.

The videos have been pulled but were here..

https://djmodels.co.uk/product/class-17-clayton-locomotive

 

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27 minutes ago, DavidH said:

 

On the other hand, according to "adb968008" a page back:
 

 

I saw - somewhere , I can't remember - a posting by someone from Revolution saying they had been shown the thing by someone last year, and they posted a video of it running within their posting

 

I can't remember where because I stuck DJM into Google to see if there were any significant discussions of their failure and there wasn't much. When you're flicking open Google listings to scan what's inside you end up a bit hazy about exactly what you saw where 3 days later...

 

Sorry if that's less than scholarly precision but I recall a modelling section of Railforum and also NGF had meaningful DJM discussions. It might be somewhere in one of those

 

Anyway the fundamental point is that - contra some of the scepticism expressed above -  tooling for the N gauge 17 does exist and  complete undecorated working models have been seen by several sources

 

I don't model in N gauge and I have no interest in Class 17, so have no personal take on the merits of the "trial shot" as a a model

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3 minutes ago, Ravenser said:

 

I saw - somewhere , I can't remember - a posting by someone from Revolution saying they had been shown the thing by someone last year, and they posted a video of it running within their posting

 

Why would RevolutioN have posted a video of the DJM class 17, it would only draw them in the supposed dispute that DJM had with them

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24 minutes ago, woodenhead said:

Why would RevolutioN have posted a video of the DJM class 17, it would only draw them in the supposed dispute that DJM had with them

 

They said they had been shown this thing, they said they were convinced it must be the DJM model , and therefore they had declined to get involved.  That is precisely why according to the posting they felt they had better not touch this thing with a bargepole

 

I'll see if I can find the posting in cyberspace

 

Edit - I can't find it on railforums or NGF , and Google isn't providing other sensible options - the  "DJM School of Business Management" had certain qualities of irony...

 

It may have been in a thread somewhere on something else... and therefore not so easy to find again... It was part of a lengthy thread, that I do remember

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16 hours ago, adb968008 said:

Interesting letter from Dj, usual generalisations.

 

try this for size...

 

if you replaced every variation of “china”, “some factory” etc with “DJs factory” and every variation of UK manufacturer etc with “DJ models”, it reads a bit more sense..., at least to me.

 

 

 

I found his various rants about China to be rather cleverly worded and extremely manipulative in some cases as they made clear inferences without making explicit accusations and when certain individuals completed the obvious inference for him there was no attempt to interject with a correction. Which indicates that far from being some sort of bumbling idiot he was actually a pretty sharp guy (just not sharp at running a business, accounting, delivering product etc). I think somebody else has already commented that he was a gifted communicator and it is true, personally I hated his matey familiarity and found it cringe inducing but I don't think I was ever his target audience (I never bought anything from him) and he clearly did win a lot of fans by his style of engagement. Whatever his faults, he did do a good job of building a fan base of sorts and that was largely down to his style of communicating (as I say I'll give him that even if it never appealed to me).

 

The stuff about China was what really turned me off him. When he started I wished him well. I'm not going to lie and say I was a DJ fan as I found his forum persona to be rather bombastic and distasteful even when he was at Dapol but I do have respect for people trying to make a go of starting their own business and some of the models he oversaw at Dapol (I don't say designed as he clearly didn't design anything despite his boasts) were very good. When the red flags started appearing I became concerned but in itself failing in business is hardly a matter of moral turpitude or nefarious behaviour and plenty of good, hard working and honest people don't make it work. The Class 74 thing was the big red flag as for Kernow to pull the plug in the way they did raised serious red flags. However his manipulative comments about China which were cleverly crafted to appeal to all sorts of cheap stereotypes and prejudices (I won't lower the tone by going further) to transfer responsibility for his own failings onto nameless persons on the other side of the world were profoundly objectionable and indicated something rotten in my opinion. It may sound slightly petty but at that point I took a decision that regardless of whatever DJ might offer, no matter how good any model he might one day manage to put on the market might be, I wouldn't be buying anything from him.

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1 hour ago, ian said:

Hopefully the link below should take you to a post on NGF where Ben ANdo describes the Class 17 EP that Revolution examined:

 

https://www.ngaugeforum.co.uk/SMFN/index.php?topic=45680.msg575787#msg575787

Which suggests that unless that was the first EP the second EP tooling was carried out although still leaving some errors in the shape of the loco.

 

So back to my question - if we can now assume the money was paid to the factory and the second tooling was completed where did the money come from to repay the Class 17 deposit payers (at times also called 'crowdfunders' by DJM) if DJM didn't have the money to pay for the work in the first place?  That, I suspect, is probably the far more pertinent question.

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5 hours ago, Ravenser said:

 

.......    So yes - it seems that tooling does exist for the Class 17 in China, and that the owners have sought a British partner to release and distribute the thing - presumably in order to get their money back on the tooling. So far without success. There was some suggestion from posters on the N gauge forum that there were some shape issues and the model would not be "the definitive Class 17"

.

 

Ahhhhh . . .  but the ethical/philosophical question is would it be right to buy such a model (should it ever appear) if (and we don't really know) it was the Chinese manufacturer who helped DJM go under ??????

 

.

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8 minutes ago, LBRJ said:

Is it possible, or even probable, that any money for repayments etc came from this house that he re-mortgaged (or sold) to finance the business?

 

There is no evidence given to support that supposition.

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6 minutes ago, phil gollin said:

.

 

Ahhhhh . . .  but the ethical/philosophical question is would it be right to buy such a model (should it ever appear) if (and we don't really know) it was the Chinese manufacturer who helped DJM go under ??????

 

.

 

Or could it be magnanimous to support a factory that had been left out of pocket overall?

 

Also there is no evidence to support a theory that a factory caused or played a part in the demise of the business.

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25 minutes ago, AY Mod said:

Also there is no evidence to support a theory that a factory caused or played a part in the demise of the business.

There are only DJ’s own nonsensical, and self-serving, rantings to evidence any wrongdoing by the factory(s). It’s not in a factory’s best interests to make a customer/commissioner go under. 

Edited by truffy
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As one of the upfront payers for the 17, I am now completely bewildered.

 

I have searched back through my e-mail folders and can't find either the e-mails shown a few posts back, neither the first one requesting funding or the second one about the refund and I don't have any recollection of the second one at all. The wording is so vague and woolly I feel I would have remembered it. All I know of for sure is what was put on RM Web and the explanation given there.

 

The money paid up by us wasn't just to finish the tooling to 2nd EP, was supposed to cover every process step to delivery. I can't understand now whether all, some or none of it was actually paid to the factory. It doesn't make sense to me that the factory would "pull" the tooling and deny access to it if the model was fully funded and had been paid for right up to production, so was there still money owed as regards getting to the first EP stage?

 

It had never occurred to me that the monies repaid to those who had funded up front might be anything other than our own money coming back to us (quite legitimately) because he couldn't access the tooling to progress to 2nd EP and thus deliver our models. I took that as a given with each project's funding supposedly ring fenced. I guess I will just have to accept I was very fortunate, but the possibility now being flagged that it might have been at the expense of others leaves me feeling pretty uncomfortable.

 

The whole thing looking back over it appears to be distorted by lots of smoke and mirrors, cleverly worded statements that seem to hint at things without actually saying them. There is also reference at times to crowdfunders but comments at other times that indicate he knew we were not. Of course we now know the definition is actually pretty loose. 

 

Final though on this for now. Whatever the true situation with the Clayton, it might be asked what would have happened to confidence in DJM if the money hadn't been repaid when it was? Would people have started jumping ship then as regards other projects and could the refund therefore have been seen as a necessity whatever "pot" it came from to protect the business?

 

Roy

 

 

 

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"Final though on this for now. Whatever the true situation with the Clayton, it might be asked what would have happened to confidence in DJM if the money hadn't been repaid when it was? Would people have started jumping ship then as regards other projects and could the refund therefore have been seen as a necessity whatever "pot" it came from to protect the business?"

 

Roy LS ....exactly so.

Having received ,y refund, like you, I assumed it was my own money coming back and not obtained by delving into another "kitty".

I must admit though that particular episode dissuaded me from any further "investment" in DJM, preferring to wait until there was something more substantial than vague promises and "maybes"

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