The electric bicycle maker VanMoof was declared bankrupt by the court in Amsterdam on Tuesday. The founders of the company announced this in an internal email to their employees. The brand had been in financial trouble for some time and was granted a deferment of payment last week.
The company spent a lot of money on repairs, because many of the bikes were delivered with defects. The company’s communication channels were regularly down, making it more difficult for customers to make an appointment. Once customers were able to make an appointment, they sometimes had to wait months for repairs.
In the message to all employees, founders Taco and Ties Carlier thank the hundreds of employees for their efforts over the past fourteen years. The trustees are now looking for candidates for a restart, so that bicycle repairs can also be carried out again. Now that the company is finally closing its doors, another party has to take over the production of parts to keep the electric bicycles running.
Read also: VanMoof, for which bankruptcy is imminent, has always had problems
VanMoof was founded in 2009 by the Carlier brothers. Seven years later, the company launched their electric bicycle. Since then, the bicycles have grown in popularity: the company claims to have sold around 200,000 bicycles in Europe, the United States and Japan. For several years now, the company has focused exclusively on the production of electric bicycles, but many of the bicycles sold had defects.